History of Psychology Review

What is the theory being tested?

• Theory of Relativity

• Theory of Conservation

• Theory of Cognitive Development

• Blue Water Theory

Answer explanation

The four stages of cognitive development were described and formalized by the Swiss psychologist Dr. Jean Piaget (pih-YAH-zhay). In the 1920s, Dr. Piaget was working in Paris, developing questions for children's intelligence testing. While working with children, he was struck by the wrong answers that children would give to questions. He realized that the mistakes made by children of a given age were similar. This led him to describe cognitive development as occurring in four stages: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. Children from birth to 2 years are in the sensorimotor stage. At this age, infants mainly use their senses and motor capabilities to experience and learn about their environment. From about 2 years of age to 6 or 7 years, the child is in the preoperational stage. At this stage, the child starts to use symbols, such as language, to represent objects. For example, a child doesn't need to see a banana to know what a banana is. A preoperational child is still learning from concrete evidence and tends to be egocentric. The concrete operational stage starts at about 6 or 7 years of age and lasts until about age 11 years. Children of this age are thinking logically about concrete events. They grasp concrete analogies and can perform mathematical operations. By age 12 years, children enter the formal operational stage where they can perform abstract reasoning, deduce consequences, and solve hypothetical problems.

What is the theory and who did the experiment?

• Behaviorism and Watson
• Phobia inducement and Skinner

• Trauma and Perry

• Humanism and May

Answer explanation

• The Little Albert experiment was a controversial psychology experiment conducted by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University.

• The experiment was performed in 1920 and was a case study aimed at testing the principles of classical conditioning.

• Watson and Raynor presented Little Albert (a nine-month-old boy) with a white rat and he showed no fear. Watson then presented the rat with a loud bang that startled Little Albert and made him cry.

• After the continuous association of the white rat and loud noise, Little Albert was classically conditioned to experience fear at the sight of the rat.

• Albert’s fear generalized to other stimuli that were similar to the rat, including a fur coat, some cotton wool, and a Santa mask.

In the Little Albert experiment, what is the name of how he responds to the animals after he's had their presentation paired with the banging on the pipe?

• Unconditioned response

• Conditioned stimulus

• Conditioned Response

• Undconditioned stimulus

Answer explanation

1. Neutral Stimulus (NS): This is a stimulus that, before conditioning, does not naturally bring about the response of interest. In this case, the Neutral Stimulus was the white laboratory rat. Initially, Little Albert had no fear of the rat, he was interested in the rat and wanted to play with it.

2. Unconditioned Stimulus (US): This is a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any learning. In the experiment, the Unconditioned Stimulus was the loud, frightening noise. This noise was produced by Watson and Rayner striking a steel bar with a hammer behind Albert’s back.

3. Unconditioned Response (UR): This is the natural response that occurs when the Unconditioned Stimulus is presented. It is unlearned and occurs without previous conditioning. In this case, the Unconditioned Response was Albert’s fear response to the loud noise – crying and showing distress.

4. Conditioned Stimulus (CS): After several pairings, the previously Neutral Stimulus (the rat) becomes the Conditioned Stimulus, as it now elicits the fear response even without the presence of the loud noise.

5. Conditioned Response (CR): This is the learned response to the previously neutral stimulus, which is now the Conditioned Stimulus. I

Who said it?

Anyone can become angry. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree

and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not

within everybody's power and is not easy.

• Albert Ellis

• William James

• Aristotle

• BF Skinner

Answer explanation

If we define psychology as a formal study of the mind and a more systematic approach to understanding and curing mental conditions, then the Ancient Greeks were certainly leading proponents. As with many scientific studies, Aristotle was at the forefront of developing the foundations of the history of psychology. Aristotle's psychology, as would be expected, was intertwined with his philosophy of the mind, reasoning and Nicomachean ethics, but the psychological method started with his brilliant mind and empirical approach.

From which field of psychology is the graphic?

• Projective Testing

• Mindfulness

• Cognitive Psychology

• Psychophysics

Answer explanation

The illusion feels fast and automatic yet is surprisingly susceptible to individual differences. Although most people across cultures experience the illusion, it is stronger for those from Japan than those from the UK. This cultural difference interacts with other factors: the effect is stronger on average in women than men (though there is massive overlap) and in social scientists than in mathematicians.

These differences are thought to rest on processing style. Those who experience the illusion most strongly tend to have a more global, holistic processing style as compared to a more local, analytic style.

Interestingly, children below the age of 7 do not seem to experience the illusion, regardless of where they come from. No-one is quite sure why but it may be because it relies on familiarity with depth cues in printed images. While most adults have years of experience of quickly making sense of size differences in 2D images, and so are easily fooled, children have a great deal less.

History of Psychophysics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452214004369

Who coined the term?

• BF Skinner

• John Locke

• Obama

• Plato

Answer explanation

The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism. Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical approaches of the Scientific Revolution. In his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” he advanced a theory of the self as a blank page, with knowledge and identity arising only from accumulated experience.

Who completed this research?

• Carol Gilligan

• Anna Freud

• Lawrence Kohlberg

Answer explanation

Men, she said, prioritize an "ethics of justice" where morality is centered on abstract principles and rules that can be applied equally to everyone. Meanwhile, women prioritize an "ethics of care," where morality is centered on interpersonal relationships and moral judgment is based on the context of an issue.

What theory was developed from this research?

• Conduct Disorder treatment

• Operant conditioning

• Classical conditioning

• Behavior Intervention

Answer explanation

When Pavlov discovered classical conditioning, he was performing unrelated research on dog digestion. He noticed how the dogs' reactions to the food they were being fed evolved based on stimuli in the test environment, which had nothing to do with the actual food he was giving to them.

At the beginning of the experiment, the dogs would salivate only when presented with food. Later on, other neutral noises, such as the food cart coming into the testing area, began to make them salivate because it always occurred prior to the dogs being fed.

To test out whether the dogs were actually being conditioned by external and unrelated stimuli, Pavlov set up an experiment that involved ringing a bell right before giving food to the dogs. After some time, the dogs began salivating after hearing the bell without seeing or hearing the food cart come into the room.

Who is this?

Answer explanation

First case leading to our understanding of neuroscience and regions of the brain being responsible for personality and behavior.

What is the experiment and who designed the study?

• Attachment Theory: John Bowlby

• Racism: Beverly Daniel Tatum

• Why is this baby here?: Donald Trump

• The Doll Test: Kenneth and Mamie Clark

Answer explanation

Drs. Clark used four dolls, identical except for color, to test children’s racial perceptions. Their subjects, children between the ages of three to seven, were asked to identify both the race of the dolls and which color doll they prefer. A majority of the children preferred the white doll and assigned positive characteristics to it. The Clarks concluded that “prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” created a feeling of inferiority among African-American children and damaged their self-esteem.