Cognitive and Biological Psychology
Wundt – structuralism; inner processes can be studied
Watson – behaviourism; inner processes cannot be studied
Karat (2016) – The study of the biological (brain and body) mechanisms of the
normal and abnormal behaviour, it is interested in the biology of human behaviour
Broca (1861) – aphasia; language disorders (left-side of brain)
Wernicke – aphasia; speech is fluent but repetitive and lacking meaning
(comprehension)
Witzel et al. (2016), Schiltz et al. (2013) – study on institutionalised inmates of high-
security institutions; high prevalence brain pathology.
Pujol et al. (2012) – fMRI study
Weber, Habel, Amunts & Schneider (2008) – psychopaths show a significant 20%
reduction in amygdala volume (danger sensor).
James Fallon – study of psychopathic brains on death row – difference between
violent and non-violent psychopaths is upbringing
Hare (1991) – EEG scans of psychopathic brains show little change in response to
neutral and emotional words and much less brain activity compared to non-
psychopathic brains.
Edward Thorndike (1905) – the law of effect
Burrhus Frederick Skinner – reinforcement; specific environmental elements
factoring the recreation of an action. – operant chamber
Schacter et al. (2016) – selective attention is our ability to focus our mental
processing Ona limited range of events.
Cherry (1953) – selective attention experiment; headphones with two different
sounds, participants to repeat one of the inputs; participants noticed sensory
changes in unattended input but could not remember semantic meaning of
unattended input.
Broadbent (1958) – broadband theory (bottleneck theory) – humans have limited
capacity to process information; too much information processed would overwhelm
us; need to prioritise information for high processing; attention acts as filter
preventing overloading of the limited capacity.
Murray (1959) – 65% of subjects noticed their name spoken in unattended channel;
cocktail party effect.
Wundt – structuralism; inner processes can be studied
Watson – behaviourism; inner processes cannot be studied
Karat (2016) – The study of the biological (brain and body) mechanisms of the
normal and abnormal behaviour, it is interested in the biology of human behaviour
Broca (1861) – aphasia; language disorders (left-side of brain)
Wernicke – aphasia; speech is fluent but repetitive and lacking meaning
(comprehension)
Witzel et al. (2016), Schiltz et al. (2013) – study on institutionalised inmates of high-
security institutions; high prevalence brain pathology.
Pujol et al. (2012) – fMRI study
Weber, Habel, Amunts & Schneider (2008) – psychopaths show a significant 20%
reduction in amygdala volume (danger sensor).
James Fallon – study of psychopathic brains on death row – difference between
violent and non-violent psychopaths is upbringing
Hare (1991) – EEG scans of psychopathic brains show little change in response to
neutral and emotional words and much less brain activity compared to non-
psychopathic brains.
Edward Thorndike (1905) – the law of effect
Burrhus Frederick Skinner – reinforcement; specific environmental elements
factoring the recreation of an action. – operant chamber
Schacter et al. (2016) – selective attention is our ability to focus our mental
processing Ona limited range of events.
Cherry (1953) – selective attention experiment; headphones with two different
sounds, participants to repeat one of the inputs; participants noticed sensory
changes in unattended input but could not remember semantic meaning of
unattended input.
Broadbent (1958) – broadband theory (bottleneck theory) – humans have limited
capacity to process information; too much information processed would overwhelm
us; need to prioritise information for high processing; attention acts as filter
preventing overloading of the limited capacity.
Murray (1959) – 65% of subjects noticed their name spoken in unattended channel;
cocktail party effect.
