Lecture notes Introductory Psychology and Brain &
Cognition: Part A - INTERIM 1
Lecture 1: CH1 Background of the study of Psychology 02/09/2024
Psychology: science of human behavior and its underlying processes
Stimuli: everything that is offered to an organism to provoke a reaction
Response: A measurable reaction to a stimulus (behavior)
Underlying ideas of psychology
1. Behavior and mental processes have NO supernatural, but rather a material origin
→ Dualism vs materialism
2. An individual changes because of experiences
→ Nature vs nurture
3. Humankind was shaped by evolution and natural selection, just as all other species
→ Evolution vs creationism
Dualism vs materialism
Dualism
- René Descartes: Body/soul dualism. Saw the body as a complex machine, animals
are completely mechanical, while humans are not since they have consciousness
thought
- Claims that conscious thought (‘I want to move my arm now’) is performed by a
supernatural soul that exists outside of the body
- Stimulus → eyes → pineal gland → soul → pineal gland → mouth
- Ties in with intuition and religion
- Concept of individual deliberation and judgment is related to Qualia (The subjective
quality of an observable thought, or memory like color, or taste. ‘Your red does not
have to be the same red as I see’)
Materialism
- Thomas Hobbes: the idea that there is a material base for our thought processes.
- Hobbes argued that the soul is a meaningless concept and that nothing exists but
matter and energy
- All human behavior, including voluntary choices, can be understood in terms of
physical processes in the body, especially the brain. Conscious thought is purely a
product of the brain’s machinery and therefore subject to natural law.
1
,Nurture vs Nature
Nurture (Empiricism)
- Empiricism: human knowledge and thought derive from sensory experience (vision,
hearing, touch). If we are machines, we are machines that learn. Our senses provide
input that allows us to acquire knowledge of the world around us, and this knowledge
allows us to think about that world and behave adaptively within it.
- Locke: Tabula rasa (blank slate): There is no “human nature” other than an ability to
adapt one’s behavior to the demands of the environment.
- Primary building blocks of experience are the senses (philosophical founders = are
John Locke (1632 -1704) and John Stuart Mill
- Learning = associating experiences
- Association takes place when ‘building blocks’ appear successively or simultaneously
- in psychology, this is supported by growing knowledge about how humans and
animals learn
- John B Watson transformed Pavlov’s ideas into behaviorism
Nature
- In philosophy the difference between posteriori knowledge (things you must learn)
and priori knowledge (things you do not have to learn)
- Max Wertheimer: ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’
- Ornstein (1991): Summarized the nativist response to empiricism
- A human child can learn human language, but a cat cannot,
- A creature must possess the appropriate machinery to learn specific skills
- But also within species, there are limits to what can change
Experiences change people (Nurture), but only in those areas in which we can change
(nature).
We are born into a body (including a nervous system) that can learn certain things, but its
capabilities aren't limitless.
Evolution vs Creationism
Evolution
- Darwin - Natural selection → Beaks of finches
- Environment plays an important role
- Complex changes require mutations and a long time to evolve
- Can only lead to changes that are immediately adaptive, it cannot anticipate future
needs.
Creationsims
- Belief that nature and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans
originated with divine creations.
- Mostly a religious belief
2
, Lecture 2: CH2 Methods of Psychology - 04/09/2024
Independent variable: Varied/manipulated
Dependent variable: Effect that you want to research → measured
Representative sample: Differences in the sample
Pre- and post-measurements: show differences in dependent variable
Effect: pre-measurement - post-measurement
Random assigning participants helps with reliability
Subject-expectancy effect: participants’ expectations can affect the results
Observer-expectancy effect: observers’ expectation treats participants differently in
different conditions
Dubble blind experiment: participants and observers do not know which conditions are
assigned to whom.
Meta-analysis: Summarises the results of many studies on the same subject
Preregistration: 3 steps:
1. Register studies in advance
- Complete setup: theory, hypothesis, prediction, operationalization, experiment, analysis plan
2. Do the research exactly as planned
3. Publish the results whatever they are
This method avoids:
- Data dredging/fishing: trying many tests to only report outcomes that show
significant results
- Publication bias: hypothesized effect not found, therefore not published
Errors
1. Validity:
How do we measure what we want to measure? → big problem in social sciences because
of socially acceptable answers
2. Measurement error:
Random factors that influence the measurement (random variation)
Less error = more reliable
Low reliability is problematic when the number of participants is low
3. Bias:
Systematic deviation or non-random effects (always too high or too low)
- Examples: there is noise when learning a list of words, while there is silence for the
other group
- Study about health only includes young people instead of a mixed-age group
- Observers expectations
Is a strong bias problematic? Yes → it leads to incorrect conclusions
3
Cognition: Part A - INTERIM 1
Lecture 1: CH1 Background of the study of Psychology 02/09/2024
Psychology: science of human behavior and its underlying processes
Stimuli: everything that is offered to an organism to provoke a reaction
Response: A measurable reaction to a stimulus (behavior)
Underlying ideas of psychology
1. Behavior and mental processes have NO supernatural, but rather a material origin
→ Dualism vs materialism
2. An individual changes because of experiences
→ Nature vs nurture
3. Humankind was shaped by evolution and natural selection, just as all other species
→ Evolution vs creationism
Dualism vs materialism
Dualism
- René Descartes: Body/soul dualism. Saw the body as a complex machine, animals
are completely mechanical, while humans are not since they have consciousness
thought
- Claims that conscious thought (‘I want to move my arm now’) is performed by a
supernatural soul that exists outside of the body
- Stimulus → eyes → pineal gland → soul → pineal gland → mouth
- Ties in with intuition and religion
- Concept of individual deliberation and judgment is related to Qualia (The subjective
quality of an observable thought, or memory like color, or taste. ‘Your red does not
have to be the same red as I see’)
Materialism
- Thomas Hobbes: the idea that there is a material base for our thought processes.
- Hobbes argued that the soul is a meaningless concept and that nothing exists but
matter and energy
- All human behavior, including voluntary choices, can be understood in terms of
physical processes in the body, especially the brain. Conscious thought is purely a
product of the brain’s machinery and therefore subject to natural law.
1
,Nurture vs Nature
Nurture (Empiricism)
- Empiricism: human knowledge and thought derive from sensory experience (vision,
hearing, touch). If we are machines, we are machines that learn. Our senses provide
input that allows us to acquire knowledge of the world around us, and this knowledge
allows us to think about that world and behave adaptively within it.
- Locke: Tabula rasa (blank slate): There is no “human nature” other than an ability to
adapt one’s behavior to the demands of the environment.
- Primary building blocks of experience are the senses (philosophical founders = are
John Locke (1632 -1704) and John Stuart Mill
- Learning = associating experiences
- Association takes place when ‘building blocks’ appear successively or simultaneously
- in psychology, this is supported by growing knowledge about how humans and
animals learn
- John B Watson transformed Pavlov’s ideas into behaviorism
Nature
- In philosophy the difference between posteriori knowledge (things you must learn)
and priori knowledge (things you do not have to learn)
- Max Wertheimer: ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’
- Ornstein (1991): Summarized the nativist response to empiricism
- A human child can learn human language, but a cat cannot,
- A creature must possess the appropriate machinery to learn specific skills
- But also within species, there are limits to what can change
Experiences change people (Nurture), but only in those areas in which we can change
(nature).
We are born into a body (including a nervous system) that can learn certain things, but its
capabilities aren't limitless.
Evolution vs Creationism
Evolution
- Darwin - Natural selection → Beaks of finches
- Environment plays an important role
- Complex changes require mutations and a long time to evolve
- Can only lead to changes that are immediately adaptive, it cannot anticipate future
needs.
Creationsims
- Belief that nature and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans
originated with divine creations.
- Mostly a religious belief
2
, Lecture 2: CH2 Methods of Psychology - 04/09/2024
Independent variable: Varied/manipulated
Dependent variable: Effect that you want to research → measured
Representative sample: Differences in the sample
Pre- and post-measurements: show differences in dependent variable
Effect: pre-measurement - post-measurement
Random assigning participants helps with reliability
Subject-expectancy effect: participants’ expectations can affect the results
Observer-expectancy effect: observers’ expectation treats participants differently in
different conditions
Dubble blind experiment: participants and observers do not know which conditions are
assigned to whom.
Meta-analysis: Summarises the results of many studies on the same subject
Preregistration: 3 steps:
1. Register studies in advance
- Complete setup: theory, hypothesis, prediction, operationalization, experiment, analysis plan
2. Do the research exactly as planned
3. Publish the results whatever they are
This method avoids:
- Data dredging/fishing: trying many tests to only report outcomes that show
significant results
- Publication bias: hypothesized effect not found, therefore not published
Errors
1. Validity:
How do we measure what we want to measure? → big problem in social sciences because
of socially acceptable answers
2. Measurement error:
Random factors that influence the measurement (random variation)
Less error = more reliable
Low reliability is problematic when the number of participants is low
3. Bias:
Systematic deviation or non-random effects (always too high or too low)
- Examples: there is noise when learning a list of words, while there is silence for the
other group
- Study about health only includes young people instead of a mixed-age group
- Observers expectations
Is a strong bias problematic? Yes → it leads to incorrect conclusions
3
