PSYC 460 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Empiricism, Wilhelm Wundt, Tabula Rasa

• School: Xavier University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 460
• Professor: Dulaney

Document Summary

Classical conditioning = the process by which certain inborn behaviors come to be elicited in new circumstances; also called pavlovian/respondent conditioning. Operant conditioning = involves the strengthening or weakening of a behavior as a result of its consequences. Behavior = any activity of an organism that can be observed or somehow measured. Learning = a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from some type of experience. Observational learning = the act of observing someone else"s behavior. Fixed action patterns = certain types of largely inherited (non-learned) behavior patterns. Aristotle"s disagreement with plato is an early example of the debate nature vs. nurture (or nativism and empiricism) British empiricists = a group of british philosophers that believed that almost all knowledge is a function of experience. Structuralism = belief that it is possible to determine the structure of the mind by identifying the basic elements that compose it.