PSY 3103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Natural Science, Edward B. Titchener, Wilhelm Wundt

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3103
• Professor: Christine Boisvert

Document Summary

Aristotle had ideas about psychology and learning which we still use today. His teacher was plato, whose belief was that all of the knowledge that we have is inborn. We come into the world knowing this information but don"t have access to it. Learning is a process of mining out that information. Aristotle disagreed, saying we come into this world not having this information, and we get information via experiences with our environment. This is an early incarnation of the nature nurture debate. Empiricism (learn through experiences) versus nativism (born with the knowledge) Aristotle also talked about the idea that ideas can be connected with each other. He came up with the four laws of association. Stimuli, ideas, facts, can become associated with each other in different ways. Laws of association: first law of association: the law of similarity. Events that are similar to each other are readily associated.