PSY 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Extrasensory Perception, Luigi Galvani, Wilhelm Wundt

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1001
• Professor: Robert Thunhurst

Document Summary

Psychology: the study of behavior and mental processes. *psychologists gather facts about behavior and attempt to explain them. Two historical trends: move from explanations of behavior based on unseen causes to observables, localization of function within the nervous system. Animism: the belief that behavior is directed by spirits. Said that sensory nerves are like strings and motor nerves are like hydraulics. Used frog legs to discover that nerves use electricity. Motor cortex: part of the brain that makes body parts move. Somatosensory: allows you to know what part of your body is being touched. First to dissect the brain into sections/ to identify different sections of the brain. Physiognomy- the face showed what personality the person had. Modern pseudoscience: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method. Analytics introspection: describing conscious experience in terms of elementary parts: ex. Reductionism: reduce behavior to its most basic parts for study.