PS101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Psychometrics, Skewness, Frequency Distribution
Document Summary
History of psych: started when people wondered about human nature and human behaviour. Roots of psych came from questions posed by philosophy. Psychology: is the study of behaviour and mental processes such as thought and emotion; study of the mind. Methods borrowed from the physical sciences to study questions from philosophy; find answers. Conducted experiments but not like today: questioned experience. Immediate, conscious: belief that all (cid:858)e(cid:454)pe(cid:396)ie(cid:374)(cid:272)e(cid:859) (cid:272)ould be reduced to basic elements trying to find the structure of our conscious experiences; elements of our soul. Primary focus: consciousness - the awareness of immediate experience: kept psych focused on the mind and mental processes, but demanded that the methods psychs used to investigate the mind be as scientific as those of chemists and physicists. Goal: understand how the simplest elements of structure of conscious experience combine to create more complex perceptions and behaviours. Reaction times; attention span; perception of visual stimuli, touch and hearing.
