EXPERIMENTAL PSYCH REVIEWER
Week 11 ● The indirect approach to perception
Psychophysics
● involves the determination of the
psychological reaction to events that
lie along a physical dimension.
● the beginning of scientific
psychology
Gustav Fechner
● measure attributes of the world in
terms of their psychological values
(1860/1966).
Classical Psychophysics - It is the minimum
intensity of a stimulus that is required to
evoke a response.
Week 12
Sensation
● In psychology, sensation is defined
as the process of the sensory
organs transforming physical energy
into neurological impulses the brain
interprets as the five senses of
vision, smell, taste, touch, and
hearing. This process is known as
transduction, or the conversion of
one form of energy into another.
● Sensation is the process by which
we receive information from the
environment.
● The direct approach to perception
argues that the usually reliable cues
in the optic array of a scene directly
provide information about depth and
distance. The direct view assumes
that the perceiver picks up the
information afforded by the
environment naturally and without
reflecting on them.
argues that our judgments of depth
are made based on our experience
with the depth cues. According to
the indirect approach, we construct
the scene to produce a perception of
depth and distance.
● These unconscious inferences, as
Von Helmholtz called them, occur
rapidly and without conscious
thought—the inferences are a visual
habit. The empirical theory is often
contrasted with a version of direct
perception called nativistic theory.
● According to the nativistic view, the
nature of the visual system (the eye
and the brain) determines visual
perception.
● In contemporary cognitive
psychology, the direct/indirect
controversy is often described as a
contrast between bottom-up and
top-down perceptual processing.
● The bottom-up view emphasizes the
role of sensory data in determining
perception
● The top-down approach stresses the
role of previously established
concepts in determining perceptions.
The Signal Detection Theory
● Decision making with uncertainties,
these uncertainties can be in a form
of time pressure or inherited
randomness or both. This is applied
to all areas of your life because of
decisions.
Week 13
Three kinds of reaction time developed by
Donders, a Dutch psychologist.
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1. Donders A - In the A reaction, which
is often called the simple reaction, a
single stimulus, say, a light, comes
on, and the observer responds by
quickly pressing a key or button.
There is only one stimulus and one
response.
2. Donders B - In a B reaction, which is
also known as choice reaction time,
there is more than one stimulus and
more than one response. Each
stimulus has its own unique
response.
3. Donders C - the Donders C reaction. Here,
as in the B reaction, there is more than one
stimulus, but only one stimulus is linked
with a response. Waiting in line at a
takeout restaurant would be an example of
a C reaction—until your number is called,
you should not respond.
Week 14
Ivan P. Pavlov
➢ Early in this century, some
fundamental psychological
discoveries were made by Ivan P.
Pavlov. The basic discovery that he
made, which is now called
Pavlovian, respondent, or classical
conditioning. Pavlov had discovered
a new type of reflex, one that he
sometimes called a psychic reflex
and sometimes a conditioned reflex.
Classical Conditioning
● Classical conditioning is a type of
learning that happens
unconsciously. When you learn
through classical conditioning, an
automatic conditioned response is
paired with a specific stimulus. This
creates a behavior.
Neutral Stimulus
● that elicits no salivation when
presented by itself is delivered to the
organism slightly before an
unconditioned stimulus, such as
food powder, that produces an
unconditioned response, salivation.
Conditioned Stimulus
● pairings, the neutral stimulus
becomes associated with the
unconditioned response.The neutral
stimulus is now called the
conditioned stimulus.
● stimulus. Eventually, the conditioned
stimulus will elicit salivation in the
absence of the unconditioned
stimulus, and this salivation is called
the conditioned response (CR). If the
conditioned stimulus is repeatedly
presented without the unconditioned
stimulus, the CR will grow weaker
and eventually extinguish.
Operant Conditioning
● referred to as instrumental
conditioning, is a method of learning
that uses rewards and punishment
to modify behavior. Through operant
conditioning, behavior that is
rewarded is likely to be repeated,
and behavior that is punished will
rarely occur.
● This procedure of reinforcing greater
and greater approximations to the
desired behavior is called shaping
the behavior.
Positive Reinforcers
● are the familiar rewards that are
given following a particular
response.
Negative Reinforcers
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● reinforcers are aversive events, and
responses that remove or avoid
them are strengthened.
● Do not confuse negative
reinforcement with punishment.
Behaviors that produce aversive
events are said to be punished.
Punished behaviors decrease in
frequency.
A Discriminative Stimulus
● (SD) signals when a behavior will be
followed by a reward.
● A discriminative stimulus may be
said to “set the stage” or “provide the
occasion”
Under Stimulus Control
● One of the primary tasks of operant
conditioning is to bring some
response “under stimulus control.”
An organism is said to be under
stimulus control when it responds
correctly and consistently in the
presence of a discriminative stimulus
and not in its absence.
Pseudoconditioning
● refers to a temporary elevation in the
amplitude of the conditioned
response (CR) that is not caused by
the association between the CS and
US. Thus, it is not true conditioning
but only mimics conditioning.
Week 15
Memory is quite broad and covers many
kinds of skills and abilities. All have in
common the properties that something is
learned, retained over time, and then used
in some situations, but beyond that, types of
memory may differ considerably.
Short Term or Working Memory
● One way of defining short-term
memory is the recovery of
information shortly after it has been
perceived, before it has even left
conscious awareness.
Long Term Memory
● refers to retrieval of memories that
have disappeared from
consciousness after their initial
perception.
Explicit memory (sometimes called episodic
memory)
● refers to the conscious recollection
of events (or episodes) in one’s
life.People may be asked to recall
what they learned in a particular time
or place or to distinguish things that
happened to them from plausible
distractors.
Implicit memory
● on the other hand, refers to the
expression of past learning in which
a person need not make any
conscious effort to retrieve
information from the past. It just
happens, automatically.
Nonsense Syllables
● created by Hermann Ebbinghaus.
He typically used meaningless
syllables that contained a vowel
sandwiched between two
consonants (therefore called CVC
syllables), such as ZOK, VAP, and
so on.
Trials to Criterion - One measure of the
difficulty of recalling a list that Ebbinghaus
used is the number of such study/test
trials (or the amount of time) needed for one
perfect recitation of the list. This is called
trials to criterion measure of memory; it was
widely used in memory research for years,
though it is rare now.
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Percentage Savings
● is defined as the difference between
the number of trials in original
learning (OL) of a list and its
relearning (RL) divided by the
number of trials in original learning
(OL), with this ratio multiplied by
100.
Paired Associate Learning
● In this technique, subjects learn a list
of arbitrary associations such as
spoon-airplane and chair-trust.
Recognition tests have two types, people
are given the original material they studied,
such as words, mixed in with several new
but generally similar items (words).
1. Forced-choice recognition tests are
multiple-choice tests.
2. Recall and recognition tests
Week 16
The experimental investigation of individual
differences illustrates the need for:
1. Reliability - to measures of individual
characteristics; if individuals’
decisions concerning future action
are to be based on their particular
mental abilities,
2. Operational definitions- separate
people into classes or categories on
the basis of the definitions, so
researchers can study these classes
of people in experimental settings.
3. Subject variables- Classified the
subject in the study based on their
age, intelligence, sex, degree of
neuroticism, or any characteristic of
people that can be precisely
specified.
4. Regression to the mean- described
as a hazard in interpreting, it leads
the investigator or researcher to
believe a change has been
produced when, in fact, it has not, or
vice versa.
Empirical Approach - aims to achieve the
greatest degree of predictive precision
possible by any means available.
Intelligence - defined by Binet and Simon as
ability to pass in school.
Predictive Validity
● also called as criterion validity, it
refers to the ability to test or
determine the predicted future
outcome.
Face Validity
● means to measure or assess
whether a test measures what the
researchers are supposed to
measure.
Nature Theory
● genetic differences underlie
individual differences.
The Bell Curve
● illustrates a heritability theory of
intelligence.
Nurture view
● Individual differences focus on
experiential factors that influence
how organisms develop.
The intelligence quotient
● IQ is defined as mental age divided
by chronological age 100,
Week 17
Social Psychology
● is the scientific study of how people's
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
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are influenced by the actual,

imagined, or implied presence of
others. This includes studying how
individuals perceive, influence, and
interact with one another.
● Social psychology became
established as an independent field
of empirical study during the 1920s
and 1930s.

Sherif (1935)
Social norms
● which are the generalized rules of
conduct that tell us how we ought to
behave.
● He researched the surprisingly
powerful impact of social norms and
their development using a
perceptual illusion, the autokinetic
phenomenon.

Conformity
● which show groups influence
individual behavior so that
the behavior agrees with
social norms, became a
popular topic in social
psychology.