Neurophysiological and Evolutionary Theories Paper

For one who may be interested in the neurophysiological or evolutionary theories of psychology, one need not look any further than Donald Olding Hebb who has been described as the father of neuropsychology and Robert C. Bolles who did most of his work in experimental psychology. Hebb is best known for his theory of Hebbian Learning which was introduced in his 1949 work: The Organization of Behavior. As far as his contributions to learning and cognition, his most important contribution was his conceptual demonstration that we could study higher cognitive processes by using single neurons and synapses as …show more content…

Evolutionary psychology emphasized innate rather than learned S-S and S-R expectancies. In Hebb’s theory, Hebb proposed that motivation would be highest when animals are neither sluggish, sleepy, or anxiety driven. Hebb made the assumption that, at some high level of stimulation or shock beyond that tested by Yerkes and Dodson which showed the relationship between arousal and performance, behavior would be disorganized. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases. Therefore, motivation be optimized at medium levels (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2013). Modern day relevancy in evolutionary psychology as far as education exists and remains relevant today. Given the innate human predisposition to acquire language, for example, schools should stress bilingual learning even in the early stages of education (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2013). Evolutionary psychology certainly remains relevant in psychotherapy today. It is important for therapists to be familiar with human development over the years and to truly understand why people are the way they are and why they behave the way they do in different situations and in different environments. This field of psychology will always remain relevant while new information and