Mental Atoms
Mental Atoms - Related Videos
05:56
Mental Rotation
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2023
Source: Laboratory of Jonathan Flombaum—Johns Hopkins University Visual mental imagery refers to the ability to conjure images in one’s mind’s eye. This allows people to process visual material above and beyond the constraints of a current point-of-view; for example, a person could imagine, using their mind’s eye, how something might look in a different color, or what it would look like if it were made from a different material or rotated and seen from a different perspective. Mental imagery...
35:03
Mental Status Examination
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2023
Source: Carmen Black, Matthew Goldenberg, and Jaideep Talwalkar; Yale School of Medicine The mental status exam is a clinical evaluation of emotional, perceptual, and cognitive functioning that spans both the fields of psychiatry and neurology. Developing skill in the psychiatric portions of the examination are important to describe salient aspects of the patient's mental state that may be observed during routine history and/or physical exam. Proficiency in the cognitive portions of this...
01:52
Atomic Mass
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2020
Atoms — and the protons, neutrons, and electrons that compose them — are extremely small. For example, a carbon atom weighs less than 2 × 10−23 g. When describing the properties of tiny objects such as atoms, we use appropriately small units of measure, such as the atomic mass unit (amu). The amu was originally defined based on hydrogen, the lightest element, then later in terms of oxygen. Since 1961, it has been defined with regard to the most abundant isotope of carbon, atoms of which are...
02:44
Atomic Orbitals
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2020
An atomic orbital represents the three-dimensional regions in an atom where an electron has the highest probability to reside. The radial distribution function indicates the total probability of finding an electron within the thin shell at a distance r from the nucleus. The atomic orbitals have distinct shapes which are determined by l, the angular momentum quantum number. The orbitals are often drawn with a boundary surface, enclosing densest regions of the cloud. The angular momentum...
03:24
Hybridization of Atomic Orbitals I
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2020
The mathematical expression known as the wave function, ψ, contains information about each orbital and the wavelike properties of electrons in an isolated atom. When atoms are bound together in a molecule, the wave functions combine to produce new mathematical descriptions that have different shapes. This process of combining the wave functions for atomic orbitals is called hybridization and is mathematically accomplished by the linear combination of atomic orbitals. The new orbitals that...
FAQs
Structuralist analysis focused on three broad contents: sensations, images, and affective qualities. A complex perception or thought was treated as something that could be described through these elementary components and their combination. This analytical emphasis shifted attention from an experience’s practical purpose toward the contents available to conscious awareness during psychological investigation.
Training was intended to make reports of immediate experience more systematic and precise. Instead of offering an everyday label such as “object” or “event,” an observer attempted to describe the sensations, images, or affective qualities present in awareness. This procedure supported the structuralist goal of comparing conscious contents rather than relying on informal personal impressions.
Structuralist work treated conscious experience as a legitimate object of psychological analysis, whereas later behaviorist perspectives questioned whether subjective experience could be reduced to discrete elements. This disagreement changed what counted as useful evidence: structuralists emphasized reported contents of awareness, while behaviorism placed less emphasis on such reports. The contrast marks a major shift in psychology’s theoretical priorities.
An observer would attend to a conscious episode, examine it through trained introspection, and report its elementary contents rather than merely naming the whole experience. The investigator could then describe how sensations, images, and affective qualities appeared within that episode and consider their relation to the larger experience. The procedure made subjective awareness the central evidence.
Although the approach was later challenged, it helped establish the idea that conscious experience could be investigated through systematic procedures rather than discussed only philosophically. Its emphasis on trained observation and careful description contributed to psychology’s early effort to study mental processes in an organized way. Its importance is therefore methodological and historical, not merely theoretical.
They provide a historical model for asking whether complex conscious experiences can be understood by analyzing simpler contents. Later cognitive perspectives questioned whether subjective experience is adequately explained as a collection of discrete elements, keeping the issue open rather than settling it. Studying this debate helps place questions about perception, consciousness, and mental processes within psychology’s development.