Ch 9. History Of Psychology

Front 1

Wundt(introspection)

Back 1

A. Wundt took the diverseachievements of other researchers and his own early research on attention(pendulum experiment) and synthesized them into a unified program of research.

He determined that this program must stress selective attention that isvolition. Psychology’s first school was formed – a school can be defined as agroup of individuals who share common assumptions, work on common problems, anduse common methods. Similar to Kuhn’sparadigm. This school was called voluntarism.

B. Goal was to study simple and complex mental process in the phenomena that is consciousness.

-Simple phenomena could be experimented on but complex could only naturalistic-ally observed.

C. Two typesof experience: Mediate experience and data are obtained via measuring devicesand thus is not direct. Immediate experience and data are events in humanconsciousness as they occurred and -this was to be the subject matter ofpsychology.

D. Primarily usedintrospection. His experimentalintrospection was not the unstructured self-observation used by earlier philosophers.Wundt’s introspection used laboratory instruments to present stimuli, in mostinstances the subject was to respond with a simple response such as saying“yes” or “no”, pressing a key. These responses were made without anydescription of internal events. Again, this was to be used to study immediateexperience but not the higher mental processes.

E. There are two basic types ofmental experience, sensations and feelings. Sensations occurred when a sense organ is stimulated and the impulsereaches the brain. These can bedescribed in terms of modality, intensity, and quality. Feelings accompaniedsensations and could be described along three dimensions, pleasantness –unpleasantness, excitement – calm, and strain – relaxation. This describes his tridimensional theory offeelings.

F. ForWundt, perception is a passiveprocess governed by the stimulation present, the physical makeup of the person,and the person’s past experience. Theinteraction of these factors make up the person’s perceptual field and the partof this field the person attends to is apperceived; apperception andselective attention are the same.

- Creative synthesis- elements which are attended to can be arrangedand rearranged as the person wills, thus arrangements not experienced beforecan be produced.

G. In his research he used a methoddeveloped by Franciscus Donders to measure:

-mental chronometry-differences in reaction time whenvarious mental activities were required by the experimental situation. Hecalled this .

H. Wundt believed that physicalcausality is possible but psychological causality was not possible because antecedent predict it.

I. Thoughhe did not believe that higher mental processes could be studiedexperimentally, they were reflected in human culture. The nature of the highermental processes could be deduced from the study of such cultural products asreligion, social customs, myths, history, language, morals, art, and the law.Wundt’s twenty year study of these things culminated in his

-10-volume work, Cultural Psychology.

J. Wundt has been portrayed in texts inaccurately by students who misrepresented or misinterpreted him.misinterpretedhim.

Front 2

Titchner-The Experimentalists(introspection)

Back 2

A. Titchener displayed conflicting behaviors towardswomen. He would not allow women to join his group, The Experimentalists.

-However, his first doctoral candidate wasMargaret Floy Washburn, who was the first women to receive a Ph.D. inpsychology.

B. Titchener thought the goals ofpsychology included introspection: the determination of the what, how, and why of mental life. Thewhat was learned through introspection – the cataloging of the basic mentalelements that make up conscious experience.

how- answered the question ofhow the elements combined

why-involved the neurological correlates of mental events.

He was a structuralist- only describing psychology by the structure of the mind.

C. His introspection was more complicated than Wundtys- laboratory required the subject to describe the basic, raw,elemental experiences which form complex cognitive experience.

stimulus error- he wanted them to report the sensations-not perceptions-not the names of the object.

D. He concluded that the elements ofconsciousness (the mind) were sensations (perceptions), images(ideas), and affections (emotions).

-The elements couldbe known only by their attributes.

-Attributes of sensations and images were quality, intensity, duration,clearness, and extensity.

Affections could have the attributes of only quality,intensity, and duration.

Titchener did not agree with Wundt’stridimensional theory of emotion;emotions were described in terms of one dimension – pleasantness –unpleasantness.

E. He described how the elementscombine by using the law of contiguity as many others had done before.

F. Titchenerbelieved that physiological processes provide a continuous substratum for continuity they otherwise would not have.

-Nervous system can be used to describe characteristics, not events.

G. What gives sensations and eventsmeaning is the images and events with which the sensation has been associatedcontiguously in the past. These associations form a core or a context. Thus,this description of what gives meaning to sensations is called the context theoryof meaning.

H. .

- People moved away from structuralism inevitably and introspection interpretations and animal studies arrived and objective measures of research etc. were preferred over practical implications of structuralism.

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A. Franz Clemens Brentano

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1. For Brentano, emphasis on mental processes by way of what they did-not what was in the mind/brain and their preforming functions.

intentionality-All mental acts incorporatesomething outside of itself.

2. He employed phenomenologicalintrospection -an introspective analysis of intact, meaningfulexperiences.

Front 4

A. Carl Stumpf

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1. Like Brentano, Stumpf-phenomenological introspection- argued forstudy of intact, meaningful experiences, phenomenology. The study of mentalphenomena.

2. Influenced the development ofGestalt psychology.

-The three “founders” of Gestalt psychology studied withStumpf.

3. Stumpf and a student OskarPhungst helped investigate the Clever Hans phenomenon.

Front 5

A. Edmund Husserl

Back 5

1. For Husserl, there are two typesof introspection:

-intentionality described by Brentano

- the second focuses on subjective experience - called pure phenomenology-introspection focuses on the essences of mental processes.

2. His goal was to create a taxonomyof the mind – describe the mental essences by which humans experiencethemselves.

3. He sought to examine meanings and essences, notmental element, via introspection, which differed greatly from thestructuralists.

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The phenomenologies of Brentano, Stumpf, and Husserl

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all insisted that the proper subject matter of psychologywas intact, meaningful psychological experiences. This approach was to impactGestalt psychology and existentialism.

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A. Oswald Külpe

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1. In contrast to Wundt, Külpeproposed that some thought could be imageless. The imageless thought controversy continued for many years.

systematic experimental introspection- also that the higher mentalprocesses could be studied experimentally.

2. The most influential work that came out of the Würzburg school(where Kulpe was the leader) was the idea of mental set.

-Mental set is adetermining tendency that causesthe person to behave in certain ways while completely unaware- The mental set can be induced by instruction or by simply the person’s pastexperiences.

This school also showedthat higher mental processes could be studied experimentally.

Front 8

Hans Vaihinger

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A. proposed that societal livingrequires that we give meaning to our sensations, and we do that byinventing terms, concepts, and theories and then acting “as if” they were true.

Front 9

HermannEbbinghaus

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A. Ebbinghaus researched learningand memory using a unique methodology.

-This was important because this was the first time that learning andmemory had been studied as they occurred and it illustrated that theseprocesses could be studied experimentally.

Many of his findings are still cited today and most of the major conclusionsreached are still valid today.

B. Method

1. He developed nonsense syllablesto use as stimuli in his research. These provided a series of stimulithat were essentially meaningless.

2. The subject is to learn(memorize) a series of syllables by looking at them sequentially until mastery.Then after various time intervals they were to relearn the same list. Thedifference in number of exposures to relearn the list in comparison to thenumber of exposure to mastery at the initial exposure was called savings.

3. Among the conclusions were:

a. More rapid forgetting during thefirst hours following learning and slower thereafter.

b. Overlearning (continuing to studypast mastery) decreased the rate of forgetting. c. Distributed practice was moreeffective than massed practice.