History and Systems Ch 4-5

act psychology

Brentano's system of psychology, which focused on mental activities (e.g., seeing) rather than on mental contents (e.g., that which is seen).

Herman Ebbinghaus

first to investigate learning and memory experimentally, made study of associations objective, quantified learning, memory, recall, and forgetting, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, nonsense syllables (zol)

Margaret Floy Washburn

first woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

founding father of modern psychology

distortion of wundt

he feared being misunderstood and misrepresented, prolific writer in German

focus on wundts studies

immediate sensory experience, creative synthesis, apperception, and experimental introspection

Titchener opposed wundts approach

interested in elements/parts not wholes

nonsense syllables

syllables presented in a meaningless series to study memory processes

voluntarism

the idea that the mind has the capacity to organize mental contents into higher level thought processes

apperception

the process by which mental elements are organized

structuralism died when ____ died

titchener

Titchner

translated wundts most important ideas and research, translated only parts that supported his own ideas

Ewold Herring

visual stimuli, opponent process theory, when red cone is activated it shuts off the green cone, nativistic-innate born that way

franz brentano

wants to study the act of thinking (act psychology), says by introspecting you change the essence of it, trying to take a happy experience and break it down to analyze it but then you ruin the essence of the happiness, precursor of Gestalt and humanistic psychology, Freud was his student

creative synthesis

whole is greater than its parts

Oswald kulpe

wurzburg school, student and college of Wundt, 1893 outline of psychology, psychology depends on the experiencing person, idea of unconscious set (attitude and priming)

defined 3 essential problems for psychology

1. reduce conscious processes to simplest components (bulk of his work), determine laws by which elements associated, 3. connect the elements with their physiological conditions

the Pre-Leipzig years (Wundt)

1862 he tells what science of psychology will be, 1867 taught his 1st course in psychology at Heidelberg, 1873 published principles of physiological psychology (actually means experimental psychology)

Wundt in Leipzig

1875 Wundt goes to Leipzig as a professor of philosophy, Konvict building 2nd floor develops a lab

Wundt- Leipzig years

1875-1920 1st psych lab was model for all others, 1st journal

why Wundt is credited for founding psychology

1879 starts original research, 1883 gets a larger lab, he called himself a psychologist, was inspired by Bessels work on personal equation, interested in whether one can attend to two stimuli at once, can one person perceive two stimuli at the same moment

cultural psychology

1880-1891 wrote on ethics logic and systematic philosophy, 1900 published Volkerpsychologie 10 volume work, its cultural psychology, studied cultures- arts, myths, language, customs, morals, etc., divided psychology into two experimental and social

1st journal from wundt

1881 journal of philosophical studies, 1906 new title journals of psychological studies, trained first generation psychologist

Wundt

1st official psychologist, medical doctor by training, 1879 founded psychology

Wundt great teacher

600 lectures at a time, 32 different courses, trained some of the best psychologists

imageless thought

Kulpe's idea that meaning in thought can occur without any sensory or imaginal component

systematic experimental introspection

Kulpe's introspective method that used retrospective reports of subjects' cognitive processes after they had completed an experimental task

Phenomenology

Stumpf's introspective method that examined experience as it occurred and did not try to reduce experience to elementary components. Also, an approach to knowledge based on an unbiased description of immediate experience as it occurs, not analyzed or reduced to elements.

tridimensional theory of feelings

Wundt's explanation for feeling states based on three dimensions: pleasure/displeasure, tension/relaxation, and excitement/depression.

Boring

a student, leading historian

goals for Wundt for psychology

analyze mind into elements, determine the manner of the connection, propose laws of connection

psychology is different than other sciences

because the subject matter requires the presence of a human being, other sciences are independent of experiencing persons, psychology is dependent on it

Titchener

brings psychology to America, New York, central task of psychology, analysis of conscious experience, these conscious experiences are dependent on a person

immediate sensory experience

cant ever have immediate response or pictures processing in all things has to be this delay

stimulus error

confusing the mental process under study with the stimulus or object being observed

Zallner

developed an illusion and an explanation at Leipzig

characteristics of mental element

discovered 44,000 basic and irreducible elements of sensation, each is conscious, each is distinct from all others, each could combine with others to form perceptions and ideas

other german psychologists

ewold herring, herman Ebbinghaus, georg muller, franz Brentano, carl Stumpf, Oswald kulpe

introspection

examination of ones own mind to inspect and report on personal thoughts or feelings

phenomenology

experience as it occurs let people be happy w/o breaking it down

titcheners experimental approach

experiment= an observation which had frequent repetition, strict isolation (control), vary observations widely

immediate experience

is unbiased by interpretation

experimental introspection

looking inside

criticisms of structuralism

methodology (introspection was attacked), sterility/artificiality of lab experiments (too much control didn't show real life events), new specialties did not fit with titcheners definition (child, animal psych)

examples of titcheners experiments

people swallowed a tube (poured hot and cold water down it explain experience), people wrote down descriptions of the sensations of urinating and defecating, people would make notes of sensations during sex, attached devices to measure physiological responses

Georg Muller

physiologist, lab rivaled wundts, trained many students in Europe and US, field- learning and memory, posited conscious attitudes actively influence learning, interference theory of forgetting

the selective translation causes

profound effects on the history of psychology and titchner became more influential

mediate experience

provides information about something other than the elements of that experience

each element can be categorized

quality (attribute differentiating each element from the other), intensity (strength, weakness, loudness, or brightness of sensation), duration (sensations path over time), clearness (refers to amount of attention given to element)

apperception

readiness for experience (attention)

the content of experience

seeing an apple the content is "red" or "round" the experience is seeing an apple, Titchener warned against stimulus error, confusing our human experiences of events as the actual events

introspection

self observation

elements of consciousness

sensations, images are ideas made from sensations and memories, affective states (emotion)

wundts can one person perceive two stimuli at the same time

stimuli: sound of a bell and sight of a pendulum, subject: himself, conclusion: one cannot attend two stimuli simultaneously, both stimuli register sequentially time for both stimuli to register 1/8th of a second

later in titcheners career

stopped talking about elements, considered changing name of movement to existential psychology which would emphasize experience as it occurs w/o analysis or breaking it down to elements

the content of conscious experience

structural psychology-pure science, only legitimate purpose is to discover teh facts of the mind, applied aspects are not needed and not scientific, only appropriate subjects are normal adult humans

Titchner school of thought

structuralism, everyone thought it was just a mirror of Wundts work

carl stumpf

studied music and tones (breaking into small elements changes the essence) studied with Brentano, major rival of Wundt (Wundt was for reductionism) founded berlin association for child psychology

contributions of structuralism

subject matter clearly defined, research methods (good science), introspection remains a variable method, impact on cognitive psychology, strong base against which others could rebel