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