HAPPY BIRTHDAY

PSYCHOLOGY

Time Check!!!1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents Telephone.

1886- The Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from France, is dedicated by President Cleveland in New York City harbor.

Broadway New York City 1881

Thomas Edison – 1877 became the first person to ever record and play back the human voice.

1903- The first successful powered airplane flight is made by Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The first production Model T was built on September 27, 1908.

Downtown Platteville 1892/1910

Second Street 1891\

The Women's Suffrage took place in March of 1914 in front of the City Hall in Platteville, WI. The march was started by the Women's Relief Corps in Platteville.

Who is Wundt?

Born 1832 in south West GermanyFather – Lutheran Pastor (but extended family were university presidents, physicians and scholars.

As a child he showed littlepromise.His best friend was developmentally delayed.He was a daydreamer in school.Father’s visit to the first grade classroom.Failed grade in gymnasium when 13.Graduated not knowing what he wanted to do but he now had his mother to support.

In an amazing turn around, he enrolled at the medical school at Heidelberg, studied hard, received his M.D., and in 1855 received the highest scores in the state medical examinations.

Had no interest in becoming a clinical doctor – but liked the research aspects of science. Developed a background in Physiology, neurology and medicine.

First independent research project : “Effects of restricted salt input on chemical composition of his own urine”.

Wundt studied at the University of Berlin for a semester under Müller and then, in 1857, he became a lecturer in physiology at the University of Heidelberg.

Privatdozent – offered university courses but his pay was dependant on student enrollment.

- first course enrollment was 4 students - became very ill (1857).

Worked for Helmholtz ( 1858-1864 – Heidelberg University)

- published two books and several studies on sensation and perception.

1864 – set up his own lab.

1871 – hired as extraordinary professor

1873- published Principles of Physiological Psychology“The work I here present to the public is an attempt to

mark out a new domain of science”

Hired by University of Zurich (1874-75)University of Leipzig (1875- 1917) 1879 - Established the first laboratory for Experimental Psychology (destroyed in 1943 by an allied bombing raid).

Birth Place of Psychology

Wundt was given a room in the Konvikt which had previously been used as a closet to use for demonstrations.December 1879 – set up the room for a study for Max Friedrich’s Ph.D. data collection.

G. Stanly Hall was also present.Video

Measuring the Mind

Student of Robert Bunsen

From Helmholtz and Bunsen, Wundt acquireda love of gadgetry devices.Timing and stimulusPresentation apparatus!

Analogy to chemistry: . . . in precisely the same way in psychology . . . It would be quite wrong to say that the experiment determines only the action of [stimuli] on the psyche. The behavior of the psyche in response to the external influences is determined as well, and by varying those external influences we arrive at the laws to which the psychic life as such is subject. . . . By creating manifold changes in the sensory stimuli while continually studying the psychic phenomena, we apply the principle that is the essence of the experimental method: as [Francis Bacon] put it, “we change the circumstances in which the phenomena occurs.”

Wundt-style Tachistoscope :This is a device designed to present a visual stimulus for a very short adjustable exposure time by using a gravity operated falling shutter. The onset of the drop (fall) of the shutter is controlled by solenoids

Wundt's perimeter : This device allows the presentation of visual stimuli in all parts of the visual field and at a constant distance from the subject's eye. It is used to examine the visual field for defects and to plot visual acuity and color acuity. It presumably comes from Wundt's time with Helmholtz.

Differs from the Mechanists

Mechanists – seeking to make psychology scientific – rejected introspection on the grounds that it is subjective and dealt with unobservable phenomena. “Psychology without a soul”!.Wundt – mental processes could be measured.

It has often been held that the area of sensation and perception it the only one in which the use of the experimental method is possible . . . Surely this is a prejudice. As soon as the psyche is viewed as a natural phenomenon, and psychology as a natural science, the experimental methods much also be capable of full application to this science.

It was through using introspection that Wundt and his students concluded that the sensations and feelings are what constitute the activity in our minds.

They believed that the combination of or the relationship between sensations and feelings are what creates constantly shifting psychological processing.

Introduced the scientific use of Introspection.

Introspection is the precise reporting of subjective experiences. Wundt realized that there was a limit to what you could observe. Subjects were extensively trained to make consistent and accurate reports. You might be shown an object and asked to describe how you are perceiving it. Wundt believed that these immediate experiences were the building blocks of cognition. He used chemistry as a model. These building blocks were like the elements in chemistry to Wundt.

Wundt spent little time in the lab. He lectured, ran the institute and wrote books on psychological subjects, logic, ethics and philosophy.His lectures were popular!In 1883 – given a raise, the institute was given official status and the laboratory was increased to a 7 room suite.

His writings, totaling an estimated 53,000 pages, include: articles on animal and human physiology, poisons, vision, spiritualism, hypnotism, history, and politics; text- and handbooks of “medical physics” and human physiology; encyclopedic tomes on linguistics, logic, ethics, religion, a “system of philosophy;” not to mention his magna opera, the Principles of Physiological Psychology (in ten volumes).

Architect of Psychology’s Master Plan

William James: While others make mincemeat of some of his views by their criticism, he is meanwhile writing another book on an entirely different subject. Cut him up like a worm and each fragment crawls; there is no noeud vital in his mental medulla oblongata, so that you can’t kill him all at once.

He was very narrow-minded and dictatorial. He told his doctoral students what they were to write on for their dissertations.

He was strongly opposed to child psychology, animal experimentation, and any practical applications of psychology.

Wundt could be very scornful to psychologists who did not do things his way, and he often rejected new ideas that became very important in the history of psychology.

By the end of his career, he had made his fair share of enemies, even though his psychological laboratory had many imitators and his books and lectures were much admired.

Wundt retired in 1917, but continued writing until shortly before his death in Grossbothen, Germany, on August 31, 1920.

James McKeen Cattell

American student who studied under Wilhelm Wundt.

He invented a timing device used to measure visual stimuli, and the "lip key," which was developed to measure reaction time by movement of the subject’s lips or vibrations from the subject’s voice. While measuring verbal "association times" (word responses to verbal stimuli) noted much variability across tasks as well as between subjects.

Cattell interpretation: some people have generally quicker association times, and those who react faster think faster and experience more ideas in the same objective period of time.This was an early suggestion that differences in an individual’s reaction time may be related to differences in individual intelligence.

Edward B. Titchener Titchener attempted to systematize the Wundtian point of view, producing laboratory research using only Wundt's method of introspection.

Psychological observation is observation by each man of his own experience, of mental processes which lie open to him but to no one else. Hence while all other scientific observation may be called inspection, the looking-at things or processes, psychological observation is introspection, the looking inward into oneself. (Titchener, 1898 p. 27).

Attempted to push the method of controlled laboratory introspection far beyond the bounds that Wundt had so carefully set for it. The "general rules" must be observed in all investigations involving experimental introspection. They are:1. Be impartial. Do not form a preconceived idea of what you are going to find by

the experiment; do not hope or expect to find this or that process. Take consciousness as it is.

2. Be attentive. Do not speculate as to what you are doing or why you are doing it, as to its value or uselessness, during the experiment. Take the experiment seriously.

3. Be comfortable. Do not begin to introspect till all the conditions are satisfactory; do not work if you feel nervous or irritated, if the chair is too high or the table too low for you, if you have a cold or a headache. Take the experiment pleasantly.

4. Be perfectly fresh. Stop working the moment that you feel tired or jaded. Take the experiment vigorously.

(Titchener, 1898, pp.34-35).

Stimulus Error.For example, if you look at a ripe tomato and say, "The tomato is red," you are doing it wrong. You are paying attention to the tomato, not to your own mental experience. You have broken the first two general rules. What you should report is something like, "Redness."

Titchener considered his own highly trained introspective observers to be so good that they had become mere recording instruments of the mind. He said,…the practiced observer gets into an introspective habit, has the introspective attitude ingrained in his system; so that it is possible for him, not only to take mental notes while the observation is in progress, without interfering with consciousness, but even to jot down written notes, as the histologist does while his eye is still held to the ocular of the microscope. (Titchener, 1909, p. 23).

Structuralism - attempting to find the Elements of conscious experience ~ just like Chemistry identifies the elements of the physical world.

According to Titchener, there are three classes of elements: sensations, images, and affections. The sensations were the mental elements as given by the senses. Titchener had discovered about 50,000 sensations. Images were the elements of ideas, and affections were the elements of emotions. All the elements had attributes: quality, intensity, duration, and clearness (and for vision, extensity in space). The qualities multiply the number of discrete sensory conditions one might discern to 194,250 for vision and 46,222 for the other senses, for a total of 240,470.

Like Wundt, Titchener refused to consider applied psychology a valid enterprise, had no interest in studying animals, children, abnormal behavior, or individual differences.

When Titchener died in 1927, so did structuralism and the whole introspectionist movement.

Introspectionism became a ”Dirty Word” in research, regardless what one was measuring.

Other Facts about Titchner

•Titchener was the first to have a woman Ph.D. graduate.  Over 1/3 of his doctorates were women when Harvard and Columbia excluded them, and he advocated their right to serve as faculty

•Titchener’s first Ph.D. student was Margaret Floy Washburn, she was the first woman elected to National Academy of Sciences, served as President of the APA, and established Vassar College Psychology Program.

So how does Wundt become father of Experimental Psychology and Not:

Weber (1830) – Just Noticeable Difference.Helmholtz –Speed of Nerve ConductanceFechner – PsychophysicsDonders – Reaction Time Studies

Edwin G. BoringStudent of Titchner’s What a man! To me he has always seemed the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated." (E. G. Boring on E. B. Titchener Pictorial History of Psychology and Psychiatry).

Boring Figure

Titchner’s Brain remains at Cornell in a jar

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