The New Psychology
Structuralism
and a Crash
course in German
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
 Studied conscious experience by examining its structure or
components parts (sensations, feelings) using individuals who
were trained in introspection. This "school of psychology"
became known as structuralism.
 The Founding Father of modern
 Psychology or experimental psychology.
Voluntarism
• Voluntarism: The idea that the
mind has the capacity to
organize mental contents to
higher level thought processes.
Mediate vs. Immediate


Mediate and immediate experiences: Mediate
experience provides information about
something other than the elements of that
experience; immediate experience is unbiased
by interpretation.
Mediate: provides us with information other
than the direct thing we’re looking. Mediate
experience and data are obtained via
measuring devices and thus is not direct.
Introspection

Examination of one’s own mind to inspect
and report on personal thoughts and
feelings.
Nonsense Syllables
• KZH
• ILR
• YTO
• LOL
• KFC
• JFK
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
• Nonsense
syllables: syllables
presented in a
meaningless series
to study memory
processes.
Nonsense Syllables



More rapid forgetting during the first
hours following learning and slower
thereafter
Overlearning (continuing to study past
mastery) decreased the rate of
forgetting.
Distributed practice was more effective
than massed practice
Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

Mental Acts Brentano’s
System of Psychology,
which focused on
mental activities (e.g.,
seeing) rather than
mental contents (that
which is seen).
Carl Stumpf (1848-1916)
aka Music Guy
• Phenomenology
• Stumpf’s introspective
method that examined the
experience as it occurred
and did not try to reduce
experience to elementary
components. Also an
approach to knowledge
based on unbiased
description of immediate
experience as it occurs, not
analyzed or reduced to
elements.
Clever Hans
• Van Osten
• Pfungst and Stumpf
Oswald Kulpe (1862-1915)
• Science is my Bride
• Imageless Thought:
meaning in thought
can occur without
any sensory or
imaginal
component.
• Mental set
Systematic Experimental
Introspection:
• Kulpe’s introspective method that used
retrospective reports of subject’s
cognitive processes after they
completed an experimental task..