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 Germany
Father – Lutheran Pastor (but extended family
were university presidents, physicians and
scholars.
As a child he showed little
promise.
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 acquired
a love of gadgetry devices.
Timing and stimulus
Presentation 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'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.
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
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 (1850)–Speed of Nerve Conductance
Fechner (1850) – Psychophysics
Donders (1860)– Reaction Time Studies
Wundt - 1879
Edwin G. Boring
Student 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
"