modern psych in hist perspective - Wilhelm Wundt

what is Wilhelm Wundt’s nickname?

father of modern psychology

why was Wundt uniquely positioned to bride natural sciences and. human sciences?

he was trained in medicine and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Berlin

what prompted the split of psychology from philosophy?

a struggle within German philosophy between rationalists and empiricists and Wundt’s strong commitment to empirical methodology

why did Wundt use instruments that measure reaction time in his experiments?

he believed the mental processes can be studied quantitatively

what did Wundt’s experiments center on?

sensation, perception, attention, memory, and emotion

what did Wundt introduce in his lab?

trained introspection

what is trained introspection?

subjects carefully reported their immediate conscious experiences under controlled stimuli

what did mental chronometry do?

measure the time required for mental operations

what are simple reaction time studies?

respond to a single studies

what are complex reaction time studies?

require decision-making

what are memory studies?

examined perception and recall of related vs unrelated words 

why did Wundt believe in two types of sciences?

humans exist in the world of physical objects and the world of spiritual values, so there is a science for each

what is Wundt’s empirical psychology?

focuses on cognition, emotion, and behavior using the experimental and methodological rules of the natural sciences

how did Wundt believe spiritual aspects of the human mind are expressed?

in arts, religion, customs, traditions, culture, language, and meaning

how did Wundt think spiritual aspects of the human mind should be studied?

using the methods and rules of humanistic sciences, such as anthropology or cultural studies

what does experimental psychology do?

describe the basic elements of awareness (perceptions, thoughts, feelings) and discover how these elements combine and integrate within memory

what is done within cultural/anthropological psychology?

study the higher phenomena of consciousness, study the volitional aspects of human motivation, ethics, and conduct, and study the socially mediated system of meaning and selfhood

what are the higher phenomena of consciousness?

language, custom, religion, the arts, and other forms of symbolic expression

what are the elements of awareness?

simple sensations, perception of an object, complex associations, feelings, and memories

what are the two parts of linguistics?

the outer phenomenon (form) and inner phenomenon (meaning)

can you change one form of linguistics without changing the other?

yes, you can change the outer form without changing the inner form

what did Wundt’s experiments on attention and capacity of awareness show?

when a string of letters is flashed, only 4-6 random letters can be grasped, but 17 can be if arranged into a meaningful word

what are Wundt’s three dimensions for describing an emotional state?

concentration-deconcentration, excitement-calm, pleasantness-unpleasantness

what do Wundt’s mental sets result from?

antecedents, cognitive priming, instructions, emotional states, prejudices, and paranoid expectations

how are mental processes observed in psychology?

directly by the experiencing person, they are immediate experiences

how are immediate experiences accessible?

through self-observation or introspection

how did Wundt believe subjects could accurately report their immediate experiences?

using his method of experimental self-observation

what do structuralists do?

focus on identifying the elements of conscious experience, study the structure of associations, train the subject to report detailed introspective experience

what seven sensory modalities did Titchener identify?

visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, and visceral

how many elements of consciousness did Titchener identify?

40,000

how did Titchener arrive at his elements of consciousness?

by combing the modalities with their intensities

what did critics of structuralism say it was overly focused on?

elementism, analyzing consciousness into small parts

what did critics of structuralism say it neglected?

the function and purpose of mental processes, unconsciousness and the dynamic nature of the mind

what did critics of structuralism say about introspection?

lacks objectivity and reproducibility

what would structuralism be overshadowed by?

functionalism, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis