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Why is Wundt credited as the founder of psychology as a discipline? Do you agree that he

deserves this credit? Justify your response.

Wundt is credited with the founder of psychology as a formal academic discipline because Wundt used used experiment as a basis for a new science. Even though fechner contributed , founding is defined as a deliberate and intentional act, that requires integration of prior and publication of newly organized material.I agree he deserves credit because founding is intentional.

what is culural psychology

dealt with the various stages of human mental development as expressed in language, arts, myths, social customs, laws, and morals

What’s the name of Wundt’s psychology? Why is it called that?

Experimental psychology. This is because he used experiment as his basis for contributiong to psychology

what is wundts most important contribution

Creation of the new science of psychology

According to Wundt, what’s the subject matter of psychology?

The study of conscious experience. Wundt believed that consciousness actively organized its own content. Consciousness includes many different parts and could be studied by the method of analysis or reduction.

What is voluntarism?

The idea that the mind has the capacity to organize mental contents into higher-level thought processes

What is Mediate experience

Provides information about something other than the experience

immediate experience

unbiased by interpretation

Was Wundt’s approach reductionist or holistic, or both? Explain.

Both, it was reductionist in the sense that his structuralist approach focused on breaking down conscious experience into its elemental components through introspection and experimental methods. However, he was holistic in the sense that he emphasized the importance of considering the whole of conscious experience rather than just its individual parts. While he aimed to analyze mental processes into their elemental components, he recognized that these components interacted with each other to form the entirety of conscious experience.

What are the 2 elementary forms of experience?

Sensations and feelings

Feelings are the subjective complements of sensation

Tridimensional theory of feelings

Wundt’s explanation for feeling states based on 3 dimensions: Pleasure/displeasure, Tension/relaxation, and excitement/depression

apperception

the process by which mental elements into a whole is creative synthesis, which creates new properties by building up or combining elements that are not previously present in the original elements.

• Voluntary process

• Conscious recognition

• It operates on perception

Apprehension

• Selective attention 

• In the background

what is a stimulus error?

Confusing the mental process under study with the stimulus or object being observed

ex. seeing a red, shiny, crispy fruit, and calling it an apple is a stimulus error rather than explaining its elements

Criticisms of Wundtian psychology

When introspection by different observers provides differing results, how do you decide which one is correct

Chain of events

sensation→ perception →apperception→ response

Mental chronometry

refers to the measurement of the time course of mental processes. It involves studying the speed and timing of cognitive processes such as perception, attention, memory, decision-making, and response execution. Mental chronometry often uses reaction time tasks, where participants are asked to respond to stimuli as quickly as possible, to infer underlying cognitive processes.

What were Wundt’s contributions to psychology?

• Establishment of the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in 1879.

• Development of structuralism, which aimed to analyze the basic components of consciousness.

• Introduction of introspection as a method for studying conscious experience.

• Emphasis on experimental psychology and the use of systematic experimentation.

Wundt claimed higher level mental processes, including learning, could not be studied using the experimental method. How did Ebbinghaus show Wundt to be wrong?

He developed experimental techniques, most notably the use of nonsense syllables (sequences of letters that have no meaning) to study memory without the interference of prior associations or knowledge. Ebbinghaus conducted extensive experiments on himself to systematically study how information is learned, retained, and forgotten over time.

gestalt psychology

focus on learning and perception

Combining sensory elements to create entirely new patterns

Not just the sum of its parts its a pattern, has comments different than any one part

What were Ebbinghaus’ major contributions to psychology?

Ebbinghaus major contributions to psychology were

• non-sense syllables,

• Forgetting curve,

• brought experimentation to the study of learning.

what is the forgetting curve

Ebbinghaus says material is forgotten rapidly in the first few hours after learning and more slowly thereafter

Why was the work of Ebbinghaus novel, compared to previous work on learning?

His work was so novel because he brought objectivity, quanitifaction, and experimtation to study learning and memory, which withheld the test of time and is still relevant

what is act psychology?

Brentano’s system of psychology, which focused on mental activities (ex. seeing) rather than on mental contents (that which is seen)

What’s phenomenology? How does it differ from Wundt and Titchener’s approach?

Stumpf 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

• Differs from Wundt because Wundt broke down experience into elements

  • Emphasized whole

• Titchener was interested in the analysis of conscious experience into its component parts

  • Emphasized parts

What challenges did early psychologists face, and how did they try to overcome them?

• Developing methods: There were no established methods for studying mental processes, so they had to create innovative techniques.

• Subjectivity in introspection: Introspection was subjective, so psychologists tried to standardize procedures and training to minimize bias.

• Limited resources: They had basic technology and fewer resources, limiting the scope of their experiments.

They laid groundwork and were pioneers

what did Karl Stumpf do?

Developed phenomenology

what did Franz Brentano do?

developed act psychology

what did Kulpe do?

develped systematic experimental introspection

Systematic experimental introspection

Kulpe’s introspective method that used retrospective reports of subjects cognitive processes after they had completed an experimental task

ex. Thought or judgment and then examine how they thought or judged

imageless thought

Kulpe idea that meaning in thought can occur without any sensory or imaginal component

Compare and contrast Titchener’s structuralism to Wundt’s psychology

Wundt’s view was the mind had the power to organize mental elements volutarally whereas tichener focused on mental elements or contents and their mechanical linking through the process of associayion, and he disregarded wundts doctrine of apperception. Tichener analyzed consciousness into its components to determine its structure

What was Titchener’s definition of consciousness? What about the mind?

The sum of our experiences as they exist at a given time. The mind is the sum of an individuals experiences accumulated over a lifetime

According to Titchener, how is psychology unique compared to other sciences?

was unique compared to other sciences primarily because of its subject matter and method of study

What were Titchener’s elements of consciousness? What about their attributes? Are some of

these still relevant today?

Sensations, images, and affective states

Attributes include

• Quality

• Intensity

• Duration

• Clearness: role of attention in conscious experience

his ideas about the basic elements and attributes of consciousness have contributed to the broader understanding of cognitive and affective processes.

Titchener’s experimentalists

Includes psychologists from ivy league schools

No women allowed because “vigours” topics were talked about

However pioneered welcoming women in different ways. Accepted them into grad programs at cornell

Margaret Floy

Washburn

What’s the difference between basic and applied science? What was Titchener’s view?

Basic science seeks to expand knowledge and understand fundamental principles, while applied science aims to solve practical problems or develop useful applications. Titchener focused on psychology as a basic science, emphasizing understanding the mind's structure and function rather than practical applications.

The first woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology was a student of Titchener’s. Who was she?

Margret floy washburn. Showed tichener support for women

What were Titchener’s goals for psychology? Did he accomplish any of them?

• Identifying elements of conscious experiences

• How are they associated together

• What is the relationship between the physical world and elements of consciousness?

Not really because his work is disregarded

What are the problems with introspection? Is it still used today?

• Methods were subjective

• According to Kant, introspection altered the conscious experience being studied because it introduced an observing variable into the content of the conscious experience

• Comte said the mind would have to divide itself to observe itself

• introspective is a form of retrospective because the time elapsed between experience and report

not used today

Has Wundt had a long-term impact? What about Titchener?

Wundt had a lasting impact due to be the founder of experimental psychology

Ticheners impact has waned over the years due to criticism of introspective methods and structurism

Christine ladd franklin

forced her way into experimental group

Be familiar with the history of evolution prior to Charles Darwin. Was evolution a new concept

when Charles Darwin proposed it? If not, then what was Darwin’s contribution?

Prior to Darwin, Aristotle studied animals, Al-Jahiz recognized interconnectedness in form and function between animals, Jean Baptiste lamarck proposed “use it or lose it” as the mechanism for evolution. Lyell said the earth passed through many stages in evolving to its present state.

This concept was not new from darwin. Darwin contributed supporting evidence for mechanism

What is required for evolution?

Heritable individual differences that influence reproductive success.

In time, greater reproductive success for some over others changes species characteristics.

Compare and contrast the views of Rene Descartes and Charles Darwin about animals, and their relationship to humans.

Rene Descartes viewed animals as automata, lacking consciousness or emotions, and saw humans as fundamentally different due to their possession of a non-material mind or soul. Charles Darwin, on the other hand, proposed that animals and humans share a common ancestry and evolutionary history, suggesting that similarities in behavior and physiology reflect shared biological principles.

Who else developed a theory of evolution similar to that of Charles Darwin?

Alfred Russell wallace. Wallace didnt have the same resources to include supporting evidence

What were Darwin’s major contributions to psychology? Explain.

A new focus on animal psychology

Emphasizes on function rather than structure

Acceptance of methodology and data from many fields

Focus on measure of individual differences

Who was the first to show that human mental characteristics fall on a normal distribution? Who had previously shown the same for physical characteristics?

Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, is often credited as being the first to demonstrate that human mental characteristics, such as intelligence, also fall on a normal distribution. Galton conducted extensive research on human intelligence and other psychological traits. Mental characterisics follow a normal curve.

Prior to Galton's work on mental characteristics, Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and sociologist, had demonstrated that physical characteristics, such as height and weight, tend to follow a normal distribution in human populations. Q

According to Galton, what two numbers describe a distribution of scores or measurements of

human traits?

Mean and standard deviation

How did Galton measure intelligence?

Galton primarily measured intelligence through sensory acuity tests, such as visual and auditory tests, as well as reaction time tasks. He attempted to create composite measures of intelligence by combining results from these tests. However, his methods lacked the standardized approach of modern intelligence tests.

8. How did John Locke’s philosophy influence how Galton set out to measure intelligence?

Techniques to measure physical and mental ability.

Ability to learn is innate and aquiring knowedge is learned

Inspired by john locke

9. Who carried out the first experiment to study word associations?

Galton conducted experiments on word associations as part of his broader research on mental imagery and individual differences. He asked participants to respond with the first word that came to mind upon hearing a stimulus word, aiming to explore the patterns and associations between words in human cognitio

Galton studied mental imagery. This is an early example of the use of which technique, still

widely used today?

Galton's study of mental imagery is an early example of introspection, a technique where individuals self-observe and report their mental experiences. While introspection fell out of favor, self-report measures, similar to introspection, are widely used today in psychology for assessing thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Who is the founder of eugenics? What about euthenics?

Eugenic" refers to efforts to improve the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding or controlling reproduction. This is developed by Galton

Euthenics is about improving human well-being through environmental and social interventions. Developed by Ellen H richards

What’s the difference between positive and negative eugenics?

Positive eugenics promotes reproduction among individuals with desirable traits, while negative eugenics aims to prevent reproduction among those with undesirable traits.

How is Galton’s work related to that of Darwin?

Galton's work is related to Darwin's through their shared interest in evolution and heredity. Galton extended Darwin's ideas to human populations, studying inheritance and variation in humans.

What were Galton’s major contributions to psychology?

Galton's major contributions to psychology include pioneering the use of statistical methods, emphasizing individual differences, coining the term "eugenics," conducting research on word associations and mental imagery, and advancing the understanding of human traits and abilities.

What’s introspection by analogy? Who used this technique to make inferences about animal

cognition? What’s the limitation of this technique?

Introspection by analogy is a method where researchers infer animal cognition by comparing their behavior to human behavior. Edward Thorndike used this technique to study animal cognition, but its limitation lies in subjective interpretations and overlooking species-specific differences in cognitive processes.

Despite problems with his methodology, how did George Romanes contribute to psychology

George Romanes contributed to psychology by pioneering comparative psychology, popularizing the idea of animal mental states, conducting observational studies of animal behavior, and proposing theoretical frameworks to explain animal behavior.

Why did Morgan criticize the methodology of Romanes? What was his alternative?

Morgan criticized Romanes for anthropomorphism in interpreting animal behavior. He proposed Morgan's Canon as an alternative, advocating for simpler explanations without attributing complex mental processes to animals without compelling evidence.