History of Psychology, Ch. 3

Germany and the birth of a new science

Established the first laboratory at Uni of Leipzig for experimental psychology. Trained many of the first generation of psychologists in his lab. Recognized as the founder of the science of psychology.

Wilhelm Wundt

Philosophy that changed university education in Germany. Curriculum promoted active epistemology particularly in science. Professors and students were given a great deal of freedom to choose research questions and what to teach/learn.

Wissenschaft

Most important book on psychology published by Wundt in 1874.

Principles of Physiological Psychology

One of Wundt's two psychologies that involved experimental psychology that guided lab work.

Physiologische psychologie

One of Wundt's two psychologies that was nonexperimental, cultural psychology. Could not be understood through laboratory means. Studied relationships among religion, art, language, customs, morality, myths, and culture.

Volkerpsychologie

Wundt's goal of psychology.

Discover the facts of consciousness, to discover the laws which governs it, identify basic elements of conscious experience to understand how those elements organize into psychical components/aggregates

The two factors of conscious experience.

Content of experience, what the observer makes of that content (apprehension)

Psychological system that indicated the voluntary/willful nature of the mind.

Voluntary psychology/voluntarism

Active intentional process in which parts of consciousness have a greater focus/clarity. Principle process by which psychical elements/compounds were synthesized into new conscious experience, process called creative synthesis.

Apperception

Goal of psychological experiments.

Provide causal explanations of mental processes in psychological terms.

Wundt's method of research on consciousness.

Introspection, experimental self-observation

Used by Helmholtz to measure the speed of nerve conduction. Tests subjects using simple reaction time tasks.

Reaction time method

Focuses of Wundt's lab.

Sensation, perception, emotions

Theory that placed all emotions on 3 separate continua: pleasant-unpleasant, tension-relaxation, excitement-depression.

Tridimensional theory of feeling

Fields of which volkerpsychologie was a precursor.

Linguistics, cultural psychology, social/personality psychology

Began research program on human memory. Worked alone, used self as test subject.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Discoveries of Ebbinghaus's research.

Forgetting curve, nonlinear relationship between length of series and number of trials needed for learning, how retention affects learning

Founder of act psychology: moral psychology that called for a larger unit of analysis in looking at consciousness. Argued it was important to study the act of seeing itself, rather than focusing on what was seen.

Franz Brentano

Postulated intentionality of conscious acts. There was a purpose to consciousness. Psychology should not study the contents of consciousness but the actions of it.

Act psychology

Argued science was best served by a few grand experiments that tested big questions, with a few smaller studies to round out the edges. Opposed introspection as a research method. Advocated for by Brentano.

Experimentum crucis

Did important work on depth perception. Emphasized the study of sensation and perception. Performed classic experiments on audition, especially pitch perception. Greatest contributions to psychology of music.

Carl Stumpf

Spent most of his career working on memory. Contributed to topics of sensation, color vision, learning, attention, and psychophysics. Learned that people assign meaning to stimuli that were meant to be meaningless, chunk syllables into units to give them meaning. Invented the memory drum.

George Elias Muller

Investigated higher mental processes like thinking. Used introspection for research. Discovered imageless thought and mental set.

Oswald Kulpe