5: Wundt to Gestalt Flashcards
What were the main ideas of Wundt?
Introspection
How we put different sensory ideas together in our mind
Voluntaristic psychology: We consciously focus attention to perceive the word the way we want to
What is apperception? (Idea developed by Wundt)
Mental capacity is directed and full attention is focused on a stimulus for it to be consciouslly recognised
What is voluntaristic psychology?
We can consciously focus our attention so we perceive the world the way we want to
What was Wunt’s main method?
Introspection
What is introspection?
Where we observe ourselves interpreting a stimulus and report back to a researcher
What is Volkerpsychologie? (Idea developed by Wundt)
Using comparative and historical methods instead of experimental ones
Collective mind
Explores the communal and cultural aspects of human nature such as religion
What did Ebbinghaus study?
Memory and nonsense words
Plotted the forgetting curve
Why do people critisize Ebbinghaus?
Memory is highly emotive and contextualised so it’s impossible to plot real memory on a curve by using nonsense words which have no context
What were Kulpe’s major ideas?
Looked into the effects of task instruction on introspection
Disagreed with Wundt over imageless thought
What were Tichner’s major ideas?
Introduced Wundt’s view to the US
Stimulus error
Atomistic direction
Who came up with the idea of stimulus error?
Tichner
What is stimulus error?
Where we impose meaning on a stimulus instead of experiencing it in its pure form during introspection
Who came up with the idea of atomistic direction?
Tichner
What is atomistic direction?
Breaking down the conscious experiance into it’s smallest parts
What did Cattell study?
Timed how long it took people to recognise lettes and words
Disagreed with Wundt’s idea that psychology can’t be a science
