Chapter 4 Origins of Scientific Psychology in America Flashcards
what exhibit marked scientific psychology’s first attempt to display its new science to the general public
- an exhibit at a fair with a room displaying scientific apparatus used in psychological experiments, and photos of subjects being tested
- participants could move through stations and test out the apparatus
- trying to draw attention away from mesmerism, spiritualism, etc.
who were the three main figures of American experimental psychology in the 19th century
- William James, G. Stanley Hall, and James McKeen Cattell
- Hall was James’s doctoral student
- Cattell did his graduate work with Hall (and eventually finished it with Wundt)
describe the nature of William James’s family
- they were well educated and well traveled
- exposed to art, literature, music and architecture
- James considered a career as a painter, brother was a novelist
describe William James’s education
- earned medical degree from Harvard
- hired at Harvard to teach physiology
- established physiological lab to supplement his course (demonstrative, not for research)
what was the book William James wrote
The Principles of Psychology –> American version of Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology
what topics did James’s book cover
- consciousness, sensation, perception, association, memory, attention, imagination, reasoning, emotions and will
- drew from work in neurophysiology, sensory physiology, etc.
what were the two key concepts of James’s book
the stream of consciousness and its linkage to selective attention –> study of the mind
what did James comment of Wundt’s psychology
argued that consciousness did not exist in bits/discrete units but rather it flowed like a stream –> thus elemental analyses of consciousness made no sense
who was James greatly influenced by
- Darwin –> brought attention to concepts of adaptation and survival value
- wanted to examine the role of consciousness in human survival –> how has it evolved, what are its functions?
describe James’s understanding of the role of selective attention in consciousness and the role of consciousness in human progress/survival
- selection of some and suppression of the rest by reinforcing and inhibiting the agency of attention
- highest mental products are those filtered
- consciousness was about making choices (rather than relying on instincts) –> something had evolved to aid the species in making good choices important to survival
what was one of James’s most important chapters in his book
- chapter on habit
- habit was a key force in the maintenance of social order –> keeps everyone within the bounds of ordinance
according to James, how do habits become engrained
- habits become engrained because of neural pathways that fire in appropriate situations
- neurally based thus hard to change once established
- emphasized importance of avoiding the establishment of bad habits and ensuring the development of good ones
what was one of James’s original theories
- theory of emotion –> now known as the James-Lange theory of emotion
- common view at time was that perception of a situation gave rise to a feeling that was followed by bodily changes
- turned this idea around arguing that the bodily changes result from the perception of the situation, and that recognition of the bodily changes subsequently produces the subjective feeling of emotion
who was James’s student
Mary Whiton Calkins –> wasn’t allowed to officially enrol in Harvard because she was a woman, never granted a PhD although James and others petitioned on her behalf
describe some of Calkins’s accomplishments
- first psychology laboratory founded by a woman
- published four articles on memory
- invented the paired associates method
- work with primacy and recency effects
- work on retroactive interference (principle cause of forgetting)
- first female president of APA
what is the paired associates method
- invented by Calkins
- items are presented in pairs in the learning trials and then one item of the pair is used to cue the other in the memory trials