Chapter 5

Question 1

Which of the following was NOT proposed in the Preface of Wundt’s early textbook, Contributions to the Theory of Perception, where he described the program that would occupy him for the rest of his life?

Answer 1

a psychology of individual differences, applying facts of general psychology to-ward an understanding of single personalities

Question 2

Which of the following was NOT an essential aspect of Wundt’s research on mental chronometry?

Answer 2

the introspective analysis of memory

Question 3

Wundt and his students found that it took a subject about one-tenth of a second longer to respond to a stimulus when concentrating attention on the expected stimulus, as op-posed to when concentrating on the required response. To what process did they attribute the extra time?

Answer 3

apperception

Question 4

One of the Wundtian mental chronometry experiments had one condition in which the subject was required to make a different response to each of two different stimuli, and another in which two stimuli were randomly presented but only one had to be respond-ed to. The mental process presumably required for the first task, but not for the second, was

Answer 4

association.

Question 5

Wundt’s introspective techniques required his subjects to

Answer 5

restrict their introspecting to relatively simple and immediately recallable stimulus situations.

Question 6

Wundtian introspective studies analyzed consciousness in terms of

Answer 6

sensations and feelings.

Question 7

Which were the four basic dimensions of sensations in Wundt’s scheme?

Answer 7

mode, quality, intensity, duration

Question 8

In Wundt’s theory, a creative synthesis accompanies acts of

Answer 8

apperception.

Question 9

As indicated by studies in Wundt’s laboratory, what was the maximum number of individual units that could be apperceived at once?

Answer 9

4 to 6

Question 10

One of the major topics covered in Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie was

Answer 10

language.

Question 11

For Wundt, the most basic unit of thought is

Answer 11

a “general impression” that is independent of words.

Question 12

In recent years, Wundt’s theories have been newly appreciated for their relevance to which current psychological specialty?

Answer 12

psycholinguistics

Question 13

Wundt classified feelings according to what three basic dimensions?

Answer 13

pleasantness-unpleasantness, tension-relaxation, and activity-passivity

Question 14

Wundt’s “thought meter” experiment challenged which of the following?

Answer 14

the commonsense assumption that when two different stimuli strike our senses at the same time, we become consciously aware of both of them at the same instant

Question 15

Who is often regarded as the “father” of modern academic and experimental psychology?

Answer 15

Wilhelm Wundt

Question 16

James McKeen Cattell is known for which of the following?

Answer 16

his invention of apparatus and techniques for measuring reaction times more accu-rately, and in a wider and more interesting variety of situations, than had ever been done before

Question 17

According to Wundt, voluntaristic psychology was

Answer 17

an approach to psychology that described events working at the periphery of con-scious experience, events such as apperception, creative synthesis, psychic causali-ty, and will.

Question 18

Wundtian psychology was mistakenly characterized for many years in English-speaking countries as “structuralism” for all of the reasons below EXCEPT

Answer 18

most of Wundt’s students were American and they emphasized the “structural” as opposed to the “functional” aspects of his theories.

Question 19

Why was Wundt’s landmark book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874) important?

Answer 19

It was the first genuine “textbook” describing under one cover several recent developments in the area of experimental psychology.

Question 20

Johann Zöllner, Wundt’s older colleague and one-time supporter at Leipzig, came to bitterly oppose him because of Wundt’s

Answer 20

skeptical analysis of “spiritualistic” phenomena.

Question 21

Titchener strongly advocated an approach to psychology he called

Answer 21

structuralism.

Question 22

Structuralism was an approach to experimental psychology that

Answer 22

focused on what the mind is rather than what the mind is for.

Question 23

Titchener insisted that introspectors should avoid imposing “meaning” or “interpretation” on their subjects, thereby eliminating what he called

Answer 23

the stimulus error.

Question 24

Titchener’s group, known as the “Experimentalists,” were notable for

Answer 24

not allowing women to join their membership.

Question 25

__________ was an accomplished American mathematician and vision researcher who challenged Titchener’s policies on his invitation-only group of Experimentalists.

Answer 25

Christine Ladd-Franklin

Question 26

Wundt’s former student Oswald Külpe started his own laboratory, where research focused on which of the following subjects?

Answer 26

imageless thought and directed association

Question 27

Experimental psychologist Narziss Ach expanded introspective psychology by

Answer 27

performing directed-association studies that revealed the importance of determining tendencies or mental sets.

Question 28

Introspective studies showing that prior instructions can influence thought without directly entering into subjects’ conscious associational processes were said to reveal

Answer 28

mental sets.

Question 29

Ebbinghaus’s finding that memory for a learned task drops off most steeply immediately after the learning and then declines more slowly exemplifies the __________.

Answer 29

forgetting curve

Question 30

Ebbinghaus’s innovative method for studying memory experimentally made use of

Answer 30

nonsense syllables.

Question 31

For Wundt, the most striking conclusion from his early “thought meter” experiment was that

Answer 31

separate and measurable acts of attention were required to register first the sound and then the sight of the pendulum’s position.

Question 32

The book by Wilhelm Wundt often credited with launching experimental psychology as a separate discipline was

Answer 32

Principles of Physiological Psychology.

Question 33

The title (in translation) of the psychology journal founded by Wilhelm Wundt in 1881 was

Answer 33

Philosophical Studies.

Question 34

All of the following became famous after directly studying with Wilhelm Wundt EXCEPT

Answer 34

Hermann Ebbinghaus.

Question 35

Which piece of experimental apparatus did James McKeen Cattell invent?

Answer 35

a lip-key used to help record reaction times for verbal responses

Question 36

In Wilhelm Wundt’s terminology, the occurrence of a(n) __________ was a specific instance of what he more generally called __________.

Answer 36

creative synthesis; psychic causality

Question 37

For Wundt, the most important units of analysis in the study of language are what?

Answer 37

sentences, each of which contains a general thought or idea, sometimes using dif-ferent words to express the same idea

Question 38

Which of the following is NOT true about Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie?

Answer 38

It encouraged the experimental and laboratory-based study of memory.

Question 39

Who among the following was a doctoral student of Titchener’s who conducted an important study of the sense of smell?

Answer 39

Eleanor Acheson McCulloch Gamble

Question 40

Which of the following senses proved most difficult for Titchener and his students to study with their introspective method?

Answer 40

smell

Question 41

E. B. Titchener’s attitudes towards women in psychology are best summarized by which statement?

Answer 41

He respected and supported women as graduate students but denied them access to the most prestigious professional networks.

Question 42

Wundt’s former student Oswald Külpe went on to establish his own laboratory which conducted introspective experiments on __________, which Wundt objected to because __________.

Answer 42

imageless thought; the studies entailed introspection of mental tasks that Wundt believed were too complex for accurate introspective analysis

Question 43

Why did Oswald Külpe came to disagree with his former teacher Wundt?

Answer 43

He believed the finding of mental sets called into question the assumptions of mental chronometry.

Question 44

Hermann Ebbinghaus’s study of memory is considered historically important because

Answer 44

it provided an acceptable experimental approach to a “higher” mental function.

Question 45

Hermann Ebbinghaus was particularly pleased because the results of his memory experiments

Answer 45

revealed a forgetting curve whose shape resembled Fechner’s psychophysical law.