Chapter 5 Flashcards
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?
a psychology of individual differences, applying facts of general psychology to-ward an understanding of single personalities
Which of the following was NOT an essential aspect of Wundt’s research on mental chronometry?
the introspective analysis of memory
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?
apperception
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
association.
Wundt’s introspective techniques required his subjects to
restrict their introspecting to relatively simple and immediately recallable stimulus situations.
Wundtian introspective studies analyzed consciousness in terms of
sensations and feelings.
Which were the four basic dimensions of sensations in Wundt’s scheme?
mode, quality, intensity, duration
In Wundt’s theory, a creative synthesis accompanies acts of
apperception.
As indicated by studies in Wundt’s laboratory, what was the maximum number of individual units that could be apperceived at once?
4 to 6
One of the major topics covered in Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie was
language.
For Wundt, the most basic unit of thought is
a “general impression” that is independent of words.
In recent years, Wundt’s theories have been newly appreciated for their relevance to which current psychological specialty?
psycholinguistics
Wundt classified feelings according to what three basic dimensions?
pleasantness-unpleasantness, tension-relaxation, and activity-passivity
Wundt’s “thought meter” experiment challenged which of the following?
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
Who is often regarded as the “father” of modern academic and experimental psychology?
Wilhelm Wundt
James McKeen Cattell is known for which of the following?
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
According to Wundt, voluntaristic psychology was
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.
Wundtian psychology was mistakenly characterized for many years in English-speaking countries as “structuralism” for all of the reasons below EXCEPT
most of Wundt’s students were American and they emphasized the “structural” as opposed to the “functional” aspects of his theories.
Why was Wundt’s landmark book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874) important?
It was the first genuine “textbook” describing under one cover several recent developments in the area of experimental psychology.
Johann Zöllner, Wundt’s older colleague and one-time supporter at Leipzig, came to bitterly oppose him because of Wundt’s
skeptical analysis of “spiritualistic” phenomena.
Titchener strongly advocated an approach to psychology he called
structuralism.
Structuralism was an approach to experimental psychology that
focused on what the mind is rather than what the mind is for.
Titchener insisted that introspectors should avoid imposing “meaning” or “interpretation” on their subjects, thereby eliminating what he called
the stimulus error.
Titchener’s group, known as the “Experimentalists,” were notable for
not allowing women to join their membership.
__________ was an accomplished American mathematician and vision researcher who challenged Titchener’s policies on his invitation-only group of Experimentalists.
Christine Ladd-Franklin
Wundt’s former student Oswald Külpe started his own laboratory, where research focused on which of the following subjects?
imageless thought and directed association
Experimental psychologist Narziss Ach expanded introspective psychology by
performing directed-association studies that revealed the importance of determining tendencies or mental sets.
Introspective studies showing that prior instructions can influence thought without directly entering into subjects’ conscious associational processes were said to reveal
mental sets.
Ebbinghaus’s finding that memory for a learned task drops off most steeply immediately after the learning and then declines more slowly exemplifies the __________.
forgetting curve
Ebbinghaus’s innovative method for studying memory experimentally made use of
nonsense syllables.
For Wundt, the most striking conclusion from his early “thought meter” experiment was that
separate and measurable acts of attention were required to register first the sound and then the sight of the pendulum’s position.
The book by Wilhelm Wundt often credited with launching experimental psychology as a separate discipline was
Principles of Physiological Psychology.
The title (in translation) of the psychology journal founded by Wilhelm Wundt in 1881 was
Philosophical Studies.
All of the following became famous after directly studying with Wilhelm Wundt EXCEPT
Hermann Ebbinghaus.
Which piece of experimental apparatus did James McKeen Cattell invent?
a lip-key used to help record reaction times for verbal responses
In Wilhelm Wundt’s terminology, the occurrence of a(n) __________ was a specific instance of what he more generally called __________.
creative synthesis; psychic causality
For Wundt, the most important units of analysis in the study of language are what?
sentences, each of which contains a general thought or idea, sometimes using dif-ferent words to express the same idea
Which of the following is NOT true about Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie?
It encouraged the experimental and laboratory-based study of memory.
Who among the following was a doctoral student of Titchener’s who conducted an important study of the sense of smell?
Eleanor Acheson McCulloch Gamble
Which of the following senses proved most difficult for Titchener and his students to study with their introspective method?
smell
E. B. Titchener’s attitudes towards women in psychology are best summarized by which statement?
He respected and supported women as graduate students but denied them access to the most prestigious professional networks.
Wundt’s former student Oswald Külpe went on to establish his own laboratory which conducted introspective experiments on __________, which Wundt objected to because __________.
imageless thought; the studies entailed introspection of mental tasks that Wundt believed were too complex for accurate introspective analysis
Why did Oswald Külpe came to disagree with his former teacher Wundt?
He believed the finding of mental sets called into question the assumptions of mental chronometry.
Hermann Ebbinghaus’s study of memory is considered historically important because
it provided an acceptable experimental approach to a “higher” mental function.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was particularly pleased because the results of his memory experiments
revealed a forgetting curve whose shape resembled Fechner’s psychophysical law.
