Chapter 5 - The establishment of experimental psychology Flashcards
Wilhelm Wundt
German physiologist who was very influential in the development of experimental psychology and became Helmholtz assistant
- believed different thinking tasks could be measured using reaction time
mental chronometry
the study of the time it takes for mental processes to occur
Völkerpsychologie
a non-experimental branch of psychology developed by Wundt that uses comparative and historical methods
- Wundt used products of human nature: mythology, religion, language, and introspection to understand völkerpsychologie
subtractive method
measures and compares reaction times to isolate and estimate specific mental processes in cognitive tasks
- the average reation time of an easy task, then subtracted from the reaction time of a discriminatory task
- developed by Donders but mostly researched by James McKeen Cattell
motor time
the extra time required because motor/difficult things are asked of someone (argued by Cattell)
will time
the extra time required because an extra mental process is present (argued by Wundt)
associations
measuring the difference in brain speed or in thinking between people (studied by Cattell)
creative synthesis (psychological causality)
combining elements of consciousness in ways one has never experienced before
- psychic causation: the psyche itself is the cause of your reaction
physical causality
the more often one is exposed to a certain situation, the quicker the person can react to it
voluntaristic psychology
focuses on the study of individual will and voluntary actions, emphasizing personal experiences and the power of conscious decision-making in understanding behavior
Edward Titchener
one of Wundt’s students who disagreed with his conception of psychology
- proponent of structuralism
- one of the first scientists to believe that women were scientifically as intelligent as men
structuralism
psychology in which introspection is used to discover the structure of phenomena before looking at their function
stimulus error
the layer of extra interpretation to what one says they feel, when using introspection
- not observing their own behavior but interpreting it
Osward Külpe
disagreed with Wundt’s subtractive method
- believed it would not measure ‘higher’ mental processes, but rather make people think differently through suggestions
imageless thoughts
cognitive or mental processes that occur without sensory or perceptual images
- according to Wundt, this was not possible
