Chapter 9: Early Approaches to Psychology Flashcards
Franz Clemens Brentano
Believed that introspection should be used to understand the functions of the mind rather than its elements. Brentano’s position came to be called act psychology. (See also Act psychology.)
Franciscus Cornelius Donders
Used reaction time to measure the time it took to perform various mental acts
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The first to study learning and memory experimentally
Edmund Husserl
Called for a pure phenomenology that sought to discover the essence of subjective experience. (See also Pure phenomenology.)
Oswald Külpe
Applied systematic, experimental introspection to the study of problem solving and found that some mental operations are imageless
Carl Stumpf
Psychologist who was primarily interested in musical perception and who insisted that psychology study intact, meaningful mental experiences instead of searching for meaningless mental elements
Edward Bradford Titchener
Created the school of structuralism. Unlike Wundt’s voluntarism, structuralism was much more in the tradition of empiricism-associationism
Hans Vaihinger
Contended that because sensations are all that we can be certain of, all conclusions reached about so-called physical reality must be fictitious. Although fictions are false, they are nonetheless essential for societal living
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
The founder of experimental psychology as a separate discipline and of the school of voluntarism
Act psychology
The name given to Brentano’s brand of psychology because it focused on mental operations or functions. Act psychology dealt with the interaction between mental processes and physical events
Clever Hans phenomenon
The creation of apparently high-level intelligent feats by nonhuman animals by consciously or unconsciously furnishing them with subtle cues that guide their behavior
Context theory of meaning
Titchener’s contention that a sensation is given meaning by the images it elicits. That is, for Titchener, meaning is determined by the law of contiguity
Creative synthesis
The arrangement and rearrangement of mental elements that can result from apperception
Elements of thought (Wundt)
According to Wundt and Titchener, the basic sensations from which more complex thoughts are derived
Imageless thoughts (Külpe)
According to Külpe, the pure mental acts of, for example, judging and doubting, without those acts having any particular referents or images
Intentionality
Concept proposed by Brentano, according to which mental acts always intend something. That is, mental acts embrace either some object in the physical world or some mental image (idea)
Introspection
Reflection on one’s subjective experience, whether such reflection is directed toward the detection of the presence or absence of a sensation (as in the case of Wundt and Titchener) or toward the detection of complex thought processes (as in the cases of Brentano, Stumpf, Külpe, Husserl, and others)
Mediate experience
Experience that is provided by various measuring devices and is therefore not immediate, direct experience
Mental chronometry
The measurement of the time required to perform various mental acts
Mental essences
According to Husserl, those universal, unchanging mental processes that characterize the mind and in terms of which we do commerce with the physical environment
Mental set
A problem-solving strategy that can be induced by instructions or by experience and that is used without a person’s awareness
Perception
Mental experience that occurs when sensations are given meaning by the memory of past experiences
Phenomenological introspection
The type of introspective analysis that focuses on intact mental phenomena rather than on isolated mental elements
Principle of contrasts (Wundt)
According to Wundt, the fact that experiences of one type often intensify opposite types of experiences, such as when eating something sour will make the subsequent eating of something sweet taste sweeter than it would otherwise
Principle of the heterogony of ends (Wundt)
According to Wundt, the fact that goal-directed activity often causes experiences that modify the original motivational pattern
Principle toward the development of opposites (Wundt)
According to Wundt, the tendency for prolonged experience of one type to create a mental desire for the opposite type of experience
Pure phenomenology
The type of phenomenology proposed by Husserl, the purpose of which was to create a taxonomy of the mind. Husserl believed that before a science of psychology would be possible, we would first need to understand the essences of those mental processes in terms of which we understand and respond to the world
Savings (method of measuring learning)
The difference between the time it originally takes to learn something and the time it takes to relearn it
School
A group of scientists who share common assumptions, goals, problems, and methods
Sensation
A basic mental experience that is triggered by an environmental stimulus
Stimulus error
Letting past experience influence an introspective report
Structuralism
The school of psychology founded by Titchener, the goal of which was to describe the structure of the mind
Tri-dimensional theory of feeling
Wundt’s contention that feelings vary along three dimensions: pleasantness-unpleasantness, excitement-calm, and strain-relaxation
Völkerpsychologie
Wundt’s 10-volume work, in which he investigated higher mental processes through historical analysis and naturalistic observation
Voluntarism
The name given to Wundt’s school of psychology because of his belief that, through the process of apperception, individuals could direct their attention toward whatever they wished
Will (Wundt)
According to Wundt, that aspect of humans that allows them to direct their attention anywhere they wish. Because of his emphasis on will, Wundt’s version of psychology was called voluntarism
Würzburg school
A group of psychologists under the influence of Oswald Külpe at the University of Würzburg. Among other things, this group found that some thoughts occur without a specific referent (that is, they are imageless), the higher mental processes could be studied experimentally, and problems have motivational properties that persist until the problem is solved
