Chapter 9 - Early approaches to psychology Flashcards
What is Wundt’s claim to fame?
Founder of psychology
Thought meter
Wundt found that it took 1/10 of a second to shift attention from sound of bell to position of pendulum
What was Wundt measuring using his thought meter?
Speed of selective/voluntary attention
Divided attention
Person can attend to pendulum or to bell, but not to both at same time
When people think they are multitasking, what are they actually doing?
Constantly switching their attention back and forth between stimuli
Did Wundt believe that consciousness can be measured and quantified?
Yes
Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology goals
To create a new field of experimental psychology
To uncover the fundamental facts of human consciousness
What was the original name of Wundt’s journal, and what was it changed to?
Philosophical Studies to Psychological Studies
What is often considered as psychology’s DOB?
1879
Why is 1879 considered psychology’s DOB?
Opened the very popular “Institute for Experimental Psychology” lab at University of Leipzig
What did Wundt oppose?
Opposed materialism and aspects of empiricism
What did Wundt believe about consciousness?
It is immaterial and that people do not passively/automatically sense and perceive stimuli
Believed we play an active role in synthesizing sensory info
What did Wundt believe about empiricism?
Couldn’t account for human will/volition
What is the first technical school of thought in psychology?
Voluntarism
What did Wundt see will as?
A central concept in psychology/consciousness
What did Wundt include in will as?
Attention
Volition
Motivation
What did voluntarism seek to do?
Understand mental laws governing consciousness
What kind of mental processes did Wundt believe could be studied experimentally/scientifically?
Only basic mental processes/immediate experience (e.g., sensation, perception)
What were Wundt’s beliefs on studying more complex mental processes?
Believed that understanding things like morality, language require naturalistic observations and historical analysis
What were Wundt’s two major goals?
To discover the basic elements of thoughts
To discover the laws by which mental elements combine into more complex mental experiences (i.e., perception)
How did Wundt seek to discover the basic elements of thought?
Through experimental rather than pure introspection
What were the 2 basic elements of thought, according to Wundt?
Sensations
Feelings
Sensations
Sense organ is stimulated and resulting impulse reaches brain
What are the three aspects of sensations?
Modality
Intensity
Qualities
Give 2 examples of the aspects of sensations
Auditory; loudness; pitch and timbre
Visual; brightness; hue and sensation
What was Wundt’s theory of feelings?
Tridimensional theory of feeling
Tridimensional theory of feeling
Pleasantness-unpleasantness
Excitement-calm
Strain-relaxation
Name Wundt’s 3 aspects of discovering the laws by which mental elements combine into more complex mental experiences
Apperception
Perception
Creative synthesis
Apperception
An active process whereby a person chooses to attend to certain stimuli (i.e., voluntarism)
What is a synonym for apperception?
Attention
Perception
A passive process whereby an individual gathers an impression based on their physical stimulation, anatomical makeup, and past experiences
Creative synthesis
People create their experiences through actively attending to and arranging stimuli (e.g., the pitch of a sound)
Accommodate, alter, contextualize information
Who said the following quote: “There are no psychological qualities in physics. For example, there is no red, or green, or blue in that world. Redness, greenness, and blueness are phenomena that are created by the cortex of the experiencing individual. A musical quality, the flavour of the wine, or the familiarity of a face is a rapid creative synthesis that cannot, in principle, be explained as a mere sum of elemental physical features.”
Wundt
What is Edward Titchener’s main claim to fame?
Developed the largest doctoral program in the U.S.
What is Titchener colloquially known as?
“The U.S. representative of Wundtian ideas”
Consciousness according to Titchener
The sum total of mental experience at any given moment
Mind according to Titchener
The accumulated experience of a lifetime
What kind of science did Titchener emphasize psychology as?
Pure science
What was Titchener’s school of thought?
Structuralism
What did Titchener seek to do? How did it differ from Wundt?
He did not seek to explain conscious experience (e.g., how perception works), but to describe conscious experience
Positivism founder
Titchener
Positivism
Believed psychology’s focus should be on observable mental events
Through his introspection, what did Titchener seek to do?
Example?
Carefully describe and classify observable mental events
Look at apple: weight, hue, brightness, etc.
What did Titchener use his introspection to describe?
Sensation (not perception)
Stimulus error founder
Titchener
Stimulus error
When meaning is described during introspection
Give an example of a stimulus error
Calling it an apple instead of describing the colour/hues/weight of an apple
What were the 3 mental elements according to Titchener?
Sensations
Images
Affections
Sensations according to Titchener
Elements of perception
How many elements of perception were there according to Titchener? Division?
Over 40,000
30,000 for vision
12,000 for audition
20 for other senses
Images according to Titchener
Elements of ideas
Mental representations
Affections according to Titchener
Elements of emotions/feelings
How did Titchener interact with Wundt’s theory of emotion?
Adjusted tri-dimensional theory of emotion into one dimension
Believed feelings cannot be described through clearness or extensity
Believed feelings occur over one dimension; could only be described using Wundt’s “pleasantness-unpleasantness” dimension
What did Titchener subscribe to in place of voluntary apperception and creative synthesis?
Associationism
What did Titchener believe drove attention? How did this differ from Wundt?
Clearness of sensations (rather than will)
Clever Hans
Hans the horse seemed to be able to solve arithmetic problems
Explain the enigma that is Clever Hans.
Carl Stumpf’s committee (e.g., Oskar Pfungst) was unable to detect deception
But Hans was only able to answer accurately when his owner knew the answer and when the questioner was visible to him
How did Clever Hans work his magic?
Hans was picking up on subtle, non-verbal cues (e.g., nodding)
Read body language
The Clever Hans Phenomenon
Pfungst tested the subtle cues (e.g., on other humans) and found they were virtually impossible to suppress
What did the Clever Hans Phenomenon inspire?
Double-blind experimentation as a way to avoid experimenter bias/observer-expectancy effect
