Early Approaches to Psychology Flashcards
School
A group of individuals who share common assumptions, work on common problems, and use common methods
Voluntarism
Wundt gave to his approach to psychology was voluntarism because of its emphasis on will, choice, and purpose
Wilhelm Wundt
Made a distinction between elementary mental functions and higher mental functions
Elementary mental functions
Low level mental functions (basic attention and memory)
Higher mental functions
Believed had to be treated differently within psychology
Psychology’s goals
Understand both simple (basic processes of the mind) and complex (higher mental processes) conscious phenomena
Mediate experience
Data are obtained via measuring devices and thus not direct
Immediate experience
Data are events in human consciousness as they occurred
Introspection
Wundt’s introspection used laboratory instruments to present stimuli. Used to study immediate experience but not the higher mental processes.
Sensations
Sensations occurred when a sense organ is stimulated and the impulse reaches the brain. Described in terms of modality, intensity, and quality.
Feelings
Accompanied sensations and could be described along three dimensions (tridimensional theory of feelings):
□ Pleasantness- unpleasantness
□ Excitement -calm
□ Strain - relaxation
Perception
Passive process governed by the stimulation present, the physical makeup of the person, and the person’s past experience
Apperception
Active and voluntary, hence the school called voluntarism
Creative synthesis
Elements that are attended to can be arranged and rearranged as the person wills, thus arrangements not experienced before can be produced. Our capacity to act and engage with the contents of our mind
Mental Chronometry
Used a method developed by Franciscus Donders to measure differences in reaction time when various mental activities were required by the experimental situation
Franciscus Donders
Reaction time studies. Wanted to see how long it would take for them to react to certain stimulus. Length of time it took to perform mental reactions (choice reaction times - to make specific choices to respond to specific stimuli)
Physical causality
Physical causality is a reality because events could be predicted on the basis of antecedent conditions
Principle of the heterogeneity of ends
Idea that when we are engaged in goal directed activity, we don’t just meet a goal, we do other things too (nonpredictable things)
Principle of contrasts
Believed that when we experience something, the opposite experience is more intense after. If we eat something super sour, after when we eat something sweet, it’s even sweeter
Volitional acts
According to Wundt, the laws of mental activity can be deduced only after the fact, and that sense the psychologist studying them is like a historian
Volkerpsychologie
Verbal communication begins with a general impression and is a three-stage process
1. The speaker must apperceive his or her own general impression
2. The speaker chooses words and sentence structures to express the general impression
3. The listener, after hearing the words and sentences must apperceive the speakers’ general impression
Edward Titchener
Largest doctoral programme in the United States
Didn’t think behaviourism was psychology
Structuralism
Goals of psychology were the determination of the what, how, and why of mental life. Saw science as observing the world.
Titchners use of introspection
Introspection in Titchener’s laboratory required the subject to describe the basic, raw, elemental experiences which form complex cognitive experience. He wanted sensations, not perceptions, if in the report the subject responded with the name of the object rather than the elemental aspects of the stimulus, the subject committed a stimulus error
Mental elements
Elements of consciousness (the mind) were sensations (elements of perceptions), images (elements of ideas) and affections (elements of emotions)
Law of combination
How the elements combine by using the law of contiguity as many others had done before
Law of contiguity
The tendency for events that are experienced together to be remembered together
Context theory of meaning
What gives meaning to sensations is called the context theory of meaning. What gives sensations and events meaning is the images and events with which the sensation has been associated contiguously in the past
Neurological correlates of mental events
Believed that physiological processes provide a continuous substratum that give psychological processes a continuity they otherwise would not have
Decline of structuralism
inevitable as people began to question the use of introspection as a viable method in research
Franz Clemens Brentano (Act Psychology)
The important aspect of the mind was not what it was made of but what it did
- Studies should emphasize the mind’s processes
Carl Stumpf
Stumpf argued for study of intact, meaningful experiences, phenomenology
Clever Hans
Thought a horse was able to do math. Found that when the trainer was out of sight, the horse was not able to perform. The horse was responding to subtle ques by the trainer not it’s own understanding and intelligence.
Types of introspection
One focuses on the intentionality described by Brentano. Second focuses on subjective experience - the processes a person experiences
Hussrels phenomenology
Describe the mental essences by which humans experience themselves. He sought to examine meanings ad essences, not mental elements, via introspection, which differed greatly from the structuralists
Oswald Kulpe (imageless thought)
In contrast to Wundt, Kulpe proposed that some thought could be imageless and also that the higher mental processes could be studied experimentally. Set out to do so by using his method called systematic experimental introspection
Mental Set
Determining tendency, which causes the person to behave in certain ways to completely unaware that they are doing so
Hermann Ebbinghaus
This was important because this was the first time that learning and memory had been studied as they occurred. It illustrated that these processes could be studied experimentally.
Nonesense material
Ebbinghaus’ method. Developed nonsense syllables as stimuli in his research
G.E. Muller
Important findings on memory
○ Subjects spontaneously organize materials to be remembered into meaningful patterns
The first to document retroactive inhibition
In addition to his studies of memory, Muller became the leading researcher in psychophysics following the death of Fechner
Hans Vaihingen
Proposed that societal living requires that we give meaning to our sensations, and we do that by inventing terms, concepts, and theories and then acting “as if” they were true
