Early Approaches to Psychology

Question 1

School

Answer 1

A group of individuals who share common assumptions, work on common problems, and use common methods

Question 2

Voluntarism

Answer 2

Wundt gave to his approach to psychology was voluntarism because of its emphasis on will, choice, and purpose

Question 3

Wilhelm Wundt

Answer 3

Made a distinction between elementary mental functions and higher mental functions

Question 4

Elementary mental functions

Answer 4

Low level mental functions (basic attention and memory)

Question 5

Higher mental functions

Answer 5

Believed had to be treated differently within psychology

Question 6

Psychology’s goals

Answer 6

Understand both simple (basic processes of the mind) and complex (higher mental processes) conscious phenomena

Question 7

Mediate experience

Answer 7

Data are obtained via measuring devices and thus not direct

Question 8

Immediate experience

Answer 8

Data are events in human consciousness as they occurred

Question 9

Introspection

Answer 9

Wundt’s introspection used laboratory instruments to present stimuli. Used to study immediate experience but not the higher mental processes.

Question 10

Sensations

Answer 10

Sensations occurred when a sense organ is stimulated and the impulse reaches the brain. Described in terms of modality, intensity, and quality.

Question 11

Feelings

Answer 11

Accompanied sensations and could be described along three dimensions (tridimensional theory of feelings):
□ Pleasantness- unpleasantness
□ Excitement -calm
□ Strain - relaxation

Question 12

Perception

Answer 12

Passive process governed by the stimulation present, the physical makeup of the person, and the person’s past experience

Question 13

Apperception

Answer 13

Active and voluntary, hence the school called voluntarism

Question 14

Creative synthesis

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Mental Chronometry

Answer 15

Used a method developed by Franciscus Donders to measure differences in reaction time when various mental activities were required by the experimental situation

Question 16

Franciscus Donders

Answer 16

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)

Question 17

Physical causality

Answer 17

Physical causality is a reality because events could be predicted on the basis of antecedent conditions

Question 18

Principle of the heterogeneity of ends

Answer 18

Idea that when we are engaged in goal directed activity, we don’t just meet a goal, we do other things too (nonpredictable things)

Question 19

Principle of contrasts

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Volitional acts

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Volkerpsychologie

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Edward Titchener

Answer 22

Largest doctoral programme in the United States
Didn’t think behaviourism was psychology

Question 23

Structuralism

Answer 23

Goals of psychology were the determination of the what, how, and why of mental life. Saw science as observing the world.

Question 24

Titchners use of introspection

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Mental elements

Answer 25

Elements of consciousness (the mind) were sensations (elements of perceptions), images (elements of ideas) and affections (elements of emotions)

Question 26

Law of combination

Answer 26

How the elements combine by using the law of contiguity as many others had done before

Question 27

Law of contiguity

Answer 27

The tendency for events that are experienced together to be remembered together

Question 28

Context theory of meaning

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Neurological correlates of mental events

Answer 29

Believed that physiological processes provide a continuous substratum that give psychological processes a continuity they otherwise would not have

Question 30

Decline of structuralism

Answer 30

inevitable as people began to question the use of introspection as a viable method in research

Question 31

Franz Clemens Brentano (Act Psychology)

Answer 31

The important aspect of the mind was not what it was made of but what it did
- Studies should emphasize the mind’s processes

Question 32

Carl Stumpf

Answer 32

Stumpf argued for study of intact, meaningful experiences, phenomenology

Question 33

Clever Hans

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

Types of introspection

Answer 34

One focuses on the intentionality described by Brentano. Second focuses on subjective experience - the processes a person experiences

Question 35

Hussrels phenomenology

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Oswald Kulpe (imageless thought)

Answer 36

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

Question 37

Mental Set

Answer 37

Determining tendency, which causes the person to behave in certain ways to completely unaware that they are doing so

Question 38

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 38

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.

Question 39

Nonesense material

Answer 39

Ebbinghaus’ method. Developed nonsense syllables as stimuli in his research

Question 40

G.E. Muller

Answer 40

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

Question 41

Hans Vaihingen

Answer 41

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