Unit 3 - Chapter 9 - Early Approaches to Psychology

Question 1

School

Answer 1

a group of individuals who share common assumptions

Question 2

Describe Wilhelm Wundt’s (1832–1920) early experiment with his thought meter.

Answer 2

involved a pendulum clock that would swing and hit a bell at the same time that the pendulum would reach the very end of its swing.

found that participants were unable to determine exactly where the pendulum was at the exact time of the bell being struck.

stressed the concept of selective attention in psychology.

Question 3

Briefly describe Wilhelm Wundt’s work, including the nature of voluntarism.

Answer 3

through the process of apperception, individuals could direct their attention toward whatever they wished.

Question 4

Will

Answer 4

reflects attention and volition

Question 5

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to the goals of psychology

Answer 5

Two major goals;

1) understand simple conscious phenomena using experiments

2) understand complex phenomena using observation/historical analysis

Question 6

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to the nature of mediate and immediate experience

Answer 6

psychology is based on immediate experience: direct subjective experience as it occurs.

Question 7

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to the role of introspection

Answer 7

used experimental introspection

Question 8

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to the two elements of mental experience

Answer 8

two basic types of mental experience; 1) sensations and 2) feelings.

Question 9

According to Wundt, sensation;

Answer 9

occurs whenever a sense organ is stimulated and the resulting impulse reaches the brain.

• described in terms of modality (ex; taste) & intensity

Question 10

According to Wundt, feeling;

Answer 10

are the basic elements of emotion that accompany each sensation.

Question 11

Tridimensional theory of feeling:

Answer 11

any feelings can be described in terms of the degree to which they possess three attributes;

1) pleasantness-unpleasantess

2) excitement-calm

3) train-relaxation.

Question 12

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to perception

Answer 12

passive process governed by;
the physical stimulation present,
the anatomical makeup of the individual,
the individual’s past experiences.

• is passive and automatic

Question 13

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to apperception

Answer 13

the part of the perceptual field the individual attends to is apperceived

• is active and voluntary

Question 14

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to creative synthesis

Answer 14

arrangement and rearrangement of mental elements according to the individuals will that can result from apperception.

• differentiates psych from other sciences.

Question 15

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to mental chronometry and use of Franciscus Donders Methods;

Answer 15

found that Donder’s reaction times was too complicated.

provided a mental chronometry –> the measurement of the time required to perform various mental acts.

Question 16

Franciscus Donders

Answer 16

conducted a series of experiments involving reacting time.

• discrimination time = simple reaction time - reaction time that involved discrimination.
• choice reaction time = (simple + discrimination reaction times) - choice reaction time.

Question 17

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to psychological versus physical causation

Answer 17

physical events could be predicted on the basis of antecedent conditions and psychological events could not.

• three principles explain why cannot predict psychological events

Question 18

Factors that makes the prediction of psychological events impossible according to Wundt;

Answer 18

1) principle of the heterogony of ends

2) principle of contrasts

3) principle toward the development of opposites

Question 19

Summarize Wilhelm Wundt’s contributions with respect to Völkerpsychologie.

Answer 19

laws of mental activity can be deduced only after the fact through historical analysis/natural observation.

discussed stages of verbal communication

Question 20

What are Wundt’s three stages of communication

Answer 20

1) speaker must apperceive their own general impression.

2) speaker chooses words and sentence structures to express the general impression.

3) listener must apperceive the speaker’s general impression.

Question 21

Describe the general problem of the misunderstanding of Wundt’s work.

Answer 21

popular view is that he focused on search for cognitive and emotional elements of a static mind.

in reality, he viewed the mind as active and dynamic.

Question 22

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: his behaviour toward women colleagues and students

Answer 22

excluded women from his organization

viewed as a chauvinist

Margaret W. was his first doctoral candidate

Taught Celestia P who established a psych lab

hired women when they were the best candidate for the job

Question 23

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: his view of Structuralism’s goals and methods

Answer 23

involves introspection, nonmetaphysical

describe conscious experience

accepted positivism

determine basic elements –> laws leading to complex experience –> neurophysiological events + mental phenomena

Question 24

Structuralism

Answer 24

school of psychology whose goal was to describe the structure of the adult, normally functioning, human mind.

Question 25

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: his use of introspection

Answer 25

• untrained observers describing their phenomenological experience.
• report sensations.
• describe elements, focused on attributes.
• avoid stimulus error

Question 26

Stimulus error

Answer 26

letting perception influence an introspective report.

Question 27

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: mental elements

Answer 27

elemental processes of consciousness consists of;

sensations (elements of perceptions)
images (elements of ideas)
affections (elements of emotions).

Question 28

Elements - Tichener

Answer 28

can only be known by listing attributes, ex: quality, intensity, duration.

Question 29

Extensity

Answer 29

impression that a sensation or image is more or less spread out in space.

Question 30

What did Tichener say about feelings?

Answer 30

occur along only one dimension (pleasantness-unpleasantness).

Question 31

Attributes of sensation and images are:

Answer 31

quality, intensity, duration, clearness and extensity.

Question 32

Attributes of affections are:

Answer 32

quality, intensity, and duration

Question 33

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: the law of combination

Answer 33

Used law of contiguity to determine how elements of thought combine to form more complex mental processes.

Question 34

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: the context theory of meaning

Answer 34

a sensation is given meaning by the images it elicits, determined by the law of contiguity.

• vivid sensations form a core.
• elicited images form a context that gives the core meaning.

Question 35

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: neurological correlates of mental events

Answer 35

nervous system doesnt cause mental events, but can be used to explain some of their characteristics.

neurophysiological processes are the why of mental life.

Question 36

Describe the following aspects of Edward Bradford Titchener’s work: Decline of Structuralism

Answer 36

caused by;

• unreliability of introspection
• excludes important developments outside the school
• not interested in abnormal behaviour
• ignored personality, learning, individual differences
• refusal to seek practical applications

Question 37

What did the decline of structuralism lead to?

Answer 37

functionalism, concerned with ‘what for’ rather than ‘what is’.

Question 38

Briefly describe the life and work of Franz Clemens Brentano, including his work in act psychology.

Answer 38

focused on mental operations or functions.

• involves intentionality & phenomenological methods

Question 39

Intentionality

Answer 39

the fact that every mental act incorporates something outside itself.

act and objects are inseperable.

Question 40

Phenomenological methods

Answer 40

study of intact, meaningful experiences.

active mind

Question 41

Briefly describe the life and work of Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) and his influence on Gestalt psychology.

Answer 41

stance that the proper object of study for psychology was mental phenomena, not conscious elements led to methods that become cornerstone of Gestalt psychology.

Question 42

Who is Clever Hans and how is he related to Stumpf?

Answer 42

• horse that seemed to solve math problems.
• uncovered that he was being given clues unintentioanlly.
• clever hans phenomenon and experimenter bias.

Question 43

Clever Hans phenomenon

Answer 43

creation of apparently high-level intelligent feats by nonhuman animals by furnishing them with subtle cues that guide their behavior.

Question 44

Experimenter bias

Answer 44

experimenter may provide subtle cues that unwittingly convey the expectations of the experimental outcome to the experimental participants, influencing the outcome of the experiment.

Question 45

Briefly describe the life and work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), including his views on the appropriate methodology for psychology

Answer 45

two types of methods:

1) focused on intentionality.

2) focused on whatever processes a person experiences subjectively. (referred to as pure phenomenology).

Question 46

Briefly describe the life and work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), including his goal.

Answer 46

Husserls goal was to use pure phenomenology to create a taxonomy of the mind.

Question 47

Brentano, Stumpf, and Husserl all insisted that the proper subject matter for psychology was

Answer 47

intact, meaningful, psychological experiences.

Question 48

Briefly describe the life and work of Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), including his concepts of imageless thought

Answer 48

believed that some thoughts were imageless.

ex; searching, doubting, confidence, and hesitation.

• used systematic experimental introspection

Question 49

Systematic experimental introspection

Answer 49

involved aubjects;
- solving a problem

• reporting on the mental operations they engaged in
• describing types of thinking involved before, during and after.

Question 50

Briefly describe the life and work of Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), including his concepts of mental sets.

Answer 50

mental set is a problem-solving strategy that can be induced by instructions or by experience and that is used without a person’s awareness.

• came out of Wurzburg school

Question 51

Describe the other findings of the Würzburg school.

Answer 51

• showed that problem solving has motivational properties.
• demonstrated that higher mental processes could be studied experimentally.
• claimed that associationism was inadequate for explaining operations of the mind.
• challenged narrow use of introspective method.
• made the important distinction between thoughts and thinking.

Question 52

Briefly describe the life and work of Hermann Ebbinghaus especially his methods of studying memory

Answer 52

• first to study memory as it occured.
• series of syllables, looked at each for a fraction of a second, pause 15 seconds and repeat till mastery.
• after mastery, recorded number of exposures to relearn then subtract from original number, difference called savings.

Question 53

Briefly describe the life and work of Hermann Ebbinghaus and the basic findings of this work.

Answer 53

• forgetting was most rapid in first few hours
• overlearning increased retention
• ten times more exposure if meaningless

any number of spread out repetitions better than cramming

Question 54

Summarize the work of Muller

Answer 54

‘third pillar’ of experimental psychology.

followed in the tradition of rationalism.

taught one of the first African American researchers (Jones)

supported Herings views regarding color vision.

Question 55

Summarize Muller’s findings on memory.

Answer 55

• subjects spontaneously organize materials to be remembered into meaningful patterns.
• first to document retroactive inhibition (new learning can cause forgetting of previously learned items)

Question 56

Briefly describe the life and work of Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) and his “as if” philosophy.

Answer 56

societal living requires that we give meaning to our sensations, and we do by inventing terms, concepts, and theories, and the acting “as if” they were true.