THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY CH4 LECTURE PREPARED BY: DR. M. SAWHNEY

TOPICS 1. No Multitasking Allowed 2. The Founding Father of Modern Psychology 3. Wilhelm Wundt ( ) 4. Hermann Ebbinghaus ( ) 6. Franz Brentano ( ) 7. Carl Stumpf ( ) 8. Oswald Külpe ( ) 9. Discussion Questions

NO MULTITASKING INVOLVED 1861: Wilhelm Wundt (29 year old researcher) had never heard of multitasking Wundt was inspired by Bessel’s work on the “personal equation” Wundt interested in whether one can attend to two stimuli at once Gedankenmesser Source: Wundt, , 3 rd vol., p. 72

NO MULTITASKING INVOLVED (CONT’D.) Wundt’s attempts to test whether one person can perceive two stimuli at the same moment Stimuli: sound of a bell, sight of a pendulum Subject: himself Conclusion: one cannot attend to two stimuli simultaneously Both stimuli register sequentially Time for both stimuli to register: 1/8th of a second Thought Meter

THE FOUNDING FATHER OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Wundt: the founder of modern psychology Established the first laboratory Edited the first journal Began experimental psychology as a science Investigated the foundations of psychology: sensation and perception, attention, feeling, reaction, and association William Wundt

THE FOUNDING FATHER OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY (CONT’D.) Why Wundt? Fechner also contributed greatly to psychology Founding is an intentional and deliberate act More than brilliant intellectual contribution Founding requires integration of prior knowledge, organization, and promotion Wundt’s contribution: “selling” psychology as a science

WILHELM WUNDT ( ) Wundt’s life Lonely childhood Unpleasant father Family tradition of scholarship Pursues medicine, but later studies physiology Professor at the University of Leipzig (45 years) Founded first psychological laboratory Influenced many students, who later become established psychologists William Wundt

FAMOUS STUDENTS OF WUNDT Some prominent students of Wundt: G. Stanley Hall Cattell Kraepelin Munsterberg Kulpe Titchener

CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY Wundt’s work on ethics, logic, and systematic philosophy Cultural Psychology (1920)-Dealt with stages of human mental development manifest through language, art, myths, social customs, law, morals Wundt’s most rewarding work Divided psychology in two parts: Experimental Psychology Social Psychology Field had little impact on American psychology Bad timing Prominence of other areas of interest

THE STUDY OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE Subject matter of Wundt’s psychology: consciousness Consciousness could be studied by the method of analysis or reduction Voluntarism: the idea that the mind has the capacity to organize mental contents into higher-level thought Did not emphasize the elements but focused on the process

THE STUDY OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE Two types of experience Mediate experiences: and data are obtained via measuring devices and thus is not direct information about something outside the elements of experience E.g., I have a toothache Immediate experiences: Immediate experience and data are events in human consciousness as they occurred unbiased by interpretation This was to be the subject matter of psychology. Eg., reporting the experiences of pain due to tooth ache, or the discomfort from toothache

THE METHOD OF INTROSPECTION The conscious experience is studied through the method of observation Introspection: examination of one’s own mind to inspect and report on personal thoughts or feelings His experimental introspection was not the unstructured self- observation used by earlier philosophers. Method taken from physics

THE METHOD OF INTROSPECTION Highly trained observers Conducted under Wundt’s explicit rules and conditions Observers must be able to determine when the process is to be introduced Observers must be in a state of readiness or strained attention It must be possible to repeat the observation several times It must be possible to vary the experimental conditions in terms of the controlled manipulation of the stimuli. Wundt’s introspection used laboratory instruments to present stimuli In most instances the subject was to respond with a simple response such as saying “yes” or “no”, pressing a key. These responses were made without any description of internal events. Used to study immediate experience but not the higher mental processes.

ELEMENTS OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE Sensations One of two elementary forms of experience Aroused whenever a sense organ is stimulated and the resulting impulses reach the brain Described in terms of modality, intensity, and quality. Feelings The subjective complements of sensations but do not arise directly from a sense organ Tridimensional theory of feelings: feeling states are based on three dimensions: pleasure/displeasure, tension/relaxation, and excitement/depression RDgsJEMH_emBM#t=16

APPERCEPTION Perception, attention, apperception, and creative synthesis Perception is passive process governed by the stimulation present, the physical makeup of the person, and the person’s past experience. The interaction of these factors makeup the person’s perceptual field. The part of this field the person attends to is apperceived Apperception and selective attention are the same Apperception is active and voluntary, hence the school called voluntarism. Creative synthesis Elements which are attended to can be arranged and rearranged as the person wills, thus arrangements not experienced before can be produced.

WILHELM WUNDT ( ) (CONT’D.) The fate of Wundt’s psychology in Germany Spread rapidly but had little long term effect on psychology Not appropriate for solving real-world problems By 1910, psychology in America was becoming more dominant Criticisms of Wundtian Psychology Introspection cannot always yield agreement Wundt’s political opinions were controversial

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMAN PSYCHOLOGY (CONT’D.) Developments in England give psychology a different theme and direction Influential themes: Charles Darwin: theory of evolution Francis Galton: individual differences American psychology also influential Different factions began to arise

HERMANN EBBINGHAUS ( ) PhD in Philosophy in 1873 Fechner’s book Elements of Psychophysics inspired him to conduct memory experiments Ebbinghaus started a new direction in experimental psychology

HERMANN EBBINGHAUS ( ) Successfully experimented on higher mental processes Investigated learning and memory Showed that Wundt was wrong Changed the way association, or leaning, is studied

RESEARCH ON LEARNING Before Ebbinghaus: Learning was studied by examining associations that were already formed Backwards approach Ebbinghaus’s method: Began with the initial formation of associations Recorded the rate at which associations were formed He tried to understand learning, memory, recall, forgetting

RESEARCH WITH NONSENSE SYLLABLES Difficult to experiment with words that carried meaning because of existing associations Ebbinghaus experimented with material that would be uniformly associated A single subject study: himself Minimum interference from previous learning Nonsense syllables: syllables presented in a meaningless series to study memory processes; eg., YAT Several studies used nonsense syllables to determine the speed of memorization and forgetting

SAVINGS Savings = (Original time to learn the list) – (Time to relearn the list after a delay) Savings curve shows savings as a function of retention interval 22

TIME ELAPSE BETWEEN LEARNING & RECALL 23

Free recall task Subjects are asked to recall the list in any order Primacy effect Recency effect SERIAL POSITION CURVE A

CONTRIBUTIONS TO LEARNING & MEMORY Overlearning effect Recall Effect of length of material to be learnt Distributed vs Mass practice effect 25

FRANZ CLEMENS BRENTANO: ACT PSYCHOLOGY ( ) Intellectual precursor of Gestalt and humanistic psychology Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Believed that psychology should be the study of mental activity. These can be studied: Through memory Through imagination Act psychology: Brentano’s system of psychology, which focused on mental activities rather than mental contents

CARL STUMPF ( ) Born into a medical family Interested in music Influenced by Brentano Chair of Psychology at the University of Berlin (1893) Wundt’s major rival

CARL STUMPF ( ) Psychology of Tone (1883 and 1890). Phenomenology Stumpf’s introspective method that examined experience as it occurred and did not try to reduce experience to elementary components An approach to knowledge based on an unbiased description of immediate experience as it occurs, not analyzed or reduced to elements 28

CLEVER HANS Wilhelm von Osten’s horse “Clever Hans”, could correctly solve arithmetic problems. Stumpf chaired the commission Oskar Pfungst, a student of Stumpf investigated Hans The horse was correct 98 percent of the time when the owner knew the right answer but 8 percent when the owner did not know the answer qQ 29

OSWALD KÜLPE ( ) He studied history but got interested in psychology after listening to Wundt Outline of Psychology which was dedicated to Wundt Went on to address problems Wundt ignored OSWALD KÜLPE ( )

WURZBURG SCHOOL New ideas: Systematic experimental introspection: Külpe’s introspective method Küple believed that thought processes could be studied experimentally Subject’s response Experimenter’s role Imageless thought 31