Chapter 1 – psychology and the ancients

Chapter 1 – psychology and the ancients
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

“A long past but a short history”
Ebbinghaus said this because psychology’s questions go back to the ancients (Egypt, Greece, Rome). Thinking about psychological topics has been around a long time, but not the discipline of psychology. Psychology emerged from the disciplines of philosophy and natural science. Philosophy and science in Western civilization are rooted in the ancients. We study Western ideas because we are Western.

Dates on the Ancient Timeline
BC means Before Christ AD means Anno Domini or Year of the Lord, which is After the Birth of Christ CE (more widely used now) means Common Era BCE means Before the Common Era BC = BCE and AD = CE

The Assyrian Empire

Assyrian Dream Tablets
Their clay tablets survived because they were fire- hardened. Written in a wedge-shaped writing system called cunieform, developed by the Mesopotamians. They describe dreams of death and the shame of being found naked in public (universal).

Egypt, Greece & Rome The world map as drawn by the Greek historian Hecataeus, ca 550 BC

The Roman Empire (120 AD)

Contributions of the Ancients
Ancient physicians and philosophers speculated about the nature and locus of the mind, sensation and perception, memory and learning. Their contributions persisted for thousands of years, forming the foundation for modern philosophy and science. Traces of their ideas persist in current thinking.

Early Greek Medicine Priests enacted rituals to promote healing, for a fee. The patient was isolated in the temple. Drugs were used to relieve pain and stop bleeding. Alcmaeon (500 BC) first dissected bodies of animals to study them objectively. He founded a medical school to counteract the priests and promoted a rational, non-mystical, observation- based medicine. He saw health and disease as a harmonious balance, taking a holistic (whole body), systems approach.

Hippocrates (460 BC) Hippocrates also rejected the superstition of the priests and founded a medical school. He taught that all disease results from natural causes and must be treated by natural methods. Nature has a healing power. The physician’s first duty is to refrain from interfering with nature’s healing – primum non nocere He often prescribed rest, exercise, diet, music, and association with friends to restore natural balance.

Picture of Hippocrates
Engraving by Peter Paul Rubens, 1638 We don’t know what he actually looked like, but there are many idealized sculptures and paintings of Hippocrates because of his importance to medicine.

Observations by Hippocrates
The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and vice versa. In “The Art of Healing” he described symptoms of melancholia (depression), mania, postpartum depression, phobias, paranoia and hysteria. In “The Nature of Man” he described a theory of four humors (corresponding to the 4 elements of air, earth, fire and water): blood, two biles, phlegm. Bloodletting to balance humors was routinely practiced into the 1800’s, barber pole is sign of a bloodletter.

Humors and Personality
Too much: Yellow Bile = easily angered, choleric Black Bile = peevish, melancholic Phlegm = apathetic, dull Blood = cheerful, happy, optimistic The terms phlegmatic, bilious, sanguine (from sanguis or blood) refer to imbalances of the humors and were used to describe personality traits. “Good humor” refers to a balance of the humors.

More Observations by Hippocrates
He described epilepsy in “De morbu sacro” (Concerning the Sacred Disease). Seizures were considered a result of divine meddling. He rejected such views and predicted that a physiological cause would be discovered (it has been). His “dry mouth” theory of thirst says that as air passes over throat membranes it dries them out, creating a sensation of thirst that motivates drinking. This is still considered partially correct (there is more to it than just this).

Father of Psychology? Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine but he also contributed to psychology by: Describing the natural causes of psychological conditions Recommending holistic treatments (like Alcmaeon) Describing behavioral problems Formulating long-lasting theories of temperament and motivation (based on imbalances of humors) Criticizing laws prohibiting women from studying medicine

Galen (130 to 200 AD) Galen combined wisdom from Rome’s Imperial Library with personal observation and experiment. He wrote a 17-book treatise “De Usu Partium” (On the Usefulness of the Parts) describing the body. He claimed that no part of the body is superfluous. Based on this he asserted the improbability of creation without divine design. Bodily warmth -- he failed to recognize the heart acts as a pump but said the heart’s biological flame distilled a spiritual substance (vital spirit) from the blood.

Pictures of Galen

Galen’s Contributions
In “On the Passions and Errors of the Soul” he described a method for curing diseases of the soul. Diseases arise from passions (anger, fear) which can be controlled via understanding and self-knowledge. Self-love blinds us to our own faults without a therapist. Galen first described the therapeutic relationship. Galen’s works dominated medicine until the Renaissance ( ). Galen wrote about Hippocrates and other ancients.

Foundations of Science 1
Science depends on measurement. Observation is not helpful unless it is done systematically. Observations need to be repeatable, so description needs to be done in a way that anyone can reproduce. Measurement is a standardized way of observing properties of the world by assigning numbers to them. Measurement depends on mathematics.

Advances in Mathematics
The Greeks refined earlier accomplishments of Egyptians in geometry and surveying as the basis for mathematical theory. Under the Greeks math became the language of science, more than a useful tool. Math was used to predict solar eclipses (Thales of Miletus, 585 BC, fell in a ditch while looking at the sky). Pythagoras tried to relate mathematical relationships in the world to psychological harmony (harmonics in music) and order in the physical world.

Pythagoras ( BC) The principles of math are the principles of all things. Ideal dimensions of the viola He related physical properties to the psychological experience of harmony.

Foundations of Science 2
A second foundation of science is the idea that a phenomenon can be understood in terms of its parts. It may be that emergent properties arise from the combination and functioning of fundamental parts. Life arises from biochemistry which is about the combination of physical elements. An analytical (reductionist) approach suggests that by breaking down a phenomenon into its parts, isolating them for study, it can be better understood.

Atomism – The Mind as Matter
Democritus ( BC) said tiny atomic particles in ceaseless motion are the basis of all matter. The world is a mass of atoms that runs without need of outside forces. The human mind is included in this physical world. The mind’s contents (arrangement of atoms) is the result of experience. He incorrectly thought that objects beam particles at the mind to produce perceptions represented mentally in the form of icons (circles, sour taste = beamed atoms)

Zeno’s Paradoxes This view of mind gave rise to the problem of the relationship between mind and matter and the reliability of the sensory systems. Zeno of Elea ( BC) invented paradoxes to demonstrate the inadequacy of the senses: Achilles and the tortoise (he can never win because the turtle keeps moving, 10 meters + a little more). Similarly, Rucker suggested that you can never leave the room you are in: Zeno was wrong -- the sum of an infinite series is 1. ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64…

The Humanist Tradition
Based on Zeno’s challenges, some Greek thinkers decided that “the proper study of mankind is man.” Man is the measure of all things. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle established epistemology, the branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. They studied learning, memory and conscious awareness.

Back to the Timeline

Socrates ( BC) Socrates questioned every assumption, doubted the obvious and ridiculed cant (rote belief) and pretension. His method of questioning to arrive at truth is called the “Socratic Method.” He believed that truth lies hidden in every mind and the role of the teacher is to uncover it via discovery (led by questions of the teacher). Antiphon used questions to treat grief and melancholy, so is called the first psychotherapist (like Albert Ellis).

Picture of Socrates At 70 Socrates was charged with undermining the religion of the state and corrupting youth and was sentenced to death.

Plato ( BC) Plato was a student of Socrates and recorded much of what we know about him in his “Dialogues.” Plato acknowledged the unreliability of the senses but said knowledge derives from the processes of reasoning about sensations. Forms are eternal structures that organize the world and are revealed to us through rational thought. Sensations decay but forms are permanent. Analogy of a cave with flickering shadows cast by fire outside. Forms are the fire, sensations are the shadow.

“God Always Geometrizes”
Plato said that geometry increases the accuracy of knowledge of the world through measurement and deductive reasoning. Geometry is knowledge of the Forms created by God. Can the human psyche be measured like the world? Plato suggested that people differ in skills and abilities endowed by the Gods (Plato’s Republic). He classified people as gold, silver, brass or iron. Some must rule, some must serve. He proposed measuring body parts (reason in head).

Aristotle (385-322 BC) Aristotle was a student of Plato for 20 years.
He complemented deductive reasoning with an inductive, observational approach. Aristotle saw the value of mathematics for making formal proofs to arrive at: Logical deductions from self-evident assumptions and clear definitions. He also recognized the value of careful observation. This led to both correct and incorrect conclusions.

Picture of Aristotle Aristotle was the tutor of the young Alexander the Great who conquered much of Eastern Europe & the Middle East, extending to India.

Aristotle’s Psychology of Memory
Aristotle developed basic principles of memory that have been restated many times in psychology and are still fundamental to contemporary theories. In “De memoria et reminiscentia” he said that memory results from 3 associative processes – see Hothersall, pg 27: Similarity, contrast, contiguity Influences on the strength of an association are frequency of an experience and ease of formation.

Aristotle’s Theory of Causation
He also developed an analysis of causation illustrated by examining a statue (see example using Michelangelo’s David) – also on pg 27. Material cause – what the statue is made of. Formal cause – its essence or form. Efficient cause – how the statue came to have that form. Final cause – the statue was created by Michelangelo. Attributions of purpose are unacceptable in a science of the physical world but apply to people.

Aristotle’s Other Views
In “Art of Poetry” he described drama as having a purgative effect on the audience (draws out emotions). This catharsis later became central to Freud’s theories. He said all life forms a “ladder of creation” from lowest to highest forms of complexity (scala natura). Nutritive (plants), sensitive (animals), rational (humans). This idea influenced Darwin’s theory of evolution. He thought the heart was the “seat of thought”.

Aristotle’s Misconceptions
Aristotle’s logic led him to make other mistakes about animals in “Historia Animalium”: He tried to classify them based on number of legs and presence of blood. He concluded that bees don’t make honey but collect it. He asserted that caged birds beaks grow long as a punishment for being inhospitable to a guest in a previous lifetime.

Post-Aristotelian Philosophy
Epicureans included Epicurus ( BC) and Lucretius (99-55 BC) & asserted that all knowledge originates in sensations stored in memory. Entirely materialistic, so the goal of life is to enjoy pleasure while minimizing the pain of others -- Locke. Stoics included Zeno of Citium and Seneca who asserted that a rational principle (logos) guides the universe which each person has a duty to follow. Passions are to be subdued in favor of reason -- Kant.

Chapter 2 – Philosophical & scientific antecedents of psychology
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

The Dark and Middle Ages

Images of the Dark Ages

Why Were the Dark Ages Dark?
The Roman Empire had preserved knowledge, but it collapsed and was overrun by Barbarians. Access to the accumulated knowledge was preserved in Muslim libraries but these were inaccessible because the West was mostly Christian. The Medieval Church discouraged literacy, free thought, and scientific inquiry beyond the revealed wisdom of clerics & church scholars (St. Augustine). With the Crusades, knowledge was rediscovered.

Muslim Libraries were Rediscovered
Launched by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095, the First Crusade was the most successful. Urban gave a dramatic speech urging Christians to swarm toward Jerusalem and make it safe for Christian pilgrims by taking it away from the Muslims.

One View of the Dark Ages

Science in the Dark Ages
Hothersall – the historian Kemp asserts there was innovation and science during the Dark Ages: Stirrups used for the first time in war (600’s AD/CE). A biography of Charlemagne was published (800’s). Domesday Book (1086 survey done for King William I of England) recorded 6000 watermills in Britain. Windmill invented in 1180 (taxed by the Vatican). It would be odd if there were no progress at all, but this is not comparable to what was seen in Greece & Rome nor was learning cumulative.

Medieval Period Population increased putting pressure on peasants.
Landowners had the advantage, there was famine. 14 universities were established in 12th & 13th centuries, including Oxford & Cambridge. Civil war and wars between France, Italy & England disrupted the 14th century. Plague (Black Death, ) killed 1/3 of the population of Europe.

Gothic Architecture Gothic Cathedrals are intricately designed architectural features, which date back to 1144 and possible even earlier. The architecture used to make these magnificent buildings took a very long time and it involved many different forms of talent, and skill as well as hard to find materials.

Scenes of the Plague Years
Plague-inspired art. Images of the grim reaper originate from this time.

Psychology in the Middle Ages
Psychological questions belonged to religion. In “Confessions,” St. Augustine (4th century) disclosed psychological emotions, thoughts, motives, memories. God was the ultimate truth. Knowing God was the ultimate goal of the human mind. Truth dwells within every person – turn inward. St. Thomas Aquinas reinterpreted Aristotle and established scholasticism – reason as a complement to faith in the search for truth.

The Renaissance (Rebirth)
The invention of movable type made printing inexpensive, permitting the spread of ideas across Europe via books, including to scholars & others. Prescientific psychology books appeared: Psichiologia – Marcus Marulus (1520). Psychologia hoc est, de hominis perfectione (Psychology on the improvement of man) (1590) edited by Goeckel. Psychologia – John Broughton (1703) in English. No scientific study of human behavior was started.

Early Cosmology Medieval conceptions of the firmament include a solid orb containing the planets with angels & heaven beyond it. Here, a traveler sticks his head through it.

Renaissance Science The view of man’s place in the universe changed.
Copernicus (1543) demoted humans from a central to a peripheral position – his system was called antireligious. Galileo (1610) confirmed his view that the Earth goes around the sun, not vice versa, as did Bruno. Galileo also developed a method of manipulating variables while controlling other factors in expts. Goaded by Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, the Catholic church was unreceptive to Galileo’s new theory -- Bruno was burned at the stake.

The Reformation Split the Church
Protestants: Lutherans Anglicans Puritans Episcopalians Presbyterians Methodists Baptists etc. Eastern Orthodox

A Plea for Freedom of Inquiry
Galileo believed in the power of reason: “…in questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” The next advances came from Protestant countries. Isaac Newton revolutionized physics by developing a new optics (theory of light) and laws of physics. Vesalius developed an anatomy of the human body. Harvey studied the movement of the heart and the motion of blood using experimental methods.

Three Scientific Geniuses
Issac Newton ( ) William Harvey ( ) Andreas Vesalius ( )

Rene Descartes ( ) At age 23, a dream revealed a “Spirit of Truth,” a vision of a new system of science and mathematics so he renounced idleness to search for truth. He first combined algebra & geometry into analytic geometry, published 18 years later as “La Geometrie”. He lived in 24 homes in 13 cities during 20 years in Spain-occupied Holland, hiding out from the Inquisition. Queen Christina of Sweden summoned him to tutor her on “How to live happily and still not annoy God.” He died of pneumonia 4 months later in her court.

Contributions to Philosophy
Descartes believed in applying logic rigorously to discover truth. Descartes was a devout Catholic but he sometimes doubted the existence of God, so he was heretical. Cogito ergo sum – I doubt, thus I think, therefore I exist. He considered the mind different than the body. Having different substance, different functions, bound by different laws. The body is nothing more than a complex self- regulating machine functioning without the mind.

Ideas about the Body Hollow tubes of minute threads contain subtle fluids (animal spirits) distilled from the blood, flowing to the senses for sensation and movement. Reflexes operate as a hydraulic pathway between body and brain, pores are synapses. The body is infinitely more complex than a machine designed by humans because invented by God. Animals only have reflexes but humans can control the opening of pores to control reflex actions. The pineal gland is where mind and body meet.

Rene Descartes

Ideas about the Ideas & Passions
Two major classes of ideas exist in the mind: Innate ideas – inborn, time, space, motion, God. Derived ideas – arising from experience, based on memories of past events (open pores stay open). Passions arise from the body and cause actions. 6 primary passions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, sadness) – other passions are mixtures of these. Animals do not possess minds so cannot think, be self-aware or have language – have no feelings.

Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
La Mettrie published “L’homme Machine” (Man the Machine) in 1748, arguing that people are solely machines, explained through mechanistic principles. People are motivated by hedonistic drives (pleasure, pain) not reasoning. Degrees of thought are present in animals not just people – cognition is a continuum across organisms. His prediction that apes can use language has been confirmed by those studying chimpanzees.

Post-Renaissance Philosophy
Empiricism – emphasized the effects of experience on a passive mind. Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley. Associationism – the active mind forms associations. Hume, Hartley, James and John Stuart Mill Nativism – the contents of the mind are influenced by its inborn structure, not just experience. Leibniz, Kant (German philosophers) Timeline --

17th Century British Empiricism
Empiricists (British): Hobbes Locke Berkeley Nativist counter-voice: Leibniz (German) Earlier Empiricists: Aristotle Earlier Nativists: Socrates Plato Descartes (French)

Thomas Hobbes ( ) Hobbes’s views of mind were based on his social and political theories about people in groups. He believed we are basically aggressive animals banding together for protection from other people. The only way a group’s integrity can be protected is via a strong, centralized authority, such as a monarch. This thinking influences current sociobiologists. Barash (1977) says that because we cannot kill each other without weapons, we have no biological inhibition against aggression like animals do, leading to war, etc.

John Locke ( ) He was the first major British Empiricist, at Oxford. Locke rejected Descartes & emphasized scientific method & experimentation. Locke’s Puritanism rejected Descartes’ Catholicism. Political ideas – people have inalienable rights to personal liberty, equality before the law, religious equality – protected by checks & balances & overthrow Philosophy of education – people are born good and equal in potential, making education crucial. Access to education should be available to all children.

Locke’s Views on Education
Locke denied existence of innate tendencies, dispositions or fears in children. The only things we innately fear are loss of pleasure and pain. We avoid whatever has these consequences. He proposed that children dislike reading because of punishments associated with teaching them. Locke advanced ideas about the acquisition and treatment of fears similar to Watson, Mary Cover Jones and Wolpe (systematic desensitization).

Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690)
This work was the beginning of British Empiricism. Locke sought a set of laws for the human mind, like Newton’s principles of physics. Locke’s system is atomistic and reductionistic. Basic elements of mind are ideas. Ideas come from experience (Locke rejected Descartes). The “blank slate, page of paper, tablet” comes from Aristotle, but characterized empiricism. Ideas have two sources: sensation & reflection.

Locke & Ideas (Cont.) Sensations can be illusory or misleading.
Ideas are either simple or complex. Simples ideas form a complex idea in several ways: By combining several simple ideas into a single one. By seeing the relation between two simple ideas. By separating simple ideas from other ideas that go with them – the process of abstraction. Locke’s idea about combination of ideas is analogous to a chemical compound (from Boyle).

George Berkeley ( ) Wrote three essays that radically extended Locke’s philosophy into subject idealism (immaterialism). Berkeley argued that because all knowledge of the world comes from experience, the very existence of the external world depends on perception. Matter exists because it is perceived – matter does not exist without a mind. The permanence of the world is thus proof of God’s existence. His book on vision was better regarded in his time.

Leibniz – A Nativist Counter-Voice
Leibniz ( ) – Germany’s leading mathematician, wrote to Locke on politics. His “New Essays on Understanding” rebutted Locke. He considered animals empirics but said humans were only empirical in ¾ of their acts, not all. Necessary and inborn truths are ¼ of the mind, the “innate intellect.” Intellect allows reason & science, gives us knowledge of ourselves and God, is the essence of the human spirit.

Leibniz’s Monadology In “The Monadology,” Leibniz described a system of monads. Monads are an infinite number of elements composing all being and activity, with no parts, not decomposable. Monads are indestructible, uncreatable, immutable. The physical and mental worlds are pluralisms of independent monads that do not interact, in parallel There is a continuum of consciousness- unconsciousness with different levels of activity, with a threshold for consciousness.

Two Empiricists and a Nativist
John Locke ( ) George Berkeley ( ) Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz ( )

18 -19th Century British Associationism
Transitional Associationists: Hume Hartley 19th Century Associationists: James Mill John Stuart Mill Bain Nativist Counter-Voice: Kant

David Hume ( ) Hume studied “pneumatic philosophy” (the name for the science of mental life). People are part of nature so should be studied using the methods of studying nature. He differentiated between impressions & ideas: When impressions & ideas occur together they become associated with each other. 3 kinds of associations: resemblance, contiguity in time or space, cause-and-effect relationship.

David Hartley ( ) Hartley said both mind and body are to be studied. Localized mental faculties to the brain, citing the effects of alcohol, poisons & opiates, blows to the head, on thinking. He described visual and auditory after-images as vibrations of medullary particules in nerves in the brain. Vibrations & ideas become associated by occurring simultaneously a sufficient number of times. This is a kind of biological associationism.

Two Mills – Father and Son
James Mill ( ) – wrote a History of British India and an Essay on Government. Believed his son’s mind was a blank slate and dedicated himself to filling it with maximum knowledge John Stuart Mill regarded himself as a “dry, hard, logical machine” and became depressed in early 20s. This led him to recognize the irrational as well as the rational, see humans as more than unfeeling machines. John Stuart Mill rejected his father’s views on women’s capacities & rights, introduced suffrage bill

James Mill ( ) James Mill wrote “Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.” Mill added muscle (kinesthesis), tickling & itching, digestive (alimentary) senses to Aristotle’s 5 senses. Described stream of consciousness associations. Some associations stronger than others. Permanence, certainty & facility determine strength. Proposed a model of concatenation (joining) of ideas later refined by his son.

John Stuart Mill ( ) Wrote “System of Logic” about metascience – the study of scientific process and assumptions that underlie all sciences, including psychology. J.S. Mill argued that there can be a science of the mind, but it must be inexact, not deterministic. If laws of psychology govern behavior will people’s action be predictable, what happen to responsibility and free will? Saw the need for Ethology – the study of the influence of external circumstances on behavior (not animal).

Alexander Bain ( ) Bain wrote “The Senses and the Intellect,” “The Emotions and the Will,” and “Mind and Body.” The standard British psychology textbooks for 50 years. Founded the journal “Mind,” establishing psychology as a field distinct from philosophy. Developed the concept of habit derived from consequences of random actions, leading directly to Thorndike’s behaviorism. Stressed the importance of observation, sympathetic to experimental method.

Immanuel Kant ( ) The leading German epistemologist, Kant was a subjectivist, nativist, rationalist successor to Descartes and Leibniz. Kant wrote “A Critique of Pure Reason” saying that empiricists forgot to ask how experience is possible. Certain intuitions or categories of understanding are inborn and frame our experiences. This knowledge is a priori, whereas experiential knowledge is a posteriori (known afterward). 3 categories of mind: cognition, affection, conation.

Kant’s View of A Priori Knowledge
Concepts of space and time. Other intuitions, including cause and effect, reciprocity, reality, existence and necessity. Higher faculties of reasoning are understanding, judgment, reason. True science must begin with concepts established a priori by reason alone and deal with observable objects that can be located in time and space. Psychology lacks this so it cannot be a science.

Chapter 3 – early studies of the central nervous system
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”
Completed in 1512 – Ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Is there an image of the human brain surrounding God, as suggested by Meshberger and is God giving life to Intellect?

Sources of Information
Dissection was prohibited for religious reasons but Michelangelo exchanged his art for the chance to study human anatomy. Other ideas about the location of the mind were speculative not observation-based. The wars of the 17th & 18th centuries provided opportunities to observe head and spine injuries. How did heads grin after decapitation on the guillotine Cabanis concluded all thought depends on the brain.

The Guillotine Decapitation means cutting the head off. The guillotine was developed to do that efficiently, without error or excess suffering.

Spinal Cord Functions Robert Whytt ( ) found that decapitated frogs would respond to a pinch by withdrawing the leg 15 min later. This demonstration of spinal reflexes requires an intact spinal cord. Francois Magendie ( ) showed the dorsal and ventral roots have different functions, dorsal controls sensation and ventral controls movement Bell successfully challenged the priority of Magendie’s discoveries; today this is called the Bell-Magendie law.

Frog and Human Spinal Reflexes
Magendie’s reflex arc provided later psychology with the paradigm of stimulus (sensation) and response (reflex) or S-R.

How do specific sensations occur?
Charles Bell ( ) suggested that the nerve imposes sensory specificity regardless of how it is stimulated. Visual sensations can result from stimulation of the optic nerve by light or by pressing the eyeball (with eye shut) German physiologist Johannes Peter Muller ( ) said the nerves must either communicate different impressions or project to different places in the brain which impose specificity. Now we know different projection areas are involved.

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)
The greatest 19th century physiologist, Helmholtz published definitive works on physiological acoustics and optics and a theory of color vision. Helmholtz & James Clark Maxwell tested Thomas Young’s theory of trichromatic vision – that 3 distinct kinds of nerve fibers respond to primary colors. Young-Helmholtz theory of trichromatic vision. Helmholtz’s research on neural conduction was his most brilliant contribution to physiology.

Trichromatic Color Vision Theory

Are nerve impulses electrical?
Galvani showed that natural electrical charges in storm clouds could cause a frog’s muscle to contract. He speculated that there was electricity generated by the brain. DuBois-Reymond finally measured electrical voltages in the muscle of a frog and later, in his own arm.

Helmholtz Measured Neural Speed
Helmholtz invented the myograph to trace a muscle contraction on a revolving drum. Helmholtz conducted the first reaction time experiments in which human subjects pressed buttons. Reaction times to a sensation on the thigh were faster than on the toe. Speed was 25 meters per second. People rejected his ideas because nerve sensations seem immediate, not delayed.

This led to more questions…
Is the impulse exclusively electrical or also chemical? Do different nerves conduct at different speeds. Do different people’s nerves conduct at different speeds? Does the speed of the nerve impulse depend on the intensity of the stimulus. Are nerves equally excitable at all times? A great deal of progress was made after this as the brain was studied directly in the 19th century.

Phrenology – a False Start
Phrenology taught our field a great deal about how to be scientific and how to avoid the pitfalls of pseudoscience. Franz Joseph Gall ( ) suggested that personality can be inferred from bodily appearance, especially features of the skull. He noticed that people with protruberant (bulging) eyes tended to have good memories, so he looked for other associations between features and abilities. His observations were compiled into a large catalog.

Phrenological Charts Well developed powers cause small bumps to appear on the skull; under developed powers cause indentations. Measurement of the skull can reveal strengths and weaknesses.

Johann Caspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)
Phrenologists like Gall & Spurzheim considered themselves anatomists and scientists. Gall’s books were considered deterministic, materialistic and atheistic and placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Catholic church. After Gall’s death, Spurzheim & George Combe turned phrenology into a cult, giving theatrical demonstrations, ultimately in the USA. Ultimately, phrenology became big business.

Criticisms of Phrenology
Circularity of arguments, e.g., opium produces sleep because it has a soporific (sleep-inducing) tendency. This is a problem with all inductive research. Circular predictions cannot be tested & proved false. In 1857, phrenology did stop seeking only corroborative examples and sought contradictory instances, but these were not accepted. “Maybe Descartes [small forebrain] was not so great a thinker as many thought him to be.” Spurzheim said. Magendie replaced Laplace’s brain with an imbecile’s.

Pierre Flourens’ Criticisms
Flourens was a French surgeon & the foremost brain researcher of the mid-19th century. He published “An Examination of Phrenology” in Flourens’ studies showed that the contours of the skull do not correspond to the contours of the brain. Phrenologists had located amativeness (lust) to the cerebellum – Flourens found that ablating the cerebellum interferes with motor movements not sex.

Localization of Function in the Brain
Flourens used ablation as a technique to systematically test for localization of function. The parts studied should be anatomically distinct. He divided the brain into 6 separate areas. His method was to: First observe an animal’s behavior. Second remove one of the brain’s units and let the animal heal. Third, observe the animal’s behavior again.

Flouren’s Findings with Animals
The cerebral lobes are the seat of all voluntary actions – only reflexes exist without them. The cerebral lobes are also the seat of perception and higher mental functions such as memory, will, judgment. Animals can survive damage to the cerebrum and cerebellum but not to the medulla oblongata. His Grand Principle -- the brain is an inter- connected, integrated system with a common action. Small areas can recover from damage without loss.

Parts of the Brain Cerebral lobes

Phineas Gage The accidental damage to Phineas Gage provided empirical evidence to show that Flouren’s findings with animals apply to humans too. After the accident, Gage became fitful, irreverent, profane, impatient of restraint or advice conflicting with his desires, obstinate, unable to plan or make decisions – “no longer Gage.” Characteristic of people with frontal lobe damage.

Localization of Speech
First evidence came from impairment after stroke. Based on experience with military injuries, Gall identified the regions just behind the eyes. Gall’s student, Bouillaud offered 500 franc challenge. Broca’s patient “Tan” seemed to be a disorder of speech without damage behind the eyes. However, Broca’s autopsy showed a lesion to the left frontal lobe in the area specified by Bouillaud and Aubertin (his pupil). Broca named this expressive aphasia “aphemie”

Examples of Expressive Aphasia

Broca’s Findings Pierre-Paul Broca ( ) asserted that this only confirmed that the lesion caused the disorder, not that speech was localized to that region. Broca found 25+ more cases with lesions of the left hemisphere but no damage to the right frontal lobe. This puzzled him because it contradicted the law of organic duality. Broca’s findings radically changed the debate over the localization of functions in the brain. Wernicke identified & localized another aphasia.

Language Centers in the Brain

Direct Stimulation of the Brain
First attempts at directly stimulating parts of the brain of animals were crude and often lethal. Electrical stimulation was first accomplished by Gustav Fritsch ( ) & Edward Hitzig ( ) to produce motor movements. Stimulation of one hemisphere always produced movement on the opposite side of the body. David Ferrier ( ) implanted electrodes and produced precise localization maps of monkeys and later human brains.

Ferrier’s Findings Ferrier discovered that representation of the different body parts in the brain is proportional to their function, not body mass. He identified the sensory and motor cortical regions. His collaborator, John Hughlings-Jackson ( ) studied epileptic seizures. He developed a conceptual model of brain organi- zation involving higher level cortical inhibitory control. Both researchers studied animals, not humans.

Studies of the Human Brain
Roberts Bartholow had a patient with a hole in her skull and used it to stimulate the underlying brain. He replicated the animal findings about localizations. He used too much electricity the second time and caused the patient’s death 4 days later, creating a scandal. Since then, observations of patients whose brains are exposed for treatment purposes have increased scientific knowledge, resulting in brain maps. Stereotaxic instruments are guided by 3-D coordinates.

Neurons: Golgi versus Cajal
Camillo Golgi ( ) discovered a technique for staining cells that revealed cell structure (cell bodies, dendrites, axons). He proposed that nerve impulses are propagated in a continuous process through networks of interlaced cells. Ramon y Cajal ( ) disagreed with Golgi, suggesting that neurons were separate and distinct. The nerve impulse must cross a gap between neurons. Cajal showed that axons end in terminals.

Staining Made Neurons Visible
Golgi-stained tissue from Monkey cortex Golgi-stained tissue from human cortex Cajal-stained embryonic tissue shows the axon terminals Unstained brain tissue is gray in the cortex and white underneath

Other Attempts at Localization
Attempts to localize such functions as learning, memory and intelligence were less successful. Karl Lashley ( ) spent 30 years unsuccessfully searching for memory engrams, the physical or chemical changes underlying memory. No matter where he lesioned, memory was affected. Recent neuroscience has found such changes. Neuroscience still relies on behavioral studies to relate brain functioning to human behavior.

Chapter 4 – wilhelm wundt and the founding of psychology
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Midterm Results Score Grade N 41-50 A 6 36-40 B 31-35 C 15 27-30 D
0-26 F 8 Top score was 48 out of 50 Top score for curve was 45

Wilhelm Wundt ( ) Psychology began as an experimental science with the founding of Wilhelm Wundt’s lab in 1879. He is often identified as “the world’s first true psychologist” and the “founder of Psychology.” Wundt with his lab research assistants Apparatus used in his studies.

Nature vs Nurture in Wundt’s Life
Shy, reserved person who disliked meeting strangers, new experiences. From a long line of famous scientists. Daydreamer. Hard worker. Strabismus (eye trouble) No playmates or siblings, alone a lot. Demanding father. Grandpa took him lots of places. Nurturing tutor from years old. Worked with famous people at university.

The German Gymnasium A fee-charging secondary school for students age 10 and over who meet high entrance standards. Presents a rigorous curriculum to prepare students for university study – like a “prep school” in the US. Teachers typically hold doctoral degrees and devote themselves entirely to teaching. The reputation of the gymnasium depends on the how well its students do on the university entrance exams. Wundt failed gymnasium because of unbridled day-dreaming, calling it his “school of suffering.”

Early Years Completed medical training in 3 years at the University of Heidelberg (1855). His dissertation was on the touch sensitivity of hysterical patients; he called this his first experimental work. He worked with organic chemist Bunsen to study the effects of restricted salt intake on urine composition, using himself as the subject. He decided to pursue an academic and research career after seeing publication of his work in the Journal of Practical Chemistry (1853).

Wundt’s Academic Tree John Stuart Mill, an early influence
Also studied with Muller & Du Bois-Reymond in Berlin (1856) Wilhelm Bunsen Organic Chemist Assistant to Hermann von Helmholtz at Heidelberg Doctoral Advisor Wilhelm Wundt Univ. of Heidelberg Postdoctoral Mentors

His Early Academic Career
In 1857, Wundt returned to the Univ. of Heidelberg as a lecturer in the Dept of Physiology. He taught experimental physiology and had a health breakdown. When he returned, he worked as the assistant to Helmholtz who had recently joined the university. He taught physiology to med students and developed a course in anthropology (social and cultural psychology). He wrote a book on sense perception and outlined a program for psychology that he followed in his career.

Wundt’s Program for Psychology
Psychology falls between the physical & social sciences Experimental and research methods used in the physical sciences were to be applied to psychological questions. Three main subdivisions: One branch would be an inductive experimental science The second would study reflections of higher mental processes, such as language, myths, aesthetics, religion & social customs via literature & naturalistic observation The third would integrate the social & physical sciences into a scientific metaphysics – coherent theory of the universe.

Other Early Activities
Published the two-volume “Lectures on the Human and Animal Mind” about cultural psychology. Resigned from the Institute of Physiology. Helmholtz did not fire him for lack of math knowledge. Was elected president of the socialistic Heidelberg Workingmen’s Educational Association. Served two 2-year terms in the Baden Parliament. Taught at Heidelberg (3 yrs), Zurich chair of inductive philosophy (1 yr) then went to Univ. of Leipzig.

The First Psychology Lab (1876)
Wundt was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the University of Leipzig which assigned him a room to store his equipment, which became his lab. He used a variety of equipment in his teaching demonstrations and research: Tachistoscopes, chronoscopes, electrical stimulators, pendulums, timers and sensory mapping devices. In 1879 he began experiments that were not part of his teaching – he marks this as the beginning of his lab. Colleagues questioned the legitimacy of his studies.

Haus zum Riesen The “House of the Giant” building in Heidelberg where Wundt established his first laboratory in 1865 (as it appears today). However, 1879 is accepted as the year psychology first became an experimental science – in the Konvikt Building. Wundt’s later lab building in Leipzig was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1943 (during WW II).

Famous Students of Wundt
Wundt studied with Helmholtz and Bunsen, both famous. Many of Wundt’s students became prominent too: G. Stanley Hall Cattell Kraepelin Munsterberg Kulpe Titchener

“Principles of Physiological Psychology”
Wundt wrote this two-volume textbook to use with his courses. See: Physiological psychology did not refer to the study of the physiological basis of psychology (as today) but to a psychology using experimental techniques. Wundt was self-consciously staking out a new field, so he is clearly the first person we can call a psychologist. The book was very successful, going through multiple printings and expansion to three volumes.

Contents First, the “bodily substrate of mental life” – brain anatomy and function, the nervous system. Obsolete now so not useful to modern students. Second, characteristics of sensations: quality, intensity, extent & duration, plus a theory of perception. Part IV – Wundt defined psychology as: “investigation of conscious processes in the modes of connection peculiar to them.”

Immediate vs Mediate Experience
Psychology’s goal is to study the psychological processes by which we experience the world. Immediate experience – the conscious processes we have when stimuli are presented: The greenness of green paper, the pitch of a tone. Mediate experience – the physical measurements using instruments of phenomena in the world. Use of a spectrometer to measure greenness of paper. Mediate is physics (objective), Immediate is psychology (subjective – we are immersed in our own consciousness)

Introspection Introspection is experimental self-observation.
Wundt did not mean “armchair speculation” by this term or “contemplative meditation.” That leads to fruitless debate and gross self-deception. Like Baron von Munchausen pulling himself out of quicksand by his own hair. Wundt’s introspection included measuring reaction times & word associations and a rigidly controlled experimental procedure for describing sensations.

Rules for Introspection
The observer had to be in a state of “strained attention”. Observations were repeated multiple times. Experimental conditions were varied systematically. Two elements were described: sensations & feelings. Complex mental processes result from creative syntheses of these elements (not “atomic elementism”). Wundt adapted Mill’s chemical principles. The mind is a creative, dynamic, volitional force

Wundt’s Concept of Mind
Wundt is called a Structuralist but never used that term, preferring “Voluntarism” instead. Titchener used the term Structuralism. Wundt was not a reductionist or an elementist either – he emphasized active psychological processes. Wundt did not define psychology as the study of the mind – that too comes from Titchener. Wundt opposed mind-body dualisms. His introspection was much more than self-report.

Wundt’s Research Wundt established the journal “Philosophical Studies” to report findings from his lab. The name avoided confusion with a Psychological Studies journal studying parapsychology (the occult). 50% of his studies were on sensation & perception. 17% measured reaction times but these were thought to be too imprecise, varying from person to person. 10% concerned attention & apperception (selective attention). 10% concerned feeling (3 dimensional theory)

Wundt’s Research (Cont.)
Wundt developed the method of paired comparisons to study feelings along a single dimension. Physiological measurements also taken (heart rate, muscle tension) anticipating physiological psychology. 10% concerned association using word-association tasks identifying inner (intrinsic) & outer (extrinsic) types of connections. Alcohol increases outer connections. Students were assigned to replicate earlier work.

The Role of Subjects Today the experimenter is in charge and subjects follow directions. In Wundt’s lab, subjects were highly trained, psychologically sophisticated members of the lab. The subject was considered more important than the experimenter because the subject supplied the data. Sometimes students alternated as subject vs experimenter, sometimes experiments were subjects. Called “reactor, observer, participant, individual under observation.”

Wundt as Adviser Wundt’s major contribution to psychology was the students he influenced. William James spent time in Wundt’s lab but didn’t like it. Wundt directed 186 Ph.D theses (70 in philosophy). Statistician Charles Spearman was his student. American students of Wundt founded labs in the USA at major universities like Stanford & Yale, NYU and Tufts, most developing their own ideas.

Wundt as Writer Extremely prolific:
2.2 pgs per day for 68 years. It would take 2-1/2 years to read it all. His works are not read today due to writing style. William James says unkind things about him, calling him industrious but lacking in genius. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration (effort). Even Titchener calls his style diffuse and obscure.

Cultural or Ethnic Psychology
His 10-volume work has been ignored by historians of psychology. It may be ignored because most of our knowledge of the history of psychology comes from one person (Boring) who does not mention it. Republished in 1990, it got favorable reviews. Wundt was fascinated by the topics that he felt could not be studied experimentally. Wundt advocated studying animals & children too.

Wundt the Man Many of his students wrote unflattering descriptions of him has a humorless drone. Wundt was generous in his support of Cattell who was haughty and unfair in describing him back. Hall called him hardworking but inept with his hands. Titchener called him humorless, indefatigable and aggressive. Students also wrote warmly of experiences with him. Wundt had a sense of humor, was a lively lecturer and used demos in class.

Wundt in Perspective Wundt is credited with founding experimental psychology. He is mischaracterized as narrow in approach but was actually quite broad in his interests and writing. We get many of our ideas about Wundt from Titchener who was the things Wundt was not (an elementist interested only in the structure of mind). His many students founded labs and departments of psychology & influenced modern psychology.

Chapter 5 – edward titchener and hugo munsterberg
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Two Students of Wundt Edward Titchener & Hugo Munsterberg
Both emigrated to the USA and conducted psychology labs: Titchener at Cornell University in NY. Munsterberg at Harvard University. Titchener is not as similar to Wundt as he has been portrayed in some histories of psychology. Munsterberg was more famous but also infamous – is he a victim or a visionary?

Edward Titchener ( ) Titchener refined Wundt’s technique of introspection and to study sensation and it Structuralism. He defined this as the study of the structure of the conscious mind. Titchener translated Wundt’s major work “Principles of Physiological Psychology” into English. He considered himself a “true Wundtian” all his career.

Academic Gowns Middle-length gown with sleeves similar to what Titchener and other scholarship students were required to wear at Cambridge. Cambridge Dr. of Philosophy graduation gown. Colors mean different things in doctoral regalia.

Titchener’s Version of Wundt
Like Wundt, Titchener presented demos during his lectures and attracted many undergrads. Like Wundt, Titchener was a prolific writer: 216 works including 6 major books. “Experimental Psychology” – a 4-volume lab manual. Like Wundt, he dictated the problems his students should study. Unlike Wundt, he was inflexible when his basic assumptions about psychology were challenged and considered his approach a “model laboratory.”

Structuralism For Titchener, psychology was the study of the mind.
He rejected the idea of a homunculus (mental mannikin) – a mind within the mind that doing the thinking. Psychology has a three-fold task: Analyze the sum total of mental processes, their elements and how they go together. Discover the laws determining the connections between these elements. Work out in detail the correlations of mind and nervous system.

Structuralism (Cont.) To accomplish psychology’s tasks, experiments must be conducted. For Titchener, experiments consisted entirely of introspections made under standard conditions. This approach became known as structuralism. Mental processes must be observed, interrogated and described in terms of observed facts. He used Wundt’s techniques to carry out introspection. Observers needed extensive training (10,000+ controlled observations) to peform correct introspection.

Elements of Consciousness
Titchener’s views of the elements of consciousness were influenced by the British associationists. Sensations are the “feels” of the perceptual world. Images comes from objects not present – ideas. Both sensations and ideas have describable qualities. The third mental element is feelings – emotional reactions accompanying mental experience. Complex mental states combine sensations, ideas and feelings via attention. Meaning comes from context and is lost with repetition.

Criticisms of Titchener
Over the years his approach using introspection became more rigid and limited. Uninterested in applied or clinical psychology, considering animal & child psychology impure and less important. Introspections are always retrospections (based on memory not immediate experience, with distortions). Introspections are remote from consciousness as it is subjectively experienced. Dull and irrelevant.

More Criticisms Because introspection itself is a conscious process it must interfere with the consciousness it aims to observe -- reflexivity concern is derived from Kant. Dunlap published “The Case Against Introspection”in the 1912 Psychological Review. A demonstration of correct introspection at the Yale APA Conference was unconvincing to anyone. Eventually the technique of introspection became extinct.

The Controversial Titchener
Brash, autocratic, dogmatic. He dismissed Behaviorism as a passing academic fad. Harsh and unyielding with former students but warm and supportive of those he considered loyal. Those students who resented his interference in their lives were excommunicated. Despite this, he was cultured, spoke several languages and could be warm and compassionate. He stuck by Watson during his crisis at Johns Hopkins.

Hugo Munsterberg ( ) Munsterberg studied with Wundt at Leipzig (1883). Seaching for “will” in the contents of consciousness he could only identify muscle movements, so he developed a theory of behavior based on these. His view of emotion as conscious recognition of one’s bodily state is similar to William James. Structuralism was the dominant approach in the USA until replaced by newer approaches. He could never accept Functionalism and Behaviorism.

James-Lange Theory of Emotion
Musterberg’s approach See a bear, react by running away, notice the bodily state and conclude “I must be afraid.” See a bear, recognize the danger, feel fear, run away. See a bear, recognize it and feel fear, notice bodily state and interpret that too.

Munsterberg’s Early Career
Taught at University of Freiburg. Restated his theory of will and was criticized by Titchener and Wundt in public, praised by Will. James. Established Germany’s second psychology lab. William James arranged for him to direct Harvard’s newly created psychology lab. Briefly returned to Germany but came back to the USA after encountering anti-semitism and in-fighting there. In 1900, wrote his first major book (Principles of Psychology), dedicated to William James

Munsterberg’s Writing Style
Munsterberg illustrates an ongoing conflict between popular writing and academic writing. He wrote books that appealed to the general public, quickly, using dictation, usually in German (later translated to English). He published often in popular magazines. He repeated himself often, ignoring contributions of others and claiming too much credit for himself. He seldom published complete data or detailed analyses of his results.

Applied Psychology He disliked Titchener’s narrow, restrictive approach. He considered structuralism precise but not useful. He was a purpose-oriented functionalist psychologist who refused to give a definition of psychology. It is more natural to drink water than to analyze it into its chemical elements. His lifelong concern was application of psychology in the service of humanity (although he always considered himself an experimental psychologist).

Clinical Psychology Munsterberg studied clinical patients in his lab, seeing those of scientific interest without fee. He developed a “directive” approach that encouraged patients to expect to get better. Reciprocal antagonism (encouragement of an opposing tendency) was used to eliminate troublesome impulses. He used hypnosis, conservatively to relieve symptoms. His results were published in the book Psychotherapy (1909).

Munsterberg & Freud Freud was the dominant voice in psychiatry at the time. Munsterberg accepted Freud’s views on trauma and hysterical symptoms and sexual basis of neuroses. He rejected Freud’s view on unconscious determinants, saying “There is no subconscious.” He conducted a series of experiments aimed at inducing a second personality using hypnosis. Automatic writing experiments were used to demonstrate the second personality.

Forensic Psychology He wrote a bestselling book “On the Witness Stand” applying psychology to legal situations. He outlined reasons for disagreement between eyewitness reports. He differentiated between subjective and objective truth – an oath to tell the truth does not guarantee objective truth. He staged a fight in class, then asked students to describe it, in a historic demo. He often criticized the legal system & was attacked.

Sensation Munsterberg
He advocated use of psychological methods in interrogation instead of brutal 3rd degree methods. Munsterberg used his methods to question Harry Orchard, a self-confessed murderer testifying against Mineworker’s union leaders. He accidentally told the press his “verdict,” which resulted in ridicule and negative publicity. Munsterberg described false confessions and the conditions under which they are more likely to occur.

Mind of the Juryman He studied jury decision-making using students making decision alone or in groups: 52% correct when alone, 78% correct in groups. He concluded that the jury system is psychologically sound. When he repeated the experiment using women as subjects, there was no increase in accuracy. He concluded that women are not capable of rational discussion in groups and women should not serve. This attracted renewed controversy.

Industrial Psychology
Munsterberg is often considered America’s first industrial psychologist. His book “Psychology and Industrial Efficiency,” has three sections: Worker selection (which excludes women) Factors affecting worker efficiency Marketing, sales and advertising techniques

Worker Selection Munsterberg recommended self-report measures of vocational interest used with job-related mini-tasks. He pioneered breaking a job down into tasks and identifying relevant performance abilities. He used street-car simulations to test employees in a job context, finding differences not present in lab- based tests. He developed tests for telephone operators and found that his tests identified the highly proficient operators (although not perfectly).

Worker Efficiency He studied workers in tedious, monotonous jobs and found that they didn’t experiment them that way. Judgments of outsiders about how boring tasks are don’t agree with worker’s own judgments. Many so-called higher professions also involve boring tasks. Many factors affect worker morale and satisfaction and need to be studied.

Advertising & Marketing
He studied how to increase consumer demand and increase advertising effectiveness. He tested the impact of repetition of ads on memory. He wrote controversial articles on the placement of ads in magazines (all in one section vs scattered throughout).

Other Contributions He wrote extensively on teaching, education and social issues. He opposed Prohibition (making alcohol illegal). He compared male drinking to women’s intemperance for candy and fashion, provoking outrage. This increased when it was discovered he had taken money from a beer manufacturer (Adolphus Busch). He opposed sex education in schools. He fought against parapsychology and the occult and challenged claims of pseudopsychologists.

Why is Munsterberg “Lost”?
Why is Munsterberg not among the well-known pioneers of American psychology? He won many honors and recognition in his own time. He was famous himself and knew famous people. One reason is his support for Germany and his writing in German during his lifetime. The outbreak of WWI in 1914 led to anti-German feeling – he received hate mail and was accused of being a spy.

Anti-German Sentiment

William McDougall ( ) McDougall took over for Munsterberg at Harvard when he died in 1917 – he too was vilified later. His book “Intro to Social Psychology” was foundational in social psychology. His book “Body and Mind” emphasized purposive behaviorism, describing motives and goals. He proposed an ever-increasing list of instincts to explain human behavior, studied parapsychology and supported Lamarckian evolution.

Relative Influence on Psychology
Munsterberg has had a huge influence on contemporary psychology, but Titchener has had very little. Nevertheless, current histories emphasize Titchener but not Munsterberg. Why? Titchener continues to influence how history is written but not how psychology is done. Boring (Titchener’s student) is a major source for most histories of psychology.

Chapter 6 – german psychologists of the 19th & early 20th centuries
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

German Rivals to Wundt Ernst Weber & Gustav Fechner -- psychophysicists Hermann Ebbinghaus -- memory Franz Brentano Carl Stumpf Oswald Kulpe

Weber & Fechner

Ernst Weber ( ) Weber published “De tactu” describing the minimum amount of tactile stimulation needed to experience a sensation of touch – the absolute threshold. Using weights he found that holding versus lifting them gave different results (due to muscles involved). He used a tactile compass to study how two-point discrimination varied across the body. On the fingertip .22 cm, on the lips .30 cm, on the back 4.06 cm. Aesthesiometric compass

Just Noticeable Difference (JND)
Weber studied how much a stimulus must change in order for a person to sense the change. How much heavier must a weight be in order for a person to notice that it is heavier? This amount is called the just noticeable difference JND The JND is not fixed but varies with the size of the weights being compared. JND can be expressed as a ratio: where R is stimulus magnitude and k is a constant and DR means the change in R (D usually means change)

Gustav Fechner ( ) Fechner related the physical and psychological worlds using mathematics. Fechner (1860) said: “Psychophysics, already related to physics by name must on one hand be based on psychology, and [on] the other hand promises to give psychology a mathematical foundation.” (pp. 9-10) Fechner extended Weber’s work because it provided the right model for accomplishing this.

Fechner’s Contribution
Fechner called Weber’s finding about the JND “Weber’s Law.” Fechner’s formula describes how the sensation is related to increases in stimulus size: where S is sensation, k is Weber’s constant and R is the magnitude of a stimulus The larger the stimulus magnitude, the greater the amount of difference needed to produce a JND. He used catch trials to study guessing.

Relationship of JND to Stimulus
S.S. Stevens modified Fechner’s Log Law to a Power Function in the early 1950’s.

Fechner’s Legacy His methods are still used in psychophysics.
Ideas from signal detection theory have been applied to a wide variety of other topics. Threshold for criminal behavior, scenic beauty. Scaling techniques, including rating scales, were placed on a sound scientific basis, especially by S.S. Stevens later work, continued by Luce & Narens. His speculations about split-brain studies were confirmed by Sperry.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
Ebbinghaus was inspired by finding a copy of Fechner’s “Elements of Psychophysics.” He wanted to apply Fechner’s methods to study of higher mental processes. In 1877, he began developing procedures for studying memory. His major work, “Fundamentals of Psychology,” is dedicated to Fechner – “I owe everything to you.”

Early Academic Career Ebbinghaus had no mentor to teach him techniques so he developed his own, highly original methods. He had no lab, no access to subjects, so he performed most experiments on himself. He followed rigorous experimental rules and spent 4 years replicating his first series of experiments. These were well received and widely recognized. His nonsense syllables were developed to avoid word familiarity, using a permutation formula. 19 consonants, 11 vowels, 11 consonants = 2299

Ebbinghaus Experiments
First, he studied the relationship between the amount of material to be memorized and the time needed to learn it to complete mastery. His measure was number of repetitions needed. Second, he studied the effects of different amounts of learning on memory. His measure was savings – repetitions needed to relearn the original items after a delay. As repetitions increase, so does relearning time saved – overlearning helps.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
His best known experiment studied the effects of passage of time on memory – his forgetting curve. In addition to graphing his data he developed a mathematical model by writing a logarithmic equation and deriving the parameters using the least squares method. He also compared means and variability and tested whether their differences exceeded chance.

Other Investigations Ebbinghaus studied the relative effects on memory of spaced versus massed practice, part versus whole, and active versus passive learning. Active, spaced learning was most effective. He found that meaningful material was much easier to learn and remember than material without meaning – Don Juan poem vs nonsense syllables. Lists learned before sleep were better retained.

Ebbinghaus’s Contributions
This was the first time a higher mental function had been studied experimentally. His book is “one of the most remarkable research achievements in the history of psychology” Roediger. His success established a paradigm for studying memory that was used for the next 90 years. An ecological approach later challenged this: Ulric Neisser challenged validity of lab tasks. Bahrick studied long-lasting memories. Banaji & Crowder defended lab-based studies.

An Applied Problem Breslau schools were concerned that children were too tired during an uninterrupted 8-1 school day. Griesbach tested mental fatigue and irritability using a two-point discrimination task. He proposed the day be broken into 2 short segments. Ebbinghaus disagreed because the measurement of sensory discrimination has little to do with mental activity, introducing the concept of content validity. He developed analogy and completion test items to measure intelligence, later included in IQ tests by Binet.

Franz Brentano ( ) Brentano was a Dominican priest and lecturer at the Univ. of Wurzburg who left his position after writing a scholarly critique of the doctrine of papal infallibility. During the next 6 years he taught at the University of Vienna and published a textbook:“Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.”

Comparison to Wundt Brentano studied Aristotle and put more emphasis on logical examination than experimental results. As a result, Brentano’s ideas were fixed and did not change, because neither logic nor premises change. Instead of studying the products of mental actions, as Wundt did, Brentano’s act psychology studied the processes and mental actions themselves. Brentano did not use introspection (inner observation) – it was impossible because the act of observing changes what is observed, retrospection (memory) was possible.

Brentano’s Ideas About Mental Acts
Three fundamental classes of mental acts: Ideating, judging, loving (versus hating) Mental acts may have as their objects past sensations (an idea of an object not present) using memory and imagination (Locke’s Reflection). It is possible to feel an emotion when the object of that emotion is not present. One mental act may have as its object another mental act – judgments about judgments.

Brentano in Perspective
Brentano is not as well-known as Wundt because he wrote less and had personal problems. He did very little experimental research. His main importance is his formulation of a rival approach to Wundt’s. His psychology of acts was a precursor to the American functionalists. Two of his students (Stumpf & von Ehrenfels) influenced the later Gestalt psychologists.

Carl Stumpf ( ) Stumpf was a talented musician who composed and performed throughout his life, mixing with musicians. Brentano changed his life by teaching him to think logically and empirically. Brentano encouraged him to transfer and study under Lotze, a German perceptual theorist. He became a priest but left the seminary over papal infallibility, but not the church like Brentano. Lotze got him a job at the Univ. of Gottingen where he worked with Weber and Fechner.

The Golden Section Two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one: Stumpf conducted experiments studying whether this “golden section” ratio was aesthetically pleasing.

Stumpf’s Early Work Stumpf gained a reputation for youthful brilliance by publishing a nativist explanation of depth perception. He opposed Berkeley, Helmholtz, Wundt & Lotze. He proposed that although “local signs” contribute to depth perception they are of secondary importance. The interpretive action of a higher center in the brain is most important. He paralleled Kant’s view of the nature of space.

Stumpf’s Tone Psychology
Like Brentano, Stumpf distinguished between phenomena and mental functions. He called sensory images, tones, colors phenomenology. Seeing, hearing, perceiving, thinking are cognitive acts. He studied sounds of musical instruments, melody, tonal fusion and consonance/dissonance of tones. He compared musical and non-musical people. His volume “Tone Psychology” appeared in 1883. This led to prestigious academic appointments.

Debunking Sensational Phenomena
In , Stumpf challenged the likelihood of a machine that could change photographs of sound waves into sounds. In 1904 he chaired a commission to investigate the claims of Clever Hans, the horse who could count. His student, Oskar Pfungst, tested Hans when his owner knew the answer and again when he did not. The horse was correct 98% of the time in the first condition but 8% correct in the second condition. He was correct 89% without blinkers, 6% with blinkers.

Clever Hans & Von Osten Von Osten was convinced that horses had inner speech and thus could do math.

Stumpf’s Later Years His later years were sad.
WWI emptied the university of young men who left to serve in the armed forces. War also disrupted his relationships with colleagues throughout Europe, including British, American and Russians, and caused his work to be overlooked. He was asked to organize psychologists to support the war effort but his heart wasn’t in the task. He retired in 1921, succeeded by Kohler.

Oswald Kulpe ( ) Kulpe studied history but became interested in psychology after hearing Wundt speak at Leipzig. At Wundt’s recommendation he went to Gottingen to study with Muller (Lotze’s successor as chair). Muller followed Fechner’s psychophysics and studied memory (interference) with Ebbinghaus – developing techniques for avoiding experimenter bias & demand. After graduating, he performed experiments challenging assumptions of Wundt & Titchener, although he had warm affection for Wundt.

Kulpe’s Experimental Psychology
Kulpe was influenced by Mach’s positivist philosophical views – all science is based on experience and naturalistic sensory observation. Mentalistic conceptions and attributions of mental entities are to be avoided. Psych needs objective descriptions of mental events. Kulpe tried to demonstrate that higher mental functions could be studied experimentally. Kulpe’s research provided a foundation for contemporary cognitive psychology.

The “Wurzburg School” Founded by Kulpe & his students.
Subjects were asked about free associations using a method of questioning called “Ausfrage.” Marbe studied “conscious attitudes” of subjects judging weights – doubt, hesitation, searching. Kulpe & Bryan (Clark University) showed that subjects could abstract features of nonsense syllables as an active mental act “apprehension.” Count the “F”s in a sentence.

Investigations of Reaction Time
Wurzburg psychologists asked how very fast, volitional reaction times could occur without being part of the subject’s mental experience. Watts used a more precise Hipp chronoscope & broke reaction times into four parts: (1) preparatory period, (2) stimulus presentation, (3) striving for the response, (4) the response itself. Based on introspection, the thinking takes place during the preparatory period (instructions), establishing a subject “set.”

More Wurzburg Findings
Using systematic experimental introspection, Ach found consistent differences between subjects – called decision types. Binet claimed priority based on descriptions of his kids. Later (1907), Buhler asked questions requiring thoughtful replies, not just “yes/no” answers. Subjects described imageless thought, where answers just came to them. Wundt claimed he was not using introspection correctly. Kulpe & Moore claimed meaning is distinct from image.

Lost German Psychologists
Why are only Ebbinghaus, Weber & Fechner well known? WWI disrupted others’ work and international contacts. WWII destroyed the German universities. Politics prevented communication between German and American psychologists. Cognitive psychology might have developed much sooner without this interruption. Only Gestalt psychology took root because some fled Nazi Germany and took refuge in America.

Origin of Third Degree The classification of the qualities of objects by degree - heat and cold, moisture and dryness etc. - was commonplace in the middle ages. Henry Lyte's translation of Dodoens' Niewe herball or historie of plantes, 1578 includes a description of rue: "Rue is hoate and dry in the thirde degree." Shakespeare went on to apply the degree classification to drink, in Twelfth Night, 1602: "For he s in the third degree of drinke: hee's drown'd: go looke after him.”

Present Meaning “The third degree” is well-known to all US crime- fiction enthusiasts as “an intensive, possibly brutal interrogation” appearing as early as Forbes (1900) In Masonic lodges there are three degrees of membership: Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason. When a candidate receives the third degree in a Masonic lodge, he is subjected to some activities that involve an interrogation and it is more physically challenging than the first two degrees.

Chapter 7 – gestalt psychology in germany & the United states
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Gestalt Psychology This was the major alternative and challenge to structuralism during the early 20th century. Founded by the successors to the people in Chapter 6. Gestalt means “shape” or “form.” Major proponents: Max Wertheimer – developed Gestalt principles Kurt Koffka – developed laws of perception Wolfgang Kohler – worked with apes on insight Kurt Lewin – developed “Field theory”

Conceptual Foundations
Gestalt Psychology grew out of the perceptual theories of physicist Ernst Mach and the experimental work of Christian von Ehrenfels. Mach described properties of spatial and auditory forms (squares, circles, simple melodies). As perceptual wholes these forms have qualities that distinguish them from their elements (parts). Its form quality gives an object perceptual or psychological permanence despite changes in sensation A song sung by different voices remains the same song.

Max Wertheimer ( ) Wertheimer studied under Stumpf in Berlin, then Kulpe in Prague (psychology of legal testimony). Fascinated by the apparent motion of objects outside a train window, he bought a stroboscope to study “where does movement come from?” Schumann loaned him a tachistoscope and introduced him to Koffka and Kohler (students of Stumpf). Apparent motion of a white stripe from horizontal to vertical was demonstrated.

Phi Phenomenon Demos phi/index.html her/TwoStrokeFlash.htm Early stroboscopic entertainment devices

Four Principles of Gestalt Thinking
Holistic thinking – the whole is always more than the sum of its parts, called supersummativity. Phenomenological basis – analyzing the essence of phenomena is the subject matter of psychology. Methodology – lifelike experiments using small numbers of subjects. Isomorphism – psychological processes are directly related to biological (brain) processes.

Tactile Phi Perceptions
Benussi showed that when two points on the skin are stimulated the stimulus appears to move in an arc through space, like a flea hopping. Von Bekesy produced a tactile phi perception of a vibration jumping from knee to knee or between. Geldard & Sherrick produced a progression of jumps up the arm from wrist to elbow (like a rabbit). In all of these, the perceptual experience had a property (movement) not present in the components.

Rubin’s Vase The figure emerges as a whole, not piecemeal, demonstrating that perceptions are active, lively and organized, not passive receivers of stimuli.

Gestalt Principles of Perception
proximity similarity good continuation (good gestalt) closure

Good Gestalts Poor performance on perceptual closure tests (right) has been associated with right hemisphere impairment.

Generality of Gestalt Principles
Closure applies to memory, not just visual stimuli. Waiters can remember checks until the bill is paid. Zeigarnik Effect -- she gave tasks but interrupted half part-way through. Later, interrupted tasks were 90% more likely to be recalled. TV cliff-hanger episodes generate tension. Alpha the chimp filled in the missing wedge of a pie-shaped figure. Results with other chimps produced inconsistent results, perhaps because they were too young.

Illusions and the Physical World
Koffka distinguished between the geographic environment and the behavioral environment. The man in the snowstorm who crossed a lake not a plain without knowing it. His behavioral environment was plain, not lake. In both cases, the horizontal line seems shorter than the vertical one, yet they are the same lengths.

Ascendancy of Gestalt Psychology
Despite the turmoil in Germany after WWI, Gestalt Psychology flourished in the 1920’s. Wolfgang Kohler succeeded Carl Stumpf as director of the Berlin Psychological Institute. A decade later, the Nazi’s wrecked it. In 1933, Jewish professors, including Wertheimer, Kohler & Koffka, were expelled from the university (27 psychologists). Many were assisted in finding jobs in the USA, some at the NYC New School for Social Research (Univ. in Exile).

Nazi Collaboration & Heroic Opposition
Germany’s most celebrated philosopher, Heidegger, supported the Nazi’s anti-intellectualism & Hitler. Under Nazi leadership, Wundt’s lab became a folk- cell or center for ultra-nationalistic activities. Kohler (not Jewish) vigorously opposed the Nazis. He wrote the last anti-Nazi article published, mocked the Hitler salute and gave an anti-Nazi lecture. He refused to take a loyalty oath to Hitler and agitated for reinstatement of Jewish colleagues. He emigrated in 1935, going to Swarthmore.

The University in Exile
Wertheimer studied human thought and education at the New School for Social Research (1933). Fromm’s interviews with major scientists at the New School was lost until republished in 1997. Wertheimer wrote “Productive Thinking” (1945) recommending a Gestalt approach to teaching. He developed new methods of teaching math and thought insightful productive thinking could be cultivated in all children (not just math geniuses).

Wolfgang Kohler ( ) Kohler studied with Stumpf, then went to the Canary Islands (Tenerife) to study primates and was stranded there for 7 years by WWI. Kohler questioned the S-R learning approach of Thorndike (trial & error), arguing that animals are capable of reasoning in the right context. He said animals were unable to demonstrate higher level reasoning in puzzle boxes. He devised situations that animals could solve using insight.

Barrier Problems (Umwegen)
Dogs and one-year-old children could do this task easily but chickens could not. Barrier S House Wall

Experiments with Chimps
Chimps seemed to use insight to solve more complicated problems involving combining tools or using objects to reach bananas, with transfer. They seemed to have moments of insight, jumping up with inspiration after giving up on a problem. Animals were tested in social situations where they learned by observation and imitation. Kohler reported his results descriptively without numbers and statistical interpretations. British intelligence thought he was a spy.

Transposition I II In both tasks the chicken pecks the square on the right. Predicted by S-R theory Predicted by Gestalt theory II III Are chickens recognizing a particular gray stimulus or are they making a comparative judgment?

Other Studies Apes were able to find buried food immediately but not after a delay – ape memory is limited. He demonstrated that fear is not a learned response by showing that apes reacted with fear to novel stimuli such as camels or masks not paired with punishment. Sample devil masks used in Sri Lankan dancing (Ceylon) where the Cingalese people live.

Kurt Lewin ( ) Lewin studied in Berlin under Stumpf but found Wundtian psychology irrelevant and dull. He organized a series of workers classes to teach basic skills -- considered subversive by the university. He volunteered for WWI winning an Iron Cross, then published “The War Landscape” describing the soldier’s experience of the war. He used terms like life space, boundary, direction and zone, which became important in his later topological theory & described depersonalization of the enemy.

Kurt Lewin

Applied Interests Returning to the Berlin Psychological Institute, he found Gestalt psychology interesting but had a more applied focus. Two papers on the laborer in agriculture and industry. In 1919 he returned to the idea of life space, comparing agricultural and industrial spaces. He criticized the time-and-motion studies of Frederick Winslow Taylor (Principles of Scientific Management), arguing work has life value and must be humanized. He inspired Zeigarnik’s research on waiter’s recall.

Topological Psychology
An individual is a complex energy field, a dynamic system of needs and tensions directing behavior: where behavior (B) is a function f of a person (P) interacting with an environment (E). Each person moves in a life space that contains goals with positive or negative valence. Goals create vectors that attract or repel. He used non-quantitative geometry to represent this

Lewin’s Eggs (Potatoes)
E (P) E Nonpsychological Lewin used diagrams like this to describe life spaces

Studies of Child Behavior
Lewin criticized statistical approaches to child behavior and conceptions of “the average child.” The totality of a child’s life must be studied and since each life space is different, using intensive case study. An infant’s life space is small and undifferentiated but grows larger and more differentiated with age. Lewin conducted detour studies similar to Kohler but used topology to explain the results. “Environmental Forces in Child Behavior & Development.”

Detour Studies Chocolate Barrier
V Chocolate This task is difficult for a young child because the child must move in a direction opposite to the vector to obtain the chocolate. play with friends picnic C This choice is easy because both options are positive

Conflict Diagrams The child wants to climb the tree but is frightened creating an approach/avoidance conflict – vectors wax and wane. Tree ± C Task the child doesn’t want to do Here the conflict between two undesirable events results in deflection sideways to a third vector R – escape from the field. R C Punishment

Lewin in the USA Lewin left Germany because of Hitler & anti- semitism at the Univ. of Berlin. Ogden (Kulpe’s student) got him a 2-yr job at Cornell in home economics studying eating habits of children. Lewin tried for an appointment at Hebrew Univ. studying displacement of Jews but Freud opposed it He was appointed at the Univ. of Iowa’s Children Welfare Research Station under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Research at Univ. of Iowa
People reach for the pie at the back of the counter. The amount of effort expended strengthens the valence of a goal – goals become more attractive with effort. Under conditions of frustration, children’s behavior becomes dedifferentiated (regresses to an early stage). Authoritarian vs democratic leadership styles have a strong influence on children’s behavior. Authoritarian styles lead to more child aggression.

Lewin’s Applied Research
In this too, he stressed democracy over autocracy. Lewin used “action research” – reflective team problem solving -- to diagnose productivity problems in Harwood Manufacturing. Workers felt productivity goals were unachievable. When allowed to set their own goals and solve their own productivity problems, in improved considerably. Lewin used this approach in his own lab, stating that he could not think productively as an individual.

War Efforts With Margaret Mead, he showed that group discussions led to more behavior change (eating visceral meats) than facts her in dynamic lectures. He also worked on propaganda, leadership, military morale, and rehabilitation issues. William Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” To better carry out his activities he founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT.

Four Major Programs of Research
Ways to increase group productivity and counter the tendency of groups to stray from their goals. Studies of communication and the spread of rumors. Areas of social perception and interpersonal relations, group membership and individual adjustment. Studies in leadership training, leading to the formation of T groups (training groups) designed to open communication and combat prejudice.

Programs to Combat Prejudice
Founded the Commission on Community Interrelations (CCI) for the American Jewish Congress to conduct studies of discrimination. Interviews with customers of black or white clerks showed no effect of race on sales. This finding was publicized to combat job discrimination Interviews with people in integrated vs segregated housing projects showed greater pride & community, less suspicion & hostility in the integrated projects. Most positive results were for 70% black occupancy.

Other Studies Lewin had found that you can change attitudes by changing behavior, so he encouraged the AJC to challenge the college admissions quota system. A study of Ways of Handling a Bigot found that in playlets enacting bigotry, 80% of the audience wanted to see the bigot challenged, but calmly. Lewin died in 1947 of a heart attack, but his work continued at his institutes. Those more interested in applied research split off and moved to the University of Michigan.

Gestalt Therapy Gestalt therapy is not really derived from Gestalt psychology. Although it borrowed some terms like closure and insight (defining them differently), it is recognized to have little to do with Gestalt psychology. Perls admitted never reading the books of the Gestalt psychologists but dedicated a book to Wertheimer. Henle: “The most grotesque misunderstanding of Gestalt psychology is the notion that it has some relation to Gestalt therapy…there is nothing in common

Chapter 8 – CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY & THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Clinical Psychology Like psychology in general, clinical psychology is very new but its roots are ancient. Despite this, reforms in care of the mentally ill only occurred in the 18th century and clinical psychology was established as a subfield in 1876. It is now a central area of psychology, dominating the American Psychological Association. Clinical psychologist is what most people think of when they hear the word psychologist.

Witchcraft and Mental Illness
Despite enlightened views by Greeks such as Hippocrates & Antiphon, and Roman Galen, the mentally ill were generally equated with sin & evil. Throughout the dark and middle ages they were regarded as subhuman and subjected to barbaric abuses and scapegoated. Mental illness was frequently equated with Witchcraft and possession by the devil. Joan of Arc may be an example, since she reported hearing voices (hallucinations), first a mystic then a witch

Witchcraft in Europe Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches) published late 1480’s said witchcraft arises from unsatisfied lust, which is never satisfied in women. This “textbook of the Inquisition” was an incitement to torture & mass murder, ,000, 85% female. It was written by two Dominican priests (Sprenger & Kramer) & used with the full authority of the Pope. 3 main sections: (1) proof witches exist, (2) descriptions of characteristics & actions of witches, (3) how to examine a witch to ensure full confession.

How Can You Tell She’s a Witch?
Since people believed that no natural power could overcome witchcraft, the outcome of a confession was death by hanging, burning or drowning. Women were offered hanging instead of burning as an inducement to confess. This Monty Python clip is funny because it seems absurd to us now, but the Inquisition was serious.

Don’t Confuse the Inquisition with the Witch Trials
In the 12th century, spreading moral corruption (illegal marriage, extraordinary wealth) among the clergy drove people to heretical movements. The Inquisition’s main focus was to eradicate these and later sects (Cathars, Albigensians, Waldensians, etc.) The Malleus Haereticorum (Hammer of Heretics) described how to identify and punish heretics. Dominicans were the inquisitors and the methods of torture were similar, but heretics had more rights and were not killed by the church (only by locals).

Witchcraft in the USA Witch trials were common in New England after they had largely died out in Europe. The Salem witch trials began when 8 young girls developed symptoms diagnosed as bewitchment. 19 people were hanged, 1 was pressed with stones. The following Spring, the governor released the remaining 150 accused people. Laws were rewritten making witchcraft difficult to prosecute. Ergot poisoning may have produced their symptoms or perhaps hysteria.

Early Institutions and Cures
Many retarded and mentally ill people were treated as criminals and locked up in “fools’ towers, fool’s homes, or lunatic asylums. In 1130 a convent became the first mental institution. In 1543 Henry VIII chartered the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, known as “Old Bedlam” (uproar). Bars, manacles and chains were common in asylums in England and the USA. Inmates were starved in baskets over the dining table. Bizarre cold water & whirling cures and blood-letting.

Pictures of Interior of Bedlam
Keepers were only paid what they could collect from those wanting to see inmates as entertainment.

Benjamin Rush ( ) Considered the father of American psychiatry, Rush was an enthusiastic advocate of blood-letting, almost killing himself with it to cure Yellow fever. Blood-letting was used to “quiet the blood” because excessive stimulation and excitement produced mental & physical illness (Brunonian system). Rush founded a wing for treatment of the insane at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelpha. His belief that the insane deserved treatment was admirable but his methods were barbaric.

Phillipe Pinel ( ) Pinel is considered the father of scientific psychiatry. His personal experience with a manic-depressive friend motivated his interest in studying insanity. Daquin asserted that insanity was a disease that could be understand by the methods of natural science. Encouraged by Daquin, Pinel urged humane treatment of the insane, not beatings or ridicule. As a result he was appointed Director of the Bicetre asylum in Paris (1793).

Changes at the Bicetre In a cautious and systematic way, Pinel began removing chains from the inmates. 8 years earlier, Chiarugi outlawed chains in Italy. One of the men released later saved Pinel from a lynch mob accusing him of poisoning wells & harboring rich. He used the minimal restraint necessary for safety. Deaths fell from 50-60% to about 12% after he implemented his changes. In 1795 he was appointed head of La Salpetriere, the women’s asylum with 8000 inmates.

Marat/Sade The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates at the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (by Peter Weiss). The characters in a play depicting the French Revolution (15 years earlier) are played by inmates with various symptoms. The audience is nobility, as was common. The time is 1794. eature=related

Wild Boy of Aveyron Pinel was asked to examine a boy of 12 who had walked out of the woods of Saint-Serin in Aveyron. The boy seemed to bear upon a philosophical controversy – Rousseau said a natural life is best because civilization corrupts (noble savage idea). One of Pinel’s assistants, Itard, tried to educate him. He was able to teach him basic self-care but not to talk. He was unpredictable and violent when stressed. His efforts suggested that retarded children from less deprived backgrounds might be helped by remediation

Johann Guggenbuhl ( ) Guggenbuhl wondered whether cretins could be cured, especially by diet, exercise & vitamins. A cretin is a thyroid-deficient dwarfed individual with mental subnormality, from the French word. His claims of success were investigated and found to be bogus – the inmates were neglected and unimproved. Guggenbuhl fled with the money. His legacy is that hundreds of asylums for the mentally retarded were established with better results.

William Tuke ( ) Tuke was a prosperous, retired Quaker gentleman. Appalled by conditions at an asylum in York and the death of a Quakeress, Tuke decided to found his own “retreat” for persons with mental disorders. Tuke’s York retreat resembled a farm and patients and staff were both treated like family. Thomas Scattergood visited his retreat. Inspired by his report, the Quakers founded the first private psychiatric hospital in the USA in Philadelphia.

Dorothea Dix ( ) Teaching in a prison school, Dix realized that many women who were mentally ill were being treated like criminals, but not allowed prisoners’ privileges. She became an advocate, travelling from state to state and publicizing the abuses and mistreatments. She lobbied for a land-grant bill to enable states to build mental institutions, but it was vetoed by Pierce. During the Civil War she worked as a nurse, then lectured Queen Victoria & chided the Pope.

State Institutions in the US
The first public institution opened in Williamsburg VA in 1773, part prison and part infirmary. Many large state-run institutions were established, initially run humanely on the “retreat” model, but they were inundated with the chronically disturbed. Disproportionately large numbers of immigrants were committed and states couldn’t cope with the ethnic and cultural differences. So the states established large custodial institutions.

Deinstitutionalization
Despite campaigns like that of Beers, founder of the mental hygiene movement, support for mental institutions declined with the Depression & WWII. In 1949 no state hospital met APA minimal standards of operation. Deinstitutionalization policies in the 1970s led to release of former patients who were then left without supervision or support to become homeless. California went from 40,000 to 5,000 beds under Governor Ronald Reagan.

Lightner Witmer ( ) Witmer founded the first psychological clinic at the Univ. of Pennsylvania in 1896. Though trained in experimental psych, he believed that psychology must help people like the mentally ill. He encountered resistance from people who wanted to keep therapy within medicine. Witmer treated children with speech defects, developmental delays or reading problems. He published 2 papers on intelligent behavior in a chimpanzee “Peter”.

Desperate Cures Psychosurgery – Moniz drilled holes in the skull & inserted an instrument to cut nerve tissue – a frontal lobotomy (leucotomy). His successes were ambiguous, he ignored side effects, but the procedure became widely practiced. Fulton, Freeman & Watts popularized it in the USA. Induction of insulin coma or convulsions (ECT). Only ECT has been found to have therapeutic value. Psychoactive drugs, especially lithium for manic- depression, have provided relief for some disorders

Mesmerism Mesmer reported use of magnets to cure sickness and disease. He found that people would go into a trance when stroked by a magnet. He was kicked out of medical school and founded his own clinic where he practiced mesmerism (animal magnetism). A French commission investigated him and decided he was a quack – ultimately he was driven out of France. Several surgeons used mesmerism during surgery.

Hypnosis James Braid first used the term hypnosis in 1843.
He used fixation and suggestion, not magnets to induce trance. His goal was scientific description not advocacy. Liebault and Bernheim combined hypnosis with drugs and founded an important center for the treatment of psychosomatic illness in Nancy, France. Charcot operated a hypnosis clinic in Paris visited by Sigmund Freud who hoped to use hypnosis to treat hysterical patients.

Sigmund Freud ( ) Freud’s early career choices were limited by anti- semitism so he chose medicine at Univ. of Vienna. His favorite professor was Brentano, the philosophical follower of Wundt who emphasized mental acts. He also did neurological research under Brucke. Military service delayed his graduation until 1881. He spent 5 months working in the psychiatric clinic of Theodor Meynert where he encountered hysterical patients.

Breuer and the case of Anna O.
Anna O. was the name given to preserve the confidentiality of Bertha Pappenheim. Pappenheim had developed a number of hysterical symptoms after the death of her father, which were successfully treated by Breuer. When she recalled the circumstances giving rise to each symptom, she experienced strong emotion which Breuer called catharsis – a release of emotional tension. His technique of talking about her symptoms was called the “talking cure.”

Freud’s Drug Use In 1884, Freud became an enthusiastic user and advocate for cocaine, which was viewed a wonder drug with no drawbacks. By 1885 cases of addiction were being reported. Ultimately he renounced it and was lucky to escape becoming addicted himself. He was a heavy smoker (20 cigars a day) who could not stop, even when diagnosed with the mouth cancer that finally killed him.

Freud & Charcot In , Freud received a grant from the Univ. of Vienna to study hysteria and hypnosis with Charcot. Freud saw his demos of removal of hysterical symptoms using hypnotic suggestion and his claim that these symptoms had a psychological cause. Checkerboard anesthesias or paralyses did not follow anatomical principles. He translated Charcot’s book “On Male Hysteria” which was poorly received because it focused on men, although this is disputed by Sulloway.

Freud’s Medical Practice
In 1886, Freud established a practice in Vienna, with treatment of hysteria as his specialty. By 1889, he concluded that conventional treatments were unhelpful, including baths, massage, electrotherapy, and rest cures. He used hypnosis for a while, but became dissatisfied with it because it worked inconsistently with people and their symptoms. Finally he concluded that his relationship with the patient was more important than such techniques.

Psychoanalytic Techniques
Freud instructed people to remember events associated with the first appearance of symptoms. Later he relied more on free association in which patients described whatever came into their minds. Freud & Breuer published a book on Anna O and four other patients: Studies in Hysteria. Breuer emphasized catharsis but Freud emphasized the therapeutic relationship, describing transference and counter-transference. Their friendship was damaged by this.

Freud’s Seduction Theory
Freud’s friendship with Wilhelm Fliess ( ), a physician interested in sexual behavior, likely contributed to development of his seduction theory. Fliess related nasal irritation to hysterical symptoms and sexual irregularities, using cocaine for diagnosis. Fliess considered people bisexual and said that events in early life can have lasting effects. Freud’s revised theory said that hysteria was caused exclusively by unconscious memories of sexual pleasure from early childhood – finding 18 cases.

Modifications to his Theory
Under strong criticism of the methods used to extract the memories, Freud modified his theory in but didn’t admit it publically until much later. In 1905 he labeled the patients’ recollections as “fictionalized memories” or “fantasies.” Since then, a controversy has existed over whether: The memories were fantasies or real abuse. Freud still believed in his disavowed theory but yielded to pressure. Recanting changed the focus of psychoanalysis.

Freud’s Major Works The Interpretation of Dreams – dreams provide a “royal road” to the unconscious. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life – slips of the tongue, temporary memory failures and trivial mistakes are symptoms of unconscious dynamics. Husbands who repeatedly lose their wedding rings.

Theory of Personality Development
Psychosexual stages: Oral, anal, phallic,latent, genital Each embodies a conflict between gratification of instincts and limitations of the external world. Unsuccessful resolution results in fixation and prevents progress to the next stage. Oedipal conflict in phallic stage – boy wants to replace his father with his mother. Electra conflict – the same thing for girls (Freud preferred to call it castration complex).

Freud & His Followers Starting in 1902, five men met weekly – the Wed Psychoanalytical Society, later the Vienna Society. Alfred Adler broke off in 1911 to found individual psychology emphasizing social factors. Karl Jung, first an admirer, was expelled in 1914. Loyal: Rank, Abraham, Ferenczi, Sachs, Jones. Anna Freud developed analytical techniques for children, play therapy, dedicated her life to Freud. Karen Horney challenged Freud’s antifeminist bias.

Later Career After WWI, Freud was famous & in great demand as an analyst. He treated many patients because he needed the money. Analysis with Freud was different than current practice. In 1933, psychoanalysis was branded “Jewish science” and banned in Germany. The Nazis were pressured to release Freud and his family in 1938 – they fled to London. Freud died at age 83 in 1939 after being given several injections of morphine to end his great pain.

Chapter 9 – Functionalism: Darwin, galton, cattell, james & hall
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Midterm 2 Results Score Grade N 43-55 A 8 38-42 B 9 33-37 C 13 28-32 D
0-27 F 2 Highest score = 48 (used to set curve)

Functionalists Functionalists were the first major non-German school of psychology. They were interested in studying the functions of the mind and the adaptive value of consciousness. These concerns were a product of the intellectual climate of the 19th century, dominated by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Their work was later extended by the American functionalists at the Univ. of Chicago and Columbia.

Charles Darwin ( ) Darwin was born to a wealthy family with interests in medicine and natural science. The pivotal experience of his life was his 5-year voyage on the Royal Navy survey ship, the H.M.S. Beagle, where he collected specimens. He first left med school & got a “poor” (third-class) degree in religion. He was initially seeking confirmation of the Biblical account of creation, but his experiences changed his mind.

The Voyage of the Beagle
At each stop, Darwin travelled extensively inland.

Questions Darwin’s findings raised many questions:
Why had God created so many different species? Why had God allowed giant armadillos (found as fossils) to become extinct but not the smaller armadillos? Why had God allowed some species to become totally extinct? How would there have been room on the ark for the giant fossils? How could the earth have been created in 4004 BC when the age of the fossils was much older?

The Galapagos Islands The Galapagos Islands are part of the country of Ecuador.

Galapagos Observations
Tortoises from islands just miles apart had clearly different shells. On one island, finches had strong thick beaks to crack nuts and seeds, while on another island they had smaller beaks and fed on insects. On a third island they had beaks better suited for eating fruit, berries & flowers. Darwin wondered how such differences had developed – perhaps species are not fixed but are able to adapt and change over generations.

Theory of Evolution Darwin’s eventual theory was influenced by writings of several theorists before him: Darwin read Quetelet’s summary of Malthus’s view of population growth – Malthus predicted an increasingly severe struggle for existence due to lack of food. “It at once struck me that, under these circumstances, favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones destroyed” Darwin wrote. He called this idea “Natural selection” or “Survival of the Fittest.” (1859) He delayed publication for 20 yrs.

Publication of His Theory
First Darwin published his journal “The Voyage of the Beagle” which was very popular. In 1858, he became aware of Wallace’s theory of natural selection, and agreed to present both his and Wallace’s theory jointly to the Linnean Society. There was little reaction. In 1859, he published his “Origin of the Species,” which sold out immediately. His theory was hotly debated (see famous Oxford Wilberforce/Huxley debate on pg 308 of text).

Similarity of Man to Animals
Do we share behavioral, emotional and cognitive characteristics with other species? In “The Descent of Man,” Darwin argued that “there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.” (1871) Morgan’s canon: “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.”

Mechanism Darwin suggested no genetic mechanism for evolutionary change. Lamarck proposed that acquired characteristics can be inherited by offspring, speeding up change. Gregor Mendel demonstrated inheritance of physical characteristics in plants and laid the foundation for modern genetics. This was the mechanism for evolution.

Darwin’s Psychology “The Expression of the Emotions in Man & Animals.”
Darwin studied facial expressions, anticipating later research by Paul Ekman. Darwin kept detailed records on the growth of his son, Erasmus, and published them in “A Biographical Sketch of an Infant” in Mind, 1877. His methods were repeated by Jane Goodall, Piaget, and B.F. Skinner. Dar win’s theory raised questions about the adaptive value of consciousness and mind & survival

Francis Galton ( ) Galton was one of the last amateur scientists, with eclectic interests: Meteorologist, experimented with stereoscopic photos, studied fingerprints, invented an early teletype. Anthropologist and explorer (sought source of the Nile). Galton was impressed by how well people he met had adapted to their harsh desert environment (Kalahari). He published “Art of Travel.”

Individual Differences
Galton was interested in measuring things: Whenever you can, count.” Fidgets per minute in kids, middle-aged and elderly. “Beauty map” of Britain. In 1884 he established an anthropometric laboratory to collect data on individual differences. Psychometrics – measurement of mental powers. Visual & auditory reaction times, highest audible tone. He published a method for quantifying correlation later derived mathematically by Karl Pearson (r). He used questionnaires, associations & tests of imagery.

Galton as Hereditarian
In “Hereditary Genius” he discussed the relative contributions of environment & genetics to ability. “I propose to show in this book that a man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world.” He proposed that abilities were on the same continuum as other physical traits – Quetelet’s law of deviation from the average (like the normal curve). Quetelet & Galton established the “normal man”.

Galton & Statistics Galton developed the following terms:
Median, bell-shaped curve, correlation, dispersion, interquartile range, regression, percentile. Galton’s student Pearson introduced: Histogram, kurtosis, random sampling, random walk, skewness, standard deviation, variance. Formula for the correlation coefficient, Pearson’s r. The concept of dealing with individual differences in a probabilistic way – the characteristics of a population are regular, even if people are not.

Nature and Nurture Galton argued that because talent seemed to concentrate in eminent families (Hereditary Genius), individuals must be inheriting such abilities. He introduced the terms nature vs nurture into the debate and the idea of twin studies, see pg 322. Candolle criticized this idea, cataloging the favorable circumstances in eminent families. In response, Galton wrote: “English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture.”

Galton and Eugenics Galton was fascinated by the idea of human improvement via genetic control, which he called Eugenics. He proposed voluntary means of improvement. Eugenics societies and idea were widespread after WWI – G.B. Shaw & Isadora Duncan (his brain…). Abuses were justified in the name of eugenics, including forced sterilization and restrictive immigration in the US. With the rise of the Nazis, these were implemented as Hitler’s “final solution to the Jewish question.”

Inquiries into Human Faculties
In 1872, Galton published “Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer.” He advocated for the use of control groups in statistical comparisons. Are prayers beneficial? Royalty have shorter lifespans. There is no evidence that missionary voyages are safer. In his “Inquiry into Human Faculties and Development,” the chapters on prayer were omitted from future editions due to controversy.

James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944)
Cattell was one of the first students to get a Ph.D. with Wundt, then he was appointed to Cambridge. He was strongly influenced by Galton, and like Galton measured everything he could about himself. In 1888, Cattell founded a lab at the University of Pennsylvania using Galtonian measures with students but moved to Columbia College in 1891. He discussed 10 mental tests in “Mental Tests and Measurements,” published in Mind – The Freshman Test.

Cattell’s Anthropometric Tests
The 10 tests included: Dynamometer pressure, Rate of Movement, Sensation- Areas, Pressure causing Pain, Least Noticeable Difference in Weight, Reaction-Time for Sound, Time for Naming Colours, Bi-Section of a 50-cm. Line, Judgment of 10 Seconds Time, Number of Letters Remembered on One hearing. Wissler found no correlation between the tests. These tests were abandoned in favor of better mental measurements (see Chapter 11).

Cattell’s Other Work Experimental research on judgments of relative rank, such as shades of gray rank ordered on brightness. Leading psychologists ranked those in their profession. Backgrounds of famous scientists – a person had the best chance if their father were clergy or professor. His famous students were: Thorndike, Woodworth, Strong (vocational test). Published Science (AAAS). Founding member of APA. His company developed WAIS, WISC, TAT.

William James ( ) In early 20th century, America’s foremost psychologist. First on everyone’s list (Cattell). As a young man, James floated directionless, rejecting chemistry, natural science, dabbling in medicine, until finally discovering psychology. He visited Fechner, Helmholtz,Wundt & DuBois- Reymond. He finally graduated in medicine. He was offered a job at Harvard teaching physiology & anatomy. He contemplated suicide at age 28.

Principles of Psychology
In 1874, James taught his first class on physiology and psychology (making it up as he went along). In 1882, he took a leave of absence to visit European psychologists again. In 1890, he published Principles of Psychology which became an instant classic. Theodore Roosevelt was a famous student of James. After the success of his book, he withdrew from experimental research -- not worth the effort.

Link to Principles of Psychology
Available as an ebook that can be read on the web:

Eclectic & Philosopher
He became increasingly interested in mind-body relationships and psychical phenomena. Psychosomatic illness led to interest in “mind cures.” He studied automatic writing, telepathy, clairvoyance, fortune-tellers, religious experience (energy flow). He wrote “Pragmatism” expressing a practical philosophy – pragmatic criteria for judging truth. All beliefs are judged by their consequences in action. If a belief in God works, it is a pragmatic truth for that person.

James as a Psychologist
He opposed the Wundt-Titchener approach. He proposed an analytical approach that studies the functions of consciousness & its characteristics. Consciousness is adaptive – lets us adjust to environment Also, personal, ever-changing (a stream), selective. James-Lange theory of emotion – the perception of changes in the nervous system constitute emotion. Cannon criticized this view Habits are formed by nurture early in life.

Views on Memory James said the strength of a memory depends on the quality of the structure of the brain, an innate characteristic not influenced by experience. Systematically linking facts together might improve memory. This contradicted the dominant view, formal discipline, that said a general intellectual faculty could be developed via exercise. Memorizing poems (Victor Hugo’s Satyr and Milton’s Paradise Lost), he demonstrated interference.

G. Stanley Hall ( ) A contemporary of James, Hall grew up in a farm family of Puritan heritage. At age 16, he worked as a village school teacher. Later, he attended Williams college and Union Theological Seminary in NYC. In 1869, he went to Europe, then returned & finished seminary and taught at Antioch College. He ultimately did his Ph.D at Harvard, then went back to Europe to study in Wundt’s lab.

Hall’s Early Career Hall lectured on the German psychologists at Harvard and Johns Hopkins which led to a job there The president of Johns Hopkins created fellowships for grad students which attracted excellent students. Hall founded a great psychology dept and The American Journal of Psychology. Hall was the founding president of Clark University. Lots of problems, including being raided by Univ of Chicago (2/3 of faculty & 70% grad students left). Hall helped found the APA in 1892 & was president

Hall as Developmentalist
In 1883, Hall developed questionniares for Boston kindergarten children to assess the content of their minds – how children think. He was the first psychologist to describe adolescence as a separate stage. He stressed the importance of genetics & evolution. He developed a recapitulation theory (embryological development recapitulates evolutionary development). As he grew older he became interested in aging.

Hall vs Margaret Mead Hall felt that adolescent “storm & stress” was largely biological, mediated by family & culture. Mead disagreed, using a 1928 ethnography of Samoa to depict adolescents as free of turmoil. Freeman (1983) criticized Mead’s book, claiming that she had diminished “the aggression, violence, and rivalry of Samoan life and exaggerated thedegree of sexual freedom.” Orans (1996) supported Freeman, not Mead.

Mead in Samoa Although flawed, her book is still the most widely read book in anthropology.

The Clark Conference Hall organized the first opportunity for Americans to meet Freud. Freud gave 5 lectures, Jung gave 3 lectures – both received honorary degrees. The lectures were published, bringing them to a wider audience.

Chapter 10 – Functionalism AT the university of chicago and columbia university
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Functionalists Unlike the Structuralist and Gestalt schools, Functionalism did not have a single leader. Functionalism was intended to be an inclusive, pragmatic, useful American psychology. Major American functionalists are: John Dewey James Rowland Angell & Harvey A. Carr Woodworth & Thorndike were sympathetic to it. Today, nearly all psychologists are functionalists.

John Dewey ( ) Dewey was not only a psychologist but also an important philosopher and educational innovator, social critic and commentator. He represented New England values all his life. After graduating from Univ. of Vermont, Dewey taught public high school for 2 years. Teachers taught all subjects – there were no required qualifications. Discipline was physical, kids were expected to sit quietly until called, learn by rote and ask no questions.

John Dewey

Dewey at Johns Hopkins & Mich.
Dewey was a grad student under G. Stanley Hall Classmates were Woodrow Wilson & Cattell. Following graduation he became an instructor at the Univ. of Michigan, teaching philosophy & psychology. He wrote “Psychology” in 1887, which was overshadowed by W. James “Principles…”in 1890. He published an assessment of language development in children, one of his few empirical studies, in 1894. It was probably based on his own children.

Dewey’s Functionalism
In 1894, Dewey became chair at Univ. of Chicago. Dewey’s dept included psychology & pedagogy. In 1896 he published “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” emphasizing the adaptive value of mind and consciousness. He criticized stimulus-response and sensation-idea dichotomies, saying that responses and ideas always occur in a functional context (child reaching for flame). We must consider how the response adjusts to the environment, the stimulus’s “psychological value.”

W. James’s Reflex Arc Example
Suppose now (these assumptions being granted) that we have a baby before us who sees a candle-flame for the first time, and, by virtue of a reflex tendency common in babies of a certain age, extends his hand to grasp it, so that his fingers get burned. So far we have two reflex currents in play: first, from the eye to the extension movement, along the line of Fig. 3; and second, from the finger to the movement of drawing back the hand, along the line If this were the baby's whole nervous system, and if the reflexes were once & for all organic, we should have no alteration in his behavior, no matter how often the experience recurred. The retinal image of the flame would always make the arm shoot forward, the burning of the finger would always send it back. But we know that 'the burnt child dreads the fire,' and that one experience usually protects the fingers forever.

Dewey’s View of Education
Dewey considered himself a “democratic evolutionist.” Culture, education, government make people different than other species, ensuring ability to compete for all. All people should have an equal chance – to accomplish this, educational reform was critical. Dewey wrote “The School and Society (1899) with psychology as the basis for sound educational theory and practice, meeting 4 child needs: Conversation, curiosity, construction, artistic expression.

Dewey’s Lab School Dewey established a university-based “laboratory school” to study how children think and learn. 140 students, 23 teachers, 10 grad student assistants. A model for similar lab schools on college campuses. Education must foster growth and keep the mind flexible – opposed to rote and drill learning. The educator’s role was to foster divergent thinking, not transmit dogma. Lessons were presented in some context (e.g., cooking & math together).

Dewey’s Later Life In 1904, Dewey went the Columbia University.
He was a charter member of the APA and president in He was the 4th psychologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He founded the first teacher’s union in NYC. With Cattell, he founded the AAUP & was its first president. He supported the ACLU & NAACP. He remains influential despite never doing an expt.

James Rowland Angell (1869-1949)
Angell took over leadership in Chicago when Dewey left. Angell was Dewey’s student in Michigan, then studied with W. James & Munsterberg at Harvard, then met Wundt, Ebbinghaus & Helmholtz. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on Kant but was never awarded his degree due to poor German. His teaching positions led to becoming Acting president of the Univ. of Chicago in 1918.

James Rowland Angell Angell’s father was president of the University Michigan, his brother Frank founded psychology labs at Cornell and Stanford Universities, his brother Alexis became a professor of law at the University of Michigan and later a judge, and his brother-in-law was head of the history department at the University of Michigan. His maternal grandfather was a professor of mathematics and later president of Brown University.

Angell’s Functionalism
Angell described functionalism as a protest movement in his Presidential Address to the APA. He saw functionalism as the study of mental operations or functions, not mental elements. Functionalism studies thinking, not thoughts. The structuralist asks “What is mind?” The functionalist asks “What is mind for?” Consciousness is adaptive. Functions are studied under real life conditions. Functionalism assumes a constant interplay between the psychological and the physical (they are one).

Functionalism and Darwin
Angell supported comparative psychology (study of animal psychology). Angell listed 3 primary contributions of Darwin: Doctrine of instinct Idea of continuity among the minds of different species Study of the expression of the emotions. He was especially interested in the evolution of intelligence and the history of instinct, studying rats. Watson was his student. He was president of Yale.

Harvey A. Carr ( ) Carr was a grad student at U of Chicago working with Watson and writing a dissertation on visual autokinetic effects (like Wertheimer). In 1908, he replaced Watson and directed the animal laboratory at U of Chicago; in 1926 he became Dept Chair. In 1927, Carr was elected APA President. He used a flexible, wide-ranging, mature functionalist approach and was a careful, precise experimenter. He disliked being labeled.

Robert Sessions Woodworth (1869-1962)
Woodworth studied religion but became a teacher instead. Hearing G. Stanley Hall lecture and reading William James changed his life. He enrolled at Harvard to study psychology. He earned a graduate fellowship at Columbia to work with Cattell, earning his Ph.D. His early experiments were on transfer of training, testing the idea of formal discipline of the mind (muscular doctrine to exercise and develop mind). Negative transfer – driving on left, Dvorak keyboard.

Woodworth’s Psychometric Studies
Cattell offered Woodworth a position in his lab at Columbia, where he stayed the rest of his career. Woodworth supervised testing of 1100 people at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. Woodworth had a fair-minded view of racial differences in test performance. He said psychological characteristics are difficult to measure and always distributed within a population (within group variance is greater than between group).

Overlapping Distributions
Woodworth raised the same questions with respect to race, suggesting it was not a useful generalization because of the overlap and cultural issues.

Psychometric Studies (Cont.)
Woodworth criticized the approach of studying differences in intelligence by assessing cultures. Are modern Germans more intelligent than Romans? In 1906, APA appointed a group to study tests and measurements. He developed a test for neuroticism based on symptoms of shell shock and case histories of soldiers in WWI. This later became the basis for measures of neuroticism. He wrote a textbook “Experimental Psychology,” which became a definitive text.

Imageless Thoughts Woodworth studied imageless thought with Kulpe.
Titchener claimed that sensations and images are always present in thinking. Woodworth tried to study the times when new ideas come to mind – not that frequent but without content. He concluded that new ideas are determined by memories of past experiences. People were able to imagine the Supreme Court Building but not count its columns (unless they had done so before).

Motivational Psychology
Woodworth introduced the concept of drive to S-R learning theories – motivational states are important determinants of response to a stimulus. Pulling a trigger causes a gun to fire, but the bullet’s velocity is determined by characteristics of the gun and bullet, not how hard the trigger is pulled. The same response can be elicited by many stimuli. “Dynamics of Behavior” addressed drives. His modified formula was S-O-R (O = organism).

A Page from his Book

Technical Vocabulary The technical vocabulary of psychology consists of words that already have everyday meanings. Intelligence, habit, drive, feeling, emotion. Operational definitions are not completely satisfactory – intelligence is what an intelligence test measures. Woodworth suggested that psychology invent a technical vocabulary. Psychology should be called “motivology.” Conscious attitudes should be called “marbs” for Marbe Thoughts should be called kulps for Kulpe.

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)
Thorndike studied at Wesleyan Univ, founded by the Methodist church – a very shy but brilliant student. He read Principles of Psychology & it changed his life. Thorndike went to Harvard and studied with James. Mind-reading experiments with children looked for subtle movements in the face, rewarding children with candy for correct guesses. Later, he penned chickens who had to find a way out to get food and water – eventually they learned to escape.

Thorndike’s Chickens Thorndike built mazes out of books to test learning in his chickens. Modern chicken maze app

Cats in a Puzzle Box Thorndike accepted a grad fellowship at Columbia.
He planned to study Lamarckian inheritance of learning so he took his chickens with him but switched to cats. He built 15 puzzle boxes for use with cats. Cats showed trial & error at first but learned to escape quickly and smoothly. Satisfiers strengthen responses, annoyers weaken them. Tolman said: “The psychology of learning has been … a matter of disagreeing with Thorndike or trying to improve in a minimum way upon him.” (1898)

Change in Behavior for One Cat

Puzzle Box Refinements
Thorndike used 15 different boxes requiring different behaviors to escape. Animals did not learn all with the same ease. Boxes using a single, discrete response were easiest. Boxes requiring multiple responses (pulling a loop then moving a stick or two bolts) were not learned. Boxes requiring more force (400 gms) were not learned The more boxes a cat was tested in, thye better it learned to escape – they developed “learning sets.” No benefit from observation or imitation or help.

Some of his Puzzle Boxes

Thorndike’s Critics Thorndike intentionally ignored previous comparative researchers. He felt their anecdotal reports needed to be replaced by objective experiments. Mills asserted that animals put into non-natural settings may be too confused to behave normally. Thorndike published a harsh rebuttal addressing the criticisms in the June 1899 Psychological Review. His cats grew up in the lab so for them it was not artificial.

Thorndike and Education
After a year at the College for Women of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, Thorndike was offered a job at Teacher’s College, Columbia Univ. He averaged 10 publications a year, most major. He was criticized for publishing his lecture notes. He extended his learning studies to dogs and Cebus monkeys and studied fish at Woods Hole, MA. Ultimately he emphasized education more and became an expert on educational measurement.

Thorndike’s Mental Measurements
He opposed Spearman’s concept of “general intelligence” but thought of intelligence as a combination of specific skills and abilities. He developed a CAVD IQ test consisting of subtests to measure sentence completion (C), arithmetic (A), vocabulary (V) and ability to follow directions (D). He believed that heredity determined intelligence and supported systematic eugenics. He opposed educational egalitarianism – proposing tracking and nurture of high intelligence.

Thorndike’s Applied Research
Thorndike worked on numerous industrial problems. Employee exams and selection tests for workers. Statistical analysis for the Army Testing Project in WWI. Invested in Cattell’s Psychological Corporation. Surveyed quality of life in American cities, published in Your City (1939) and One Hundred Forty-Four Smaller Cities (1940). A composite G score evaluated quality of life. A composite P score measured genetic quality of the population in each city.

More Applied Research Thorndike studied word usage, compiling lists of the 10,000 most frequently occurring words. He urged teachers to spend time teaching children to spell and use these words. In 1931, he published a Junior Dictionary and in the Thorndike Senior-Century Dictionary. Bad: “Bear = a carnivorous plantigrade quadruped.” Thorndike made a rule that the definition must be simpler than the word itself. He proposed “babble-luck” as a learning theory.

Thorndike’s Honors Thorndike turned down a professorship at Harvard and was elected APA president in 1912, and president of the AAAS in 1933. He attracted many students and was generous with them and coworkers. Some people found him aggressive, abrasive and domineering – Thorndike considered this his mask for shyness. He made a lot of money from his books but was depressed after his retirement.

Chapter 11 – historical uses and abuses of intelligence testing
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Motivation for Intelligence Testing
In schools, the first intelligence tests were developed in France to enable public schools to measure children for proper grade placement. Rural schools were primarily one-room with all ages taught by a single teacher. Schools in cities were stratified by academic accomplishment (not age as is now done). Children moving to large cities needed to be placed. Other, concurrent efforts focused on measuring intelligence as an individual difference.

Broca’s Craniometry Broca measured the body to understand its functions, including the head. He equated a larger head with greater intelligence and concluded that men were more intelligent than women because their heads were larger. He concluded that the sex difference was greater in contemporary people than in the past. His assumptions exemplified the biases of the times, against women, the elderly, primitive people – he believed differences in brain sizes supported them.

Broca and Darwin Broca used ideas from Darwin’s evolutionary theory to support his thinking. “I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.” Broca believed that men struggle to survive whereas women are protected, so bigger brains are selected for in men but not women. Broca’s work was cited to justify denying education to women.

Criticisms of Broca Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that brain weight decreases with age – the women studied were older than the men, introducing a confound. Taking cause of death into account, Gould concluded that there is probably no difference in brain weight between men and women. A man of the same height would have the same size brain as a woman of that height. The sample size for prehistoric brains is too small (7 male and 6 female brains).

Alfred Binet ( ) Binet developed the first psychological scales to measure intelligence, supplanting earlier attempts using physical measures and subjective judgments. Informal, subjective assessments may be correct or wrong, but are prone to prejudice and cause trouble when people place excess confidence in them. An important result of Binet’s work was replacement of these haphazard and prejudiced methods with standard, uniform, objective methods of assessment.

Alfred Binet

Binet’s Early Education
Binet read Darwin, Galton & John Stuart Mill – he was a self-taught library psychologist. This deprived him of interaction with others and training in critical thinking. Binet accepted a staff position at La Salpetriere working with Charcot as his mentor. Charcot used circular reasoning – people who could be hypnotized had unstable nervous systems – as evidence of this, they could be hypnotized. Binet accepted Charcot’s reasoning without question.

Studies of Hypnosis Binet and Fere claimed that hypnotic phenomena could be transferred from one side of the body to the other using magnets. They also reported “polarization” in which a red hallucination would turn green with use of a magnet. They believed the magnetic field was responsible. Patients had full knowledge of what was expected so the expts were poorly controlled and carelessly conducted. Ultimately they had to admit their errors. Hypnotizability was not necessarily linked to hysteria.

Binet’s Research on Cognition
Binet was humiliated and became obsessively concerned with suggestibility in experiments. He became increasingly withdrawn and more shy. Studying his own children, he published 3 papers describing their cognitive development. He devised a number of tests of their thinking. These studies anticipated Piaget’s work – Piaget later worked with Binet’s collaborator, Simon, analyzing the wrong answers children gave on intelligence tests. In 1891 at the Sorbonne, he did a variety of studies

Binet’s Test of Intelligence
In 1882, a law established mandatory primary education for children from 6 to 14 years old. A national system of exams had been established to select students for secondary and university education and vocational schooling. Competition was intense, with 969 applicants to 1 opening at university (compared to 290 to 1 in the US). Concern about “retarded” children in the schools (children unable to learn in school) motivated interest in a systematic way of identifying them.

Test Questions Binet & Simon developed 20 subtests and investigated a variety of other measures and relationships between them. They concluded craniometry had little value. Tests included: association tests, sentence completion, themes on a given topic, picture descriptions and memory tests, object drawing and description, digit repetition and other memory and attention tests, tests of moral judgment. They carefully specified controlled testing conditions.

Revised Binet-Simon Scale
They administered their tests to larger numbers of schoolchildren and a small number of retarded children, to develop norms. In 1908, they developed a revised scale consisting of 14 of the original tests, 7 modified, 33 new tests. Tests were arranged according to age levels from 3-13 The average 5 year old should score at a mental level of 5. If a majority (75-90%) passed a test it was assigned to that age level. Binet and Simon rejected the concept of mental age.

IQ Scores They believed that even retarded children could raise their mental levels and devised a system of training for the retarded (like Montessori’s). Louis Stern introduced the concept of mental quotient as a ratio of chronological age to mental age. A score below 1 indicated retardation, a score above 1 indicated superior intelligence, x 100 = IQ score. Binet and Simon strongly opposed this concept of IQ. Despite their objections, IQ became the standard way of depicting performance on intelligence tests.

Testing Spreads The Binet-Simon scale was easy to administer and reasonably brief, so was quickly in wide use. By WWI in 1914 the tests were being using in a dozen countries, often simply translated without any attempt to standardize them for the new setting. Before the end of WWI, 1.7 million inductees to the US Army had been tested. Terman revised the scale for use in the US and 4 million children were tested.

Henry H. Goddard ( ) In 1984, the editors of Science named development of the IQ test as one of the 20 most significant discoveries in science, technology & medicine of the 20th century. Henry Goddard and Lewis Terman were the two men primarily responsible for introducing the IQ test to America. Goddard earned a doctorate at Clark University, then was appointed research director of a New Jersey home for 230 “feeble-minded” children.

Goddard’s Studies Goddard became convinced of the need for a way to distinguish between normal and feeble-minded children, and a reliable way to identify levels. He was given a copy of the Binet-Simon test in Europe. He translated the scale into English, with some minor changes, such as names of coins. He administered the test to 400 children at Vineland and 2000 in NJ public schools. The scores at Vineland agreed with their records. The scores of public school kids varied widely.

Gregor Mendel ( ) Hothersall reviews Mendel’s work to put the study of the Kallikak’s into perspective. Mendel did the first systematic experiments studying genetics and heritability of characteristics. First Mendel bred wild mice with albinos to see what color coats they would have, then bred bees. Next he bred peas to study blossom color, smooth or wrinkled seeds, green or yellow seeds, tall or dwarf plants – 10,000 plants, 300,000 peas. His work established valid principles of inheritance.

Mendel’s Findings First he bred tall & short plants – the resulting hybrids were all tall. Next he bred hybrids with each other – most were tall, a minority were short. He guessed that height was controlled by two genes (one from each parent). Tall height was dominant, short recessive. His ideas did not catch on and his papers were burned.

Example Using Pea Blossom Color
Results across multiple generations

Mendel is Rescued from Obscurity
William Bateson published “Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defence” (1902). Dutch botanist Huge de Vries also described Mendel’s work. Goddard read De Vries’ report and applied it to intelligence – a major leap influenced by Galton’s reports of hereditary genius. Goddard discovered that many of the siblings of the inmates of his institution had themselves been evaluated as feeble-minded.

The Kallikak Family Deborah Kallikak was found to have a mental age of 9 (at age 22). Goddard traced her ancestry back to Martin Kallikak Sr. in the Amer. Revolution. Deborah was descended from an illegitimate liaison with a feeble-minded barmaid, starting the “bad side” of the family tree, full of “riff-raff.” Later Martin married a Quaker woman and founded the “good side” of the family tree, which was found to have little feeble-mindedness. He concluded that feeble-mindedness is genetic.

Family Tree Good side: 496 descendants, 3 degenerate (2 A, 1 Sx)
15 infant deaths Bad side: 480 descendants, 143 feeble-minded, 33 Sx, 3 E, 24 A, 36 illegitimate, 82 infant deaths A=Alcoholic, Sx=Sexually Immoral, E=Epileptic

Criticisms of Goddard’s Study
The study took 2 years, which seems short. Conducted by untrained staff, perhaps biased. Little objective testing of the relatives – reliance on reports by family & associates. Position in society used to infer intelligence, etc. Criminal behavior and feeble-mindedness were equated. Assumption of a single gene for IQ is implausible. Influence of environment was totally ignored.

Pictures of Kallikaks Pictures of Deborah are attractive.
Stephen Jay Gould claimed that Goddard tampered with photos to make them appear less normal. Fancher suggested the publisher perhaps tried to eliminate blank, staring expressions. Goddard believed the feeble-minded look normal, so he would have been less likely to modify them – undercutting Gould’s claim. Pictures of Deborah are attractive.

Eugenic Sterilization
Similar studies of the Jukes, the Hill Folk, the Nams, the Ishmaelites, and the Zeros, reportedly showed reproduction rates twice those of “normal” families. Goddard spoke about practical methods for eliminating “defective people” from the US population. Mainstream psychologists supported eugenics, including Yerkes, Thorndike, Cannon, Terman. US involuntary sterilization laws were upheld by the courts & stayed in place until the 1960s.

Goddard at Ellis Island
In 1910, one-third of the US population was foreign born, raising fears that the US was being swamped. Teddy Roosevelt appointed a commission to study this. More recent immigrants were from East & So Europe. It was feared that immigrants would be an impetus for development of unions (to keep them out), which would threaten the US economic system. New immigrants were Catholic not Protestant. It was claimed that many immigrants were mentally defective – 2% were denied entry and sent back.

Goddard’s Innovations
Goddard began using psychological methods and the number of feeble-minded increased dramatically – 350% in 1913, 570% in 1914. Goddard claimed that 83% of Jews, 80 of Hungarians, 79% of Italians, 87% of Russians were feeble-minded, based on culturally biased testing. Restrictive immigration quotas were enacted.

Some people were considered too inferior to become citizens – such as the Irish.
"Now the fact is, that workmen may have a 10 year intelligence while you have a 20. To demand for him such a home as you enjoy is as absurd How can there be a thing such as social equality with this wide range of mental capacity?" - Goddard, before a group of Princeton undergraduates, 1919

Eugenics Demonstrators

Goddard and Gifted Children
In 1918, Goddard left Vineland for a position as director of Ohio State Bureau of Juvenile Research, then became professor at Ohio State University. Goddard was hired as consulting psychologist to help establish classes for gifted children. Those with IQs above 120 were included. Goddard advocated enrichment, not rapid promotion. The program produced long-lasting, positive results.

Lewis M. Terman ( ) Terman grew up on a farm in Indiana, then was sent to Central Normal College in Danville to become a teacher. He earned an M.A. from Univ. of Indiana. A former student of G.S. Hall helped him obtain a fellowship to Clark Univ to work with Hall. Hall disapproved of mental tests so Terman switched to Edmund Sanford to direct his thesis. After becoming a high school principal in San Bernardino, he taught at CSULA (formerly LA Normal School), then joined Stanford University.

Terman’s Stanford-Binet IQ Test
At Stanford, Terman revised the Binet-Simon, as described in “The Measurement of Intelligence.” He used a large standardization sample (2300, including 1700 children, 200 “defective” and superior, and 400 adults. His goal was to make the median chronological and mental ages coincide, to prevent IQs from changing across different ages, with an average of 100. This became the standard measure of intelligence, with a standardization sample in 1916 of 10,000 people.

Terman’s Studies of Genius
In 1921, Terman began an ambitious longitudinal study of children with exceptionally IQs of 140+. The study was continued after his death. Those participating in the study were called “Termites.” His findings contradict the stereotype of geniuses as sickly weaklings interested in nothing but books, “early ripe, early rot.” Exceptional performance continued in adult careers. The sample was unrepresentative, admittedly.

Robert Mearns Yerkes (1876-1956)
Yerkes worked his way through college, then worked with Munsterberg for this doctorate in comparative psychology, publishing “The Great Apes.” He was offered a job and remained at Harvard for his whole career. He replaced photos of James, Royce & Palmer with pictures of great apes – his “philosophers.” He also worked at Boston State Psychopathic Hospital, which focused him on the need for better ways of measuring mental abilities.

Army Alpha & Beta Tests At the start of WWI, Yerkes organized a meeting to figure out how psychologists might aid the war. Yerkes traveled to Canada to study their war experiences. They decided to focus on adapting mental measurement to military needs – IQ testing in the Army. 40 psychologists prepared tests for the Army, to identify mentally incompetent, classify men by mental ability and select individual for special training and extra responsibility.

Test Requirements Group administration.
Measuring “native wit” not education. Steeply graded in difficulty – hard enough to tax those with high ability but easy enough for those of lesser ability. Could not take more than an hour and be simple to score objectively. Alpha test – for those who are literate, Beta test for those illiterate or non-English speaking.

Results of Army Testing
Only a minute percentage of inductees were discharged due to low test scores. A 900-page report concluded that the average mental age was 13 years, much lower than assumed Racist, antidemocratic conclusions were part of popularized versions of this report. Goddard proposed a meritocracy based on IQ to replace our democracy. Studies blamed non-Nordic immigrants for the low scores (Brigham). Quotas were established.

Dissenting Voices In The New Republic, Lippmann lambasted Terman, Goddard & Yerkes, criticizing the assumption that IQ tests measure intelligence & mental age is 13. He stressed differences in early environment and experiences making comparisons across class/race meaningless. Logically impossible for the intelligence of an adult to equal that of a child. Labeling of kids is contemptible. Terman’s reply was sarcastic and hostile.

Later Controversies Cyril Burt’s twin studies – did he fake his data?
No way to know for certain, but Burt’s findings have been replicated by other researchers. Debates over social bias in testing arose in the 1940s & 1950s (working class vs upper class). Debates over racial bias arose in the 1960s with Arthur Jensen’s claim that IQs cannot be raised. The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray) in 1994 reignited debates about racial differences.

Current Trends Earl Hunt, Robert Sternberg & Howard Gardner have proposed cognitive approaches studying the knowledge structures underlying intelligent behavior Hunt developed the “cognitive correlates” approach, correlating response times with scores on cognitive tasks. Sternberg proposed a “cognitive components” approach decomposing performance on analogies into a series of cognitive processes.

Current Trends (Cont.) Gardner proposed a “theory of multiple intelligences” based on a decomposition of factors contributing to performance. This recapitulates the debate between Spearman and Thurstone over “g” – a single factor correlating performance across multiple tests, versus specific skills. There remain few alternatives to objective, group- administered standardized tests and intelligence testing remains controversial today.

Why Women Fainted Fainting and “fainting rooms” were common in the 18th and 19th century because of the tight lacing of corsets required to be fashionable. Corsets restricted breathing, compressed internal organs and put pressure on bones in the rib cage. Constriction of women’s ability to move freely and modification of their bodies in the name of beauty is analogous to foot-binding in Asian culture. Reform movements gave women experience organizing that was useful in suffrage and temperance movements.

Earlier Bustles were Bigger
French fashion 1765 used Pannier side hoops underneath British fashion 1880, busts were padded too

1890’s Styles In the 1860s, corsets were stiffened with whalebone or steel. By the 1880s, the dress reform movement was campaigning against the pain and damage to internal organs and bones caused by tight lacing. Grey cotton bustle stuffed with horsehair. These soft quilted bustles became popular in the early 1890's when the old style jutting out 1880's bustle went out of fashion.

Flapper Styles (1920s) Flapper styles were easier to sew and thus accessible to middle class women.

Chapter 12 – pavlov and watson
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936)
Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia, into a “pure Russian” religious family, the oldest of 11 kids. He abandoned the idea of becoming a priest after reading Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” and Sechenov’s “Reflexes of the Brain.” Pavlov left seminary to attend the University of St. Petersburg where Sechenev was professor of physiology. Sechenev had demonstrated that a higher brain center could inhibit activity of a lower one using frog reflexes.

Pavlov’s Early Research
Pavlov graduated in 1875 and won a medal for his research on pancreatic nerves. In 1878, Botkin invited him to direct a new lab in experimental medicine, where he earned an M.D. Botkin thought stress caused most diseases as the central nervous system failed to adapt to the demands of life. He worked in Germany, then returned to Russia and had trouble finding a job, starving with no heat, but continuing his research in his apt. In 1891, hired at St. Petersburg Military Academy.

Pavlov’s Conditioning Experiments
In 1895, Pavlov was hired at Univ. of St. Petersburg and he earned a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work studying digestive processes. Pavlov’s aim was to study living systems. His dogs went through the same surgical procedures as people, including sepsis and anesthesia procedures. He developed a surgically created miniature stomach pouch to study digestion uncontaminated by food. He discovered that a gastric reflex occurred even without food present elicited by a “psychical reflex.”

Psychical Reflexes Pavlov’s Nobel speech was not about digestion but about psychical reflexes occurring without food. Ovsianitskii’s dissertation was about salivation to a variety of stimuli, including sight of food or a bowl or the footsteps of the lab personnel who fed the dogs. Pavlov designed a “Tower of Silence” to isolate dogs from all other stimuli except the ones being studied (buzzers, metronomes, tactical and thermal stimuli). Generalization of the CS was also demonstrated, and secondary conditioning (pairing first CS with a 2nd one).

More Conditioning Phenomena
Pavlov’s co-worker Tolochinov discovered extinction via presentation of the CS without food. He also found that dogs could be trained to discriminate between two stimuli (CS+ signalling food and CS- signalling absence of food). Pavlov believed these produced excitation or inhibition in the cortex. When a CS- occurred many times, dogs went to sleep. Dogs could discriminate between accelerating and decelerating metronome speeds.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Research on Neuroses Dogs trained to discriminate ellipses and circles with a ratio of 8/7 showed acute neuroses when the ratio was changed to 9/8. Neuroses included disrupted behavior, biting, barking. Dogs nearly drowned in a lab flood showed changes in behavior after rescue, including easily disrupted CRs, sensitivity to stimuli, especially water. A simultaneous presentation of food and shock induced neurosis – this was reduced by sodium bromide given to inhibit excitation.

Pavlov on Individual Differences
Pavlov found 4 types of dogs with large individual differences in learning & discrimination: Sanguine – strong & lively, conditioned easily. Excitation and inhibition were balanced. Melancholic – slow and depressed, learned slowly with poor discrimination/generalization. Inhibition dominant. Choleric – unstable and impetuous, learned easily but little discrimination, easily neurotic. Excitation excessive. Phlegmatic – inert and slothful, showed poor learning, resistant to experimental neurosis. Inhibition dominant.

Individual Differences (cont.)
The sanguine and melancholy types seemed most common but all dogs were different. Pavlov believed the types were genetically determined but he studied the influence of environment, raising dogs in different conditions: Total freedom with varied contacts with dogs & humans. Isolation in individual cages with little contact. At 3 months, isolated dogs were more frightened of everything, but habituated quickly to isolation.

Pavlov’s Later Life Pavlov was initially hostile to the Bolsheviks who took power in 1917 because they took his Nobel Prize award money. Lenin approved of his research and gave the Pavlovs special treatment & supported his research. During famine Pavlov rejected the rations because they did not include his lab and dogs, growing a garden. Pavlov visited the US twice, including Yerkes primate lab at Yale. Later Pavlov changed his views and supported the govt, especially against Germany.

Pavlov’s Diverse Research
Beyond his conditioning experiments, Pavlov did a wide range of comparative studies, including studies of problem solving using chimpanzees. He visited Kohler but rejected his idea of insight learning; more sympathetic to Thorndike’s trial & error. He believed his chimps gained “practical experience” while roaming freely later applied to problem solving. He was devoted to science, punctual to a fault, a severe taskmaster, shouting insults at his workers. “Happiness is nothing – the dogs mean all.” he said.

Conditioning Before Pavlov
The phenomenon of conditioning was known before Pavlov studied it systematically: Bousfeld describes Lope de Vega’s play “The Chaplain of the Virgin” in which a young monk conditions cats to leave him alone while eating using a cough as a CS. Several people in the 1800s noted that thinking about food is enough to produce saliva without food present. Twitmyer (under Witmer, 1902) used a bell paired with a knee-jerk reflex in humans – his findings went unnoticed and he didn’t pursue it (Pavlov was first).

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958)
Watson is most closely associated with the term Behaviorism – he caused a revolution in psychology. His goal was to replace concerns about the structure and functions of consciousness with the study of behavior. Behaviorism involves observation, prediction and control of behavior in humans and animals. Pavlov’s research was a foundation for Watson’s Behaviorist approach.

Watson’s Early Life Watson’s father was a violent man of unsavory and notorious reputation, his mother was pious and strict. He was a poor student initially, constantly in trouble. He begged admission to Furman College with the intention of studying for the Baptist ministry. He falsely downgraded himself in his autobiography. Professor Gordon B. Moore, on sabbatical from Univ of Chicago, introduced him to works by Wundt, Titchener, James and the Chicago functionalists. He taught for a year then applied to grad school there.

John B. Watson “He was an honors student and many women saw him as a handsome and attractive young man.” p. 459 A handsome and attractive young rat.

Watson at University of Chicago
Watson was most inspired by Angell and Donaldson, working in the animal lab under their guidance to train rats in labyrinths (mazes). He studied tropisms (unlearned orienting responses) with Jacques Loeb, later important as UCS’s. In 1902 he had a serious psychological breakdown, overwhelmed with depression & anxiety. He recovered and completed his dissertation at age 25, then was offered a job at Univ of Chicago teaching a class in Titchener’s experimental methods

Watson’s Work with Rats
Watson’s work with animals undermined the structuralist approach because they could not talk to describe their introspections – they only behaved. He decided he could learn everything the structuralists could just by observing behavior. Angell was not encouraging of this approach. Watson designed his own apparatus, originally using the “Hampton Court” maze designed by Willard S. Small, testing vision and smell cues. Kinesthetic or muscle sensations mattered most.

Antivivisectionist Response
Vivisection is defined as the act of operating on living animals (especially in scientific research). Antivivisectionists were the 1906 equivalent of PETA. Because Watson did things like gradually depriving rats of their senses, he was branded a torturer. Angell defended Watson, pointing out that the expts were done under asepsis and with anesthesia, that the rats had recovered and were subsequently happy. Opposition to animal research continues today.

Watson was not “Ratomorphic”
Watson studied noddy and sooty terns on the Dry Tortugas Islands 75 miles West of Key West. Parent birds signal to their young when returning to the nest – young gulls peck the parent’s bill to get fed. Nesting birds accept fake painted wooden eggs. Birds can return from locations miles away in all directions. He observed imprinting on himself in 3 day old sooty terns, anticipating Lorenz.

Watson at Johns Hopkins University
Watson left U. of Chicago reluctantly when offered the chair of psychology at Johns Hopkins. The Dept head, Baldwin, was caught in a scandal involving prostitution and fled to Mexico. Watson was left with no supervision and took over as editor of the Psychological Review, where he published his own work. He became increasingly convinced that psychology should become the science of behavior – he published his behaviorist manifesto in 1913.

Watson’s Behaviorist Manifesto
With “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” Watson intended to force psychologists to choose between his approach and older psychology. Psychology had failed to develop as a science. Concentration on structure or function of an undefinable consciousness was the cause. Introspection was a faulty and defective method which must be replaced with objective experimental methods. Psychology is no longer the study of the mind but of behavior – its goal is to observe, predict & control it.

Action and Reaction Other psychologists shared his dissatisfaction with structuralist and functionalist approaches. Knight Dunlap had published “The case against introspection” in Psychological Review one year earlier. Watson’s personality was more dynamic than earlier critics who had made similar proposals earlier. Titchener defended introspective studies, calling Watson too impatient and his Behaviorism crude. This may have stimulated support for Behaviorism.

Behaviorism in Action Yerkes published a paper presenting Pavlov’s work to American psychologists. Karl Lashley worked with Watson on comparative studies. In 1913, to explain how thought could be observed, Watson defined thinking as subvocal speech (a behavior) involving recordable muscle contractions. In his APA address, he suggested a new method for studying conditioned reflexes.

Watson’s Research with Children
At Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore, Watson began studying reflexes and emotions in infants. He identified reflexes such as sneezing, hiccuping, yawning, coughing, grasping, swallowing and sucking. He identified emotions of fear, rage and love, evoked by a restricted set of stimuli and characterized by specific responses in a reliable and predictable way. Many stimuli said to evoke fear reactions were ineffective (no fear of dark, snakes, rats, dogs). He suggested that fears arise through conditioning.

Albert B. Watson and coworker Rosalie Rayner selected Albert B. because of his stolid (calm) temperament. They conditioned a strong fear response by striking a metal bar behind his head while he played with a rat. 5 days later, he generalized his fear response to a rabbit, dog, cotton, and a sealskin coat. He was removed prematurely from the expt. A number of researchers tried to replicate these findings without success – details were distorted. Watson used his findings to attack Freud.

Watson Leaves Psychology
Watson had an affair with Rosalie Rayner, writing her love letters. His wife found these, then her brother used them to blackmail Watson & Rayner. When they refused, the brother gave the letters to the president of Johns Hopkins, which demanded Watson’s resignation. The publicity made it impossible for Watson to find another position in academia. Watson married Rayner after a public divorce trial. Watson joined the J. Walter Thompson ad agency.

Watson in Advertising Starting in the field, Watson acquired an appreciation for consumer behavior. He became an adept ad man: He was the first to use careful demographic surveys of target populations of consumers, with free samples for filling in questionnaires. He stressed style over substance and used testimonials. He tried to manipulate consumer motives and emotions. He popularized the “coffee break.” He used radio effectively.

Overcoming Fears – Peter B.
Watson continued with psychology as a “pop psychologist.” He worked with Mary Cover Jones to conduct research on overcoming children’s fears. After hearing Watson lecture on Albert B, Jones developed the idea of eliminating “homegrown” fears using conditioning. While Peter was eating, a rabbit was brought progressively closer until it could be placed on his table without arousing fear – now called desensitization.

Watson on Nature vs Nurture
Watson is usually considered an arch- environmentalist but his early views on instincts were more moderate. He gradually became more extreme in his view of the contribution of habit. How humans form habits became central to his ideas. He said: “Give me a dozen healthy infants…and I’ll guarantee to [train one] to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist…” Watson’s sons with Rayner found life difficult.

Watson’s Environmentalism
Why did he switch to such a strongly environmentalist position? Instincts are difficult to observe in humans. Too large an array of behaviors had been described as instinctive by others, in circular ways (why war?). Animal research questioned whether some instincts in animals were really instinctive (Kuo raised kittens with rats, showing they did not attack each other). The process of habit formation can be studied whereas instincts are innate (part of genetics) and cannot be.

Behaviorism and Child Care
In 1928, Watson & Rayner published a book on child care which became a bestseller. It presents a harsh Behaviorist approach to child raising, with love and affection minimized. Even Watson and Rayner didn’t follow this approach with their own children. A competing view on raising children was presented by Benjamin Spoke in “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1943).” which sold 25 million copies.

Watson’s Later Life Hothersall wonders what Watson’s contribution to psychology might have been if he had had a full academic career. Despite his ridiculous and extreme statements, he did succeed in initiating a revolution in psychological thought -- Behaviorism. His early work with animals laid a strong methodological foundation for later researchers, as did his early work on learned fear (Albert B.).

Chapter 13 – Four Neobehaviorist psychologists
Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Four Neobehaviorists The four neobehaviorists described in this chapter (Tolman, Guthrie, Hull, Skinner) accepted Watson’s: Rejection of consciousness His definition of psychology as the science of behavior His insistence on objective, observational data. These four had similarities but also many important differences from each other. As a result, the Behaviorist movement was extremely productive in terms of theory and research.

Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959)
Tolman grew up in Newton MA and went to MIT, graduating with a degree in electrochemistry. William James “Principles of Psychology” changed his life – he went to Harvard & studied with Munsterberg. Tolman was troubled by why introspection was so rarely used in his lab, although taught as a methodology. A class with Yerkes focused his attention on behavior. He spent a month in Germany with Koffka & was influenced strongly by Lewin. He taught at Northwestern, then at UC Berkeley.

Edward Chace Tolman Tolman Hall at UC Berkeley

Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism
At Berkeley, Tolman taught comparative psych using Watson’s book as a text. He disagreed that rat behavior was mechanistic, considering rats intelligent and purposeful. He believed rats learned the general layout of a maze, forming a “cognitive map.” He developed a “molar behaviorism” concerned with purpose and cognition – both excluded by Watson. However, his book “Purposive Behaviorism” began with an attack on mentalistic psychology.

Rats Have Purpose Tolman & his students showed that:
Rats have preferences and run fastest for rewards they like better (bread and milk not sunflower seeds). Rats are disappointed if they get a less valued reward previously expected due to training. Monkeys were similarly disappointed by a lettuce leaf in place of a banana. Rats use prior experience when unrewarded to increase their behavior later when rewarded – latent learning. What is a reward critics asked?

Latent Learning Results

Rats Have Insight Tolman & Honzik gave unrewarded rats experience with a complex maze, then found that they use the shortest route when rewarded. Law of least effort – given a choice of several paths, rats use insight to find the one requiring least effort. Rats remember where something is located, not a series of turns (responses). Two groups – one (Place) always found food in the same place; the other (Response) always found food by turning in the same direction. Place rats learned faster.

Tolman’s Mazes S2 curtain F2 F1 curtain S1

Tolman’s Theoretical Model
Tolman published over 100 papers and 2 books. He proposed a model of independent, intervening and dependent variables that is widely used in experimental psychology. IVs are manipulated by the experimenter and influence intervening variables such as appetite or motor skill. Subject IVs (age, heredity) are held constant. DVs (running speed, number of errors) are measured by the experimenter.

Tolman’s General Concerns
Tolman tried to relate his rat-runner’s psychology to broader human problems such as aggression or war. In 1949, he supported younger colleagues required to take a loyalty oath, refusing to take it himself. Tolman was APA President in 1937 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Tolman liberated Behaviorism from Watson’s methodological and theoretical constraints. Contemporary behaviorists no longer view animals as passive, mechanical systems but active info processors.

Edwin Ray Guthrie ( ) McDougall classified Behaviorists as “strict, near or purposive” types. Guthrie was “near.” Guthrie graduated in math, then studied psychology at Univ. of Nebraska with Wolfe. He finished his Ph.D in philosophy with Singer at Univ. of Penn. He doubted that deduction could lead to an understanding of the human mind. He taught math briefly then accepted a position at Univ. of Washington, transferring to psychology in and becoming a professor in 1928.

Edwin Ray Guthrie

Learning Through Contiguity
Guthrie proposed that “Stimuli which accompany a response tend, on their recurrence, to evoke that response.” The simplicity of this was appealing as the ideas of other theorists became increasing complex. Association through contiguity goes back to Aristotle, Bain & Hartley (British Associationists). Reward does not cause learning – it protects it against unlearning because the situation changes. Guthrie also proposed single-trial learning.

Guthrie’s Approach Guthrie was able to provide clever explanations of a variety of learning phenomena (effects of reward and punishment, practice, trace conditioning). Punishers elicit actions – these actions are learned. Improved behavior occurs with practice because the constituent movements become better with repetition. “Learning does not disappear with lapses in time but due to new learning which erases the old.” Sleep prevents learning of new associations.

Pavlov’s Criticism of Guthrie
To explain delay & trace conditioning, Guthrie suggested that the stimuli accompanying salivation are not the CS (bell) but the orienting response (listening, turning head, pricking up ears). In reply, Pavlov wrote and angry response -- “The Reply of a Physiologist to Psychologists,” his only paper published in an American psychology journal. He said the “listening” response was nonexistent because dogs were not alert during the trace gap and because the orienting response quickly disappears – there are no mysterious latencies in the nervous system.

Guthrie’s Examples Dogs encountering meat with embedded mousetraps become suspicious of the meat because of the almost perfect contiguity. A daughter made to re-enter and hang up her coat changes behavior because of the new association. Other examples of pastor’s horse trained to lunge when he said “whoa” (which means stop); breaking horses with successive weight on its back (contiguity). Signals to smoke (finishing a meal, starting work).

Cats in a Puzzle Box Performing 800 escape responses, Guthrie observed that cat responses were highly stereotypical (the same each time). He suggested that cats had learned to associate that specific movement with escape from the box. Critics suggested the movement was stereotypical because it was instinctive (species typical) to greet others by rubbing against them.

Guthrie’s Clinical Views
Guthrie published “The Psychology of Human Conflict” in 1938. He translated Pierre Janet’s “Principles of Psychotherapy” and preferred Janet’s idea of force mentale to Freud’s ideas about the subconscious. Everyone has a certain amount of energy (force). When it is depleted by crises, neuroses appear. Mental health requires maintaining a balance of mental energy.

Clark Leonard Hull ( ) Hull was born on a farm but worked hard to become more than a “chore boy.” He was intensely self-critical and had poor health (polio, typhus). He originally studied mining engineering but a paralyzed leg ruled that out. He entered grad school at Univ. of Wisconsin, working with Joseph Jastrow, who had studied with G. Stanley Hall. His dissertation taught subjects associations to Chinese characters. He then became a lecturer at Wisconsin.

Clark L. Hull

Research on Aptitude Testing
Assigned to teach a class on psychological testing, he became interested in validating existing tests. His attempt to develop a universal aptitude test failed. Hull built a correlation machine to avoid doing the laborious calculations by hand. His machine predated calculators and computers and is now in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. Without access to sufficient subjects to validate his tests, he abandoned aptitude testing as a research interest.

Research on Hypnosis Teaching classes to medical students, Hull became interested in the role of suggestibility in medical cures. Jastrow shared that interest – as a skeptic. He attempted to improve the quality of experimental work done to investigate hypnosis, wary of fraud. He believed susceptibility to hypnosis was normally distributed in the population with little correlation with other traits or sex. Children slightly more susceptible. He found that hypnosis did not improve memory. His book Hypnosis & Suggestibility is still used as a text.

Hull’s Behavior System
Hull’s most significant contribution to psychology was his development of a comprehensive behavior system – a model of how behavior occurs. At Yale, Hull intensively studied Newton’s Principia and philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Hobbes, Lock, Hume, Kant & Leibnitz. Spence (Hull’s student) described his system as “a Herculean elaboration of [Woodworth’s] S-O-R formula” (Stimulus – Organism – Response). He conceptualized humans as elaborate machines.

Hull’s Drive Theory He attempted to extend the principles of classical conditioning to instrumental trial and error learning. He accepted the idea of reinforcement based on drive reduction. His theory was presented in “Principles of Behavior.” His theory had 17 postulates and 17 corollaries. It included intervening variables for habit strength, stimulus intensity, drive level, incentive value of the reward to determine output latency, reaction amplitude. He led an impressive program of experimentation.

Evaluating Hull’s Theory
It was successful at stimulating new research. Some questioned whether the limited range of experimental situations used in his research could shed light on more generalized behavior. Can a theory of behavior be developed without testing humans? Hull hoped to go on to test humans later. The theory was better at predicting group results than individual rat behavior. Hilgard said “For its time, Hull’s system was the best there was.”

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990)
Between 1945 & 1975, B.F. Skinner was the best known psychologist in the world. 12 major books, numerous papers, a multi-volume autobiography, numerous works written about him. 3 journals are devoted to a Skinnerian approach to psychology. He was the modern spokesperson for radical Behaviorism – articulate, effective, opinionated and controversial. He said he would burn his kids before his books.

B.F. (Fred) Skinner

Skinner’s Early Life His father was a conservative, small town lawyer.
He started out to become a writer and poet but changed his mind because he had nothing to say. Pen name Sir Burrhus de Beerus Watson’s “Behaviorism,” praised by his favorite philosopher (Bertrand Russell) inspired him to study behavior. He was accepted to Harvard. Skinner heard Pavlov speak & was impressed. He focused on reflex as the unit of behavioral analysis.

Operant Conditioning Skinner developed the apparatus called an operant chamber (Skinner box). Operant = the animal operates on its environment. In Skinner’s apparatus the animal controls the response rate, not the experimenter. Response rate was his DV. Behavior could be manipulated by changing reward. This approach was an important step toward a scientific way of experimentally studying behavior. Animals learned right before his eyes.

Skinner’s Four Principles
Skinner proposed four principles of scientific practice: When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. Some ways of doing research are easier than others. Some people are lucky. Apparatuses, especially complicated ones, break down. Skinner disliked statistics and didn’t use many. He focused on individual animals.

Schedules of Reinforcement
This approach was discovered accidentally because he had only a few rat pellets left, so he could only reinforce an occasional response. Intermittent reinforcement maintained the frequency of responding, and even increased it. Research on schedules was a major contribution to psychology and is the research Skinner was most proud of.

Behavioral Control Skinner described approaches to shaping behavior in “How to Teach Animals” in 1951. Shaping is a powerful procedure for establishing and changing behavior. He shaped a rat to drop a marble through a hole and two pigeons to play ping pong. His students Keller & Marian Breland formed a company to train animals for entertainment & commercial businesses.

Skinner’s Utopia In 1945 Skinner wrote “Walden II,” a utopian novel describing a community based on operant principles of behavioral control. He envisioned a happy, health, productive community. Other utopias include Plato’s “Republic,” St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Rousseau’s “The Social Contract,” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Huxley’s satire warns of the threat of psychology.

Skinner’s Applied Research
Skinner built a child compartment (early version of the incubator) to provide warmth & keep out germs. Called “air cribs” or “heir conditioners.” Rumors that his daughter was harmed by her “baby in a box” experiences are wrong. Skinner developed token economies and “teaching machines” to provide feedback, immediate reinforcers & let kids to progress at their own rate. Programmed instruction has worked for some subjects (arithmetic and spelling) but not others.

Behavior Modification
Skinner explored possibilities for shaping psychotic patients at Worcester State Hospital in MA. His student, Fuller, trained a severely mentally disabled man to make operant responses. Skinner called Freud theories “explanatory fictions.” Two students Lindsley & Azrin developed “behavior modification” to change inmate behavior. “The Token Economy” described their procedures. Successful techniques now exist to change a wide variety of behaviors (smoking, shyness, autism).

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