Please read chapter 4. After reading chapter 4, please respond to the following questions:
What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the visual system? Why? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.
Note: Keep in mind that you will be allowed to bring in the blog posts to class with you when you take exams. Be sure to use the terms and terminology in your posts.
Let me know if you have any questions,
--Dr. M
I found the topic of two-point threshold and Weber’s idea of sensory circles. The two-point threshold is the point where the perception changes from the feeling “one” point to feeling “two” points. I found it interesting how Weber thought that the two-point threshold was based off his idea of “sensory circles.” He thought that certain places on your body, like your thumb, have smaller sensory circles than others. I also found Ebbinghaus’s savings method interesting. The saving method is measuring memory after the passage of time, even if nothing could be recalled after the interval. I think it is interesting how you can learn something by heart, but then after awhile forget it. However when you start to relearn it again, it usually takes not as long to learn because you have parts of it still in your memory. I like how he discovered that forgetting happens pretty fast but then slows in rate after awhile. The sections that I didn’t find too interesting were the topics on the elements of pyschophysics. I know that they are probably quite important to psychology, but I just don’t find them interesting. I was always bad with physics stuff and found it though to understand. I’m not good at figuring out limits, constants, and such things as thresholds. I also have to admit that some of the history behind Wundt was boring in a way to read and I felt like some of that information could have been removed from the material. I would maybe have you elaborate a little more on Weber’s Law a bit more and definitely mental chronometry. I really didn’t understand that much.
The first thing I found interesting from Chapter four was Weber’s two-point threshold theory. He proposed that we have areas called “sensory circles” throughout our bodies which are areas where there are branching fibers of a single sensory nerve. If we touch two points within the same sensory circle, we will perceive the two points as one single touch. Different areas of our bodies have varying sizes of sensory circles, our most sensitive areas of skin have smaller areas and the least sensitive places have larger circles.
I also found Wundt’s discovery of apperception very interesting as well. It’s definition was that when we perceive something with full clarity and give it our full attention we are experiencing apperception. It is when our minds are actively organizing the information we receive into a meaningful whole. He also touched on that if we are recognizing or sensing other things around what we are apperceiving that we are apprehending them because we are not giving them our full attention. Wundt described our mind’s ability to perceive all these things as ‘creative synthesis”
Ebbinghaus’s studies on learning and the memory were very important to the history of psychology. We all learned in intro the rule of “7 plus or minus 2” which Ebbinghaus discovered through serial learning. He would try to memorize series of numbers, and he found that it was easiest to memorize about 7 characters. He also discovered the “savings method” by realizing that he could measure memory by remembering and re-learning things from the past. For instance, years ago he had memorized a poem by heart, but in time had all but forgotten it. When re-learning the poem it took significantly less time to memorize it because he already had that information stored in his memory.
Two things I found a little less interesting were Jost’s Law and the invention of the memory drum. Jost’s law was that if two associations have equal strength, further practice will strengthen the older association more than the new one. The memory Drum was a device that presented stimuli for a fixed amount of time, and it was used regularly with memory procedures and experiments among Muller and his students. I think the reason this was less interesting to me was just that it wasn’t explained very clearly, and was stated quickly so I had to read over it a few times to retain it.
I had a hard time understanding the personal equation, subtractive method, and mental chronometry.
The first thing from chapter four that I found interesting was Ernst Weber’s findings on the ‘two-point thresholds’. In a biology class I took a year ago we did something very similar to his studies by pairing up with a partner, closing out eyes, and having our partner take a compass like tool and touch different areas of our skin with it. As I was reading I kept thinking this is just like the experiment I did! I think it’s really cool that we are still finding things out today that were studied many years ago; I never knew of the two-point threshold until that experiment in my biology class, so it is nice to know more about where it came from and why.
Secondly I found it interesting that the book brought attention to the fact that when studying Wilhelm Wundt, people often just focus on his works at the University of Leipzig, and not the numerous things he did before. There was really not a whole lot of information on everything he did, but I felt that the book did a nice job of summarizing and seemingly bringing more to the surface that was is normally associated with Wundt.
What I found least interesting were the findings of Fechner, I believe this is because I did not understand much of what the chapter was presenting. I have struggled with science in terms of academics and when it comes to formulas and what not dealing with physics, I really have no idea what it going on, which made it difficult to concentrate during that part of the book. Also, I did not really enjoy Mental Chronometry due to not understanding what it meant, nor did I understand the equations associated with it in the book.
I think Ebbinghaus’ contributions on memory research will serve to be fairly important in understanding the visual system. Without memory how can we understand what we are or have seen?
As far as things to go over in class, I think I need to understand physics a little more to understand the things happening in this chapter. I knew once I read the word psychophysics I was going to have a difficult time.
What I thought was quite interesting in this chapter was Wundt's concept of apperception. He says our minds organize information to create a whole. One example like his would be reading the word "cat" which we would not just think of as a three letter word, but the individual would think of the word "cat" as an object or a whole. To go even further on this thinking, some would even think of a specific kind of cat, maybe one they own, or possibly one could think of "cat" and think, gross (for those who don't like cats). When I think of the word "cat," I think of a siamese cat because I own one. This describes his meaning for "creative synthesis" because our minds are creating images by just reading a word.
Another area I really found interesting but couldn't quite comprehend by just reading it was Weber's law. I find it interesting because when I read about how they did weight testings and how one can notice the difference between a 30 to 33 gram weights but not notice the difference between 60 to 63 gram weights, it kept me wanting to know why. Apparently it depends on how our mind perceives the weights. (physical stiumli) This makes me think of the car lifting scenario where I guess it's said that a person lifted up a 3000 pound car when their loved one was trapped underneath it. This just blows my mind because I'm assuming this person wasn't a heavy weight lifter, and he wasn't at all even thinking about how heavy the car was, but he had the right mindset to save his loved one, so therefore he lifted the object. I'm assuming though that a person can't do that on a regular basis and if one were to try to lift a 3000 pound car, and actually had to think about, i bet they couldn't do it. So yes, Weber's law is interesting knowing about the thresholds that go along with it, and this is an area I would like to learn more about, because the threshold thing kind of confuses me.
One topic that didn't interest me much was Ebbinghaus' memory section. I just found this quite bland and pretty self explanatory and more common sense. It is important though today in mental testing, and he was an intelligent man for coming up with his all kinds of experiments, and it is pretty interesting how we do memorize the alphabet from a-z but if asked to say it backwards from z-a, hardly anyone could do it.
Another thing I didn't find too interesting was the complication experiment because it confused me. Math is not a strong point for me and I didn't comprehend much of this section at all. This is another thing I would to go over in class because it was too hard to understand.
One thing I found interesting about this chapter was the first couple sections. The introduction of the term psychophysics which is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions. One psychologist that delt with this was Ernst Weber, who mapped relative sensitivity of various locations on the skin and came up with Weber’s Law. His work was important because it was one of the first to include objective real measuring, and it proved there is not a one-to-one relationship between changes and their psychological experience.
The two-point threshold was something Weber came up with and is the point where perception changes from one feeling to two. He felt that there were sensory circles, which are invisible circles on the skin and if the compass-like thing he used to test perception was inside a circle it would be perceived as one thing touching the skin, but if it was in two different circles it would be perceived as two touches.
Webers Law is judging the weight between two different objects. He invented the JND which is a just noticeable distance between one weight and the next.
Another interesting section for me was learning about Wundt. I assumed this part was most important in truly understanding a significant part of the history of psychology. I found that he examined immediate conscious experience; this is experience that is genuinely felt or… well experienced by the person, not determined by any outside measuring (i.e. a thermometer). He used internal perception to judge this. Internal perception is self-observation but it is reported immediately so as not to lose the memory and it involves training. It mostly can judge size, intensity and duration of the physical stimuli.
He also examined higher mental processes and was really interested in mental chrometry which is essentially reaction time. It was interesting to me while reading this that back at the beginning of psychology people were so interested in mental speed and reactions. He also came up with vonluntarism, which is the manner in which the mind organizes its experience. This includes apperception which is when one perceives and event with full clarity and all focus on it.
Not so interesting was learning about Hermann Ebbinghaus. He studied memory and came up with a way to test the development of associations by coming up with something called nonsense syllables which are three letters, two consonants surrounded by a vowel. This required serial learning. Serial learning requires recalling by reproducing a set of stimuli exactly as it was presented.
What I did not understand as well was the work of Gustav Fechner. He is arguably the first experimental psychologist and studied after images. He came up with absolute threshold which is the point where the sensation is first noticed. The difference threshold is when JND (from Weber) is above absolute threshold. He came up with the Method of Limits which is when the stimulus is presented well above threshold and descends until it can not be heard (called the descending trail) and is followed by the stimulus being presented below threshold and increased until it is heard (ascending trail). What I didn’t understand is that I started this section and thought we were still talking about weights, because Fechner was expanding an testing Weber’s Law, but then it turned to sounds. Did I miss something and was it always about sounds?
I found Weber’s two point thresh hold to be pretty interesting. This is “the point where the perception changes from feeling ‘one’ point to feeling ‘two’.” He believed that the different thresh holds represented sensory circles. He found that areas towards the fingers are more sensitive and areas towards the upper arms have larger thresholds. Serial learning is being able to “accurately respond to a set of stimuli in the exact order of their presentations”. It aided in his investigation into the buildup of associations and how quickly they occur. He created nonsense syllables which are just 3 letter words with a vowel between 2 consonants. He made these to get rid of any pre-associations someone could have already made with words they know.
One of the things I found uninteresting was Kupe’s concept of systematic experimental introspection. It dealt with the same memory issues as before but more complicated ones. They developed fractionation to help observers describe their experiences. This was a something that separated a task into its components so they could easily be introspected. Another thing I found uninteresting was Jost’s law and retroactive inhibition. Retroactive inhibition means that something you’re practicing now it will interfere with something you were trying to learn before. I thought this was uninteresting just because it seemed kind of common sense.
I feel that Germany’s new education system (Wissenschaft) was an important contribution to the history of psychology. This made original research more appealing to students. Two things I thought were difficult to understand were systematic experimental introspection and fractionation.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the philosophy of education known as Wissenschaft. Instead of following a boring curriculum where many of the things we learn in a specific class is knowledge we will not use in practical life, we simply come up with our own thesis and research on our own to find out what is important to us internally instead of being told what is important. Although there were still exams required to get degrees so it was not complete academic freedom.
I found the two-point threshold and Weber's law to be interesting as well. The idea that we have a threshold of how we perceive the difference of things is fascinating to me. I think of working out and lifting weights when I think of Weber's Law. Let's say I can bench 2 40 pound dumbbells easily. I decide to move up to 42.5 pounds. Still easy, not much a difference in reps. Move to 45 pounds, suddenly it is more difficult to lift the dumbbells. I barely notice 2.5 pound increase in each hand in difference, but 5 pounds is noticeably more difficult. This is the basic idea of Weber's Law; jnd("just noticeable difference")/S(standard stimulus)=k(kinesthesis).
I found Fecherner's idealism to be inspiring, but his reformation of Weber's Law and ideas he wrote about in the Elements of Psychophysics were kind of boring. Method of limits can be ascending and descending to find when a stimulus first occurs. Method of constant stimuli is a bunch of random stimuli presented to find which you can respond to and which you can't. Method of adjustment adjusts the stimuli until you can experience at threshold and holds it there. I just didn't find any of these interesting for some reason.
I also didn't find Wundt's research on sensation and perception that interesting. The idea of psychophysics does not really make me think "psychology." I like the idea of understanding the mind's complexity and trying to understand it to help people, not to understand how our mind responds to physical stimuli.
I found Fechner's idea's of the absolute and difference thresholds to be the most educational regarding my understanding of visual perception. We only perceive what our threshold allows us to. When we walk into a dark room after being outside, it is difficult to see, but after a couple minutes, it is much easier. It shows we just need time to adjust to our surroundings.
I'd like to know more about the Fechner's idea of thresholds along with Wundt's mental chronometry. I feel like I didn't completely understand these so I might find them more interesting with some additional insight.
The first thing in chapter 4 that I found very interesting was the theory of two-point thresholds by Ernst Weber. I found this part of the chapter interesting because in Life: Continuity and Change Lab last semester we actually tested this out. Our study was more about the science part of it but it was very intereswting to me to see the origin of the test. The test which he used was the exact same one we used so it goes to show that his thought process and testing theory were a big success for his time. I find it interesting that he labeled the sensory objects as circles/hexagons instead of any other shaped object aht fits together. It's very interesting that the different parts of the body in the diagram can sense the pokes in such a different way.
The second part of the chapter that I found very interesting was Wundt's study on the immediate conscious experience. I found it interesting because of how he relates how we experience things and how we relate tools of science to other things. He used the example of the thermometer reading 15 degrees that you are not experienceing it, but once you go outside with no coat you will directly experience the event of coldness. I also found the internal perception part interesting. Wundt liked internal perctipton over self-observation because the problem of memory was reduced by the immediacy of the response and by using observers. trained to respond automatically and without bias.
One part of the chapter that I was not interested in was the personal equation and the subtractive method. It was a subject that I just got lost in and could not quite understand what and where everything fell into place in the equation.
The second part of this chapter that I did not find interesting was the part on Hermann Ebbinghaus. His test for memory using nonsense syllables or CVC's was just a different way of conducting a memory test. His tests also involved serial learning which was just the test and reiterating the test after heard. It was a little confusing but also something I would like to learn more about.
I found Wundt's section to be the most important part of the chapter to the study of history of psychology. Essentially he is the "father" of psychology and played many essential roles in psychology. I think learning about the different ways of thinking was the catalyst for other scientists/physisists/philosopher/students to jump on board and really get into psychology. He has an astounding story as well by coming up with not such good grades to becoming top of his class and starting his own school.
I would like to learn more about Ebbinghaus' experimental study of psychology. I found it interesting but I was just confused on what was all going on. I would also like to learn more about thresholds in general.
I didn't particularly find this chapter very interesting to be honest. However, I realize that threshold on experimental psychology is a huge deal. Fechner used Weber's threshold research to determine absolute threshold (point where sensation was first noticed) and difference thresholds (JND's above the absolute threshold).
Weber's twopoint threshold(where the perception changes from feeling one point to two). Weber found that areas around the finers were more sensitive than areas around the arms.
ANother key point of this chapter was Wundt's lab. Known as being the founder of experimental psych, he studied immediate conscious experience under controlled lab conditions. Most of his research was done on basic sensory and perceptual processes. As a structuralist, ( to reduce consciousness to its basic elements), Wundt was more interested in the minds ability to organize info (sustem voluntarism).
I found Ebbinghaus to especially boring. Memory is such a cool part of psychology but his nonsense syllables don't really make any sense to me. 3 letter unites comprised of two consonants with a vowel in the middle? Did he really memorize all of those? Serial learning takes so much time and he I realize he proved his point but wow.
In class I would like to cover the threshold stuff more, I think. It was a huge part of the chapter and is obviously very important but It was hard to focus on it (maybe because I hate math and equations?).
The first thing I was interested in was Ebbinghaus’ study with memory. The only reason I was interested in this was that right before I started to read this section I had said that I must have rampid memory loss if I cant remember exactly what happened an hour ago. What I find to be rediculus is that Ebbinghaus was his only subject! That is just a waste of an experiment if you ask me, he may alter observations, second guess himself, and bias his results. He basically concluded that practice increases memorization. What I have always been told in school is that it takes 7 times of repetition to memorize something. The trick to memorizing numbers like he did is noted as repetition and time. But now the study of ecological memory is the more realistic everyday events. I wish that he would have done more research on everyday events memories because what would you rather want to remember, lists of numbers, or your childs birth. I see a big difference.
The second thing I found interesting was the mental set. Why I thought this was neat was that because no matter what task was asked of the students the reaction time was always the same. Their mind had been prepared prior to the testing. This is pretty important when we learn how to set up results to differ between staging the experiment and how to introduce it to the participants. If before a math test we told all girls that girls usually score lower than boys because they are bad at math, studies show they will do worse. It is because they have this pre set mental set in their mind and it in the end effects how they do.
I guess the thing that I learned that will influence the visual system was Wundts apperception. It is basically saying what you see and what you focus on is then interpreted and understood then sent to memory. This is what Wundt called “visual synthsis”
Two things that I did not care so much about was the mental chronometry.. just the name alone looks boring. Math and equations are not so fun to interpret but I am sure when we go over them in class it will become more clear how there are equations for determining reaction time.. I can almost guarantee there is a newer better formula. The second thing I was not so interested in was the education in Germany. Though it was nice to see why they had so many improvements in their studies I just as not interested and skimmed over until I got to something that needed more of my attention and time.
In Chapter four another man that needs more attention is Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt began his career working under Helmholts. His first book Principles of Physiological psychology was a vision about perception in 1862. Wundt worked with the immediate experience and “mediate” experience. For example looking at a thermometer and feeling it directly are different. When two or more people feel the same temp but diciver it differently then that is where intropection occurse. In Wundts second book, Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology he tackels subjects such as learning, thinking, language. Wundt was also the creater of the psychology school called structuralism
One thing I found really interesting in this chapter was Weber's theory of two-point threshold. Basically this theory talked about how nerves are responsible for a certain area of sensation on the skin. Where there are more nerves these circles are relatively small, but where there are less nerves these circles are larger. When you touch two points within one of these circles, it feels to the person like you are only touching one point, but as soon as one of the points being touched is in a different circle the person can feel both points being touched. I remember doing some sort of experiment or activity with this in my biology lab and thinking it was really interesting, so learning the history of the theory behind it was interesting to me.
I also thought that the whole concept/theory of apperception was really interesting. It essentially pertains to how we perceive (or rather, apperceive) certain things. People base their perceptions of certain objects on their past experiences, which is the basis of apperception. While a poor person might find a $50 bill on the street and feel like they hit the jackpot, a wealthy person might see that same $50 bill and walk by it, because it is so little money to them. This is an example of apperception; because of these two people's past experiences they have vastly different feelings about the meaning of $50.
One thing I found rather uninteresting was Fechner's reinvention of Weber's law. I was left rather confused about the whole theory after reading this section, which is probably why I found it so uninteresting.
Another thing I found somewhat boring was the whole section about mental chronometry. Similar to Fechner's law, I simply didn't understand what the book was trying to tell me about this topic, leaving me rather dumbfounded after trying to read it several times. I know that it deals with reaction time (RT) to determine different things, but that is about as far as my understanding went on this subject.
The thing in this chapter I thought was most important to psychology as a whole would have to be Wundt's lab. He is widely considered the father of psychology, and he, along with some other psychologists of his era, are largely responsible for psychology becoming and empirical science. Their use of the scientific method in labs to understand differnt aspects of psychology allowed psychology to grow into the massive field that it is today.
Due to not understanding mental chronometry and Fechner's re-do of Weber's law, I would like to talk more about those in class tomorrow to hopefully boost my knowledge of the subjects.
One thing that I found interesting in Chapter 4 was Ernst Weber’s two-point threshold. I had learned about this specific perception finding before, but was unaware of the whole story. I found this interesting because it’s a significant finding in history and contributed to a lot of people’s knowledge of sensory nerves. Another thing I found interesting was Ebbinghaus’s “savings method”. He found that certain lists are harder to remember the longer they get. This got my attention because I’m already interested in memory, so learning about how these findings were discovered is interesting to me. His experiments were unheard of during this time since the idea of memory was relatively new. This topic is still popular today. It’s not uncommon to read magazines, newspapers or hear on T.V./radio how to improve memory function. Whether it’s taking fish oil supplements, eating Omega-3 fatty acids, listening to classical music before bed, etc., the ideas are endless and still being talked about today.
One thing that I found to be not so interesting was the history of Wilhelm Wundt. It’s not that I thought it was unimportant, it was just dry and difficult for me to pay attention. The further I read into the chapter though, the more interesting I found his discoveries. Another thing I didn’t think was very interesting was the introduction to this chapter. It mainly talked about how Germany was a desired spot for many students, even today, to study abroad. This topic was a good way to introduce the German men discussed in this chapter, but it seemed a little out of place at the same time.
The main thing I took away from this chapter that is applicable to psychology is what these men discovered and how uncommon it was to think as in-depth as them during this time.
Two topics I would like to be covered in class are the Wissenschaft philosophy of education that developed in Germany and why Wundt called his system voluntarism.
I found the idea that much of the history of Wundt was wrong to be very interesting. It is crazy to think of how a chain was created from one person’s mistakes. We often hear so much of our information from other people like our professors that we just take it as true. Often we do not take the time, or do not have the time or resources to really delve into the topic and verify what is said was right. That is what is great about this class is because we are suppose to do that and find out more information on our own.
I also thought that the idea of the two-point threshold by Weber was very interesting. It is strange to thin that at one point some scientists thought that we had little circular areas under our skin that decided if you feel one or two pokes. It had never occurred to me that at some times we may think we are feeling one poke when there are two. Weber also discovered that certain areas were more sensitive to telling the difference than other areas were.
I found mental chronometry to be uninteresting. It talked about different peoples reaction times and how to calculate them. I do not like math and so once I have equations thrown at me I do not enjoy learning about it. I also found fractionation uninteresting. It about breaking up tasks into components. It has to do with the systematic experimental introspection. I just thought it was a small detail of an experiment that I did not really understand.
I thought the study of memory of Ebbinghaus was important to the chapter. It gave us a better idea of how memory works and how soon we forget things after we learn them. It was discovered that we forget a lot of what we learned right after we learned it and then slowly forget more and more as time goes on.
I would like you to discuss voluntarism and apperception in class a little more on Tuesday.
One thing from the chapter that I found interesting was Ernst Weber’s two-point threshold. The two-point threshold is the point where the perception changes from feeling one point to feeling two points. Some areas were found to be more sensitive than others when performing this test. For instance, on the thumb it was easier to make the distinction between the one point and the two points whereas on the upper arm it was more difficult to do so. On the areas where points could be distinguished easier, the points did not have to be very far apart to tell the difference and for the areas that were less sensitive, the points would need to be farther apart. I thought this was interesting because of how we have different thresholds and how our bodies are more sensitive in certain areas than others. Also, I remember doing an experiment involving this two-point threshold in a previous class using blindfolds and toothpicks.
The second topic I found to be interesting from the chapter was remote associations, which was studied by Ebbinghaus. Remote associations are indirect associations between list items separated by more than a single item. Ebbinghaus used a list of numbers including list A, B, and C. After reading list A which was simply the numbers one through sixteen, it was easier to learn lists B and C because an association was formed after the first list. I though this was interesting because it is something that occurs in life that we don’t really even think about. By looking at these example lists, it makes you realize that you do create an association automatically, which is kind of fascinating.
One topic from the chapter I found to be less interesting was nonsense syllables which Ebbinghaus created. Nonsense syllables are three letter units comprised of two consonants with a vowel in the middle. Overall, Ebbinhaus created around 2300 of these in order to better understand how people made associations between syllables. I guess this just didn’t seem to catch my attention possibly because he was solely interesting in how syllables were formed and not necessarily the meaning of each of these syllables.
A second topic that wasn’t as interesting to me was the whole concept of mental chronometry. Mental chronometry was essentially reaction time research that was done during this time period. The goal of this was to measure the time taken for various mental events. Because this deals with math and equations, it was not my favorite topic of the chapter. I think it could be more interesting if I were to completely understand it.
An important aspect of this chapter that I find to be the most beneficial in understanding the visual system is Wundt and apperception. Apperception is to perceive an event with full clarity and have it in the focus of one’s attention. The book gives an example: As you are reading this page, your full attention and focus is on this sentence and it’s meaning. I believe this is very important because when we see something we must process it and put it into our minds and from there interpret what it is that we saw. This is a vital process when it comes to our visual system.
Overall, the chapter seemed to be pretty self-explanatory. There are a few things that I would like a little better understanding of. Those include: retroactive inhibition, Jost’s law, and memory drum. Also, even though I found the topic of mental chronometry to be somewhat boring, I would like to learn a little bit more about that as well.
One thing I found interesting in Chapter 4 was something Ernest Weber called two-point threshold. A two-point threshold is the point where the perception changes from feeling “one” point to feeling “two.” Some skin areas with great sensitivity, like the thumb, were found in have a very small threshold. This means that the points didn’t have to be very far apart before being noticed as two separate points, but on less sensitive parts, like the upper arm, the points would have to be placed further apart to be noticed as separate. I found this to be interesting, along with his idea of “sensory circles.” I found this interesting because it is not something I have ever even thought about! It is obvious just how curious these men were during this time! Some other things that interested me were the concepts of mental sets and imageless thoughts. Mental sets were discovered in the Wurzburg laboratory and they refer to the effect of giving observers some instructions that influence them to think in certain ways. Am imageless thought is any thought that cannot be further reduced to mental images. One thing that I didn’t find as interesting was the stuff dealing with Gustav Fechner – physics isn’t very interesting to me and pretty confusing so it was hard to be interested in it while reading. Another thing I didn’t find as interesting was mental chronometry, which is the name given to 19th century reaction time research, in which the goal was to measure the time taken for various mental events. Something that I believe to be beneficial for understanding psychology would be any of the work done by Wundt and his lab. Some things that I would like to learn more about would be some of Fechner’s work just to understand it better. Also, I would like to learn/hear more about Ebbinghaus and his studies.
I found it interesting that people tend to associate Wundt with only Leipzig even though he had been practicing experimental psychology for 17 years at Heidelberg. He was an esteemed scientist and researcher long before what people remember him for today. Equally interesting to his reputation as a scientist, is what he studied. It would appear that Wundt was one of the first scientists to base experiments around consciousness (at least as we know it today). In past eras researchers knew about this idea of "consciousness" but they treated it as an intangible existence of something that could not be tested.
Another interesting thing I found in the text was this idea of an imageless thought. It was a result of research from Wurzburg Lab and the reason it is so interesting to me is because it was highly controversial and contrary to the research conducted in Wundt Lab. The idea of imageless thoughts was new and innovative because Wundt and Titchner both claimed that people required visual representation of thoughts.
What I liked least about the chapter was the focus on Wundt and his research. I understand that he was one of the founding fathers of experimental psychology and the first established laboratory that we know of, but I feel that the information was a little overdone leaving less room for other labs and researchers.
I feel one of the most important things that we can pick up about the visual system from the reading is that it cooperates with our nervous system in a relatively fast manner. It's also good for us, as students, to realize that experiments on reaction times and visual perceptions have been going on for years and years whether we knew it or not.
I would like to examine work done by Ebbinghaus more, especially research done in the areas of memory and learning through repetition.
One thing that interested me was Weber's two-point thresholds. Different points of the body have more sensitivity to multiple stimuli. Weber drew a diagram to show where the sensitivity was greater and less prominent. For example in the thumb there are several smaller sensory circles so you can sense two points sooner then in the upper arm where the circles are larger and more spacious. Along those lines another interesting thing that I picked up was the Just Noticeable difference (jnd) which deals with the threshold where you can tell a change in a stimulus. He came up with the formula that jnd/S=k where S is the standard stimulus. Gustav Fechner then came along and discovered the absolute threshold where a sensation is first noticed and then difference thresholds where each jnd is noticed with the stimulus.
Some un-interesting points are introspection and Internal perception. These deal with different people experiencing different stimuli in different ways and at different speeds. These concepts were developed by Wilhelm Wundt, the father of modern Psychology.
A couple of points I would like to see covered more in class are the reaction time or mental chronomoetry formulas. Also,Ebbinghaus and Memory.
One thing I found to be interesting in the chapter was Weber’s two-point thresholds. It was interesting how he made the connection that your perception changes from feeling “one point to feeling two”. Also another thing about Weber that I found interesting was the thing about the different thresholds and how people perceive weight. It was interesting to me that people couldn’t tell the difference in certain weights in different intervals but they could when they reached a certain threshold.
Another thing I found interesting is Wundt’s concept of apperception. It is a crazy thing to think about and can become far too complex if you think about it too hard. Creative Synthesis is when you read a word and automatically get an image of a certain thing in your head. It is like when you think of “hotel” you automatically think of a general hotel experience you had. Or like when I read the word pizza I can imagine in my head a God Fathers sausage pizza.
I struggled with the readings of Fechner. He worked with Weber’s weight theory. He was declared the “inadvertent founder of psychophysics” by Boring.
The part in the book about mental chronometry was somewhat un-interesting.
I think the most important part of this chapter to understand the history of psychology is the part about Wundt and the breakthroughs he had.
Topics for class would be Ebbinghaus and his memory study and also Fechner might be a good thing to cover in class because I didn’t really get it from reading the book.
The first thing that I thought to be very interesting was Weber's theory on the two point thresholds. The two point threshold is were you measure how far apart it takes for you to not only feel point one but at the same time can feel point two. Depending on how sensitive the area is may determine how far apart each point has to be. He believed all this to be true because of the different sizes in sensory circles. If two points touched the skin in the same circle the sensory would only be felt in one place. When the two points touched two different circles, the sensory would be different areas. I also liked Wundt's idea of apperception, meaning that we classify things into something meaningful and that we understand. When we see the word dog, it isn't seen as three separate letters but as one meaning and it could be different for all of us. It isn't quite the same as associationism like seeing john then seeing mary, but if you see the two of them and analyze them beyong information you already know then thats what apperception is. I felt a lot of the information about Wundt and his background was pointless and way boring. I don't see the importance in knowing all the schools he went to and all the jobs he had or even that he thought doing research was better then writing perscriptions or setting bones. The mental Chronometry would be something to go over more in class because i felt it was kind of confusing.
I'm gonna be honest here, I didn't find this chapter to be all that interesting, my apologies, but I did find a couple things to be interesting. I thought that two point threshold was cool in the sense that "the point where the perception changes from feeling "one" point to feeling "two." I thought it was interesting how Weber found out which areas of the arm had a greater sensitivity in comparison to other parts of the arm. Like the thumb compared to the upper arm. He concluded that parts of the arm had larger "sensory circles" which are really a higher concentration of nerves. Another thing that I thought was interesting was was Wundt's concept of apperception. I thought it was interesting because it was about how we focus and give out attention to what we're doing, but we can also be aware at what is around us sort of like peripheral vision, but in being able to focus. I also liked how he gave the example about reading the word "dog" and how we don't see it as three separate letters, but as a word because our mind creates it. I think these things help us piece together how the brain works and how these scientist are making progressions compared to animal spirits. The things that I found to be least interesting was everything that involved math. I saw the math problems and my brain just kind of shut down and skipped over it which is not a good thing, but honestly I HATE math! So maybe this could be something that you go over in class and make it interesting maybe? Maybe my appereption doesn't work quite so well with math as it does with words?
I thought that Ernst Weber’s work on the two-point threshold was very interesting. As I was reading this section I found myself poking my arm with two pencils just to understand what it was talking about. I never thought that there was a relationship between the distance of two points and whether or not you could feel them. I also thought it was interesting because of his theory on sensory circles. Sensory circles are areas of the skin that were sensed by the branching fibers of a single sensory nerve.
I also thought that Ebbinghaus’ work on memory was also very interesting. The part that made me think was the reason why he chose to do the study on himself. I would die if I had to memorize the order of over 1300 lists of 3 letter “nonsense syllables”. In his studies he learned that it takes more repetition to learn longer lists.
I found the section on mental chronometry to be very boring. I understand that it is studying reaction time but the equation involving SRT, DRT, CRT, choice time, and discrimination time really confused and bored me.
I also found Weber’s Law to be confusing because I didn’t understand the jnd and how it related to the standard stimulus.
I think that all of the men covered in the chapter are important to the understanding of psychology because without their work we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I would like you to discuss voluntarism and apperception in class a little more in depth.
One thing that I found interesting was Wundt stating that he has established a new psychology, and how it explained in the section that many philosophers and Psychologists will claim to have found something new when in reality they didn't. But it all comes down to who can persuade and use propaganda the best to make the public believe in what they are saying and trust them. Wundt was noted for being Great at this. The section on "Studying Higher Mental Processes" intrigued me the most because I've always been interested in knowing why people behaved and reacted certain ways before I even considered Psychology being my field of study.
Mental Chronometry also interested me. I felt it was pretty creative how HelmHoltz decided to try and measure reaction time to come up with an accurate answer. It seemed like a way I would attempt to if that job was presented to me, but it goes on to explain how it is MUCH more in depth than the simple way he attempted to measure it. I'm not a big fan of science so most of their discoveries interest me. That is a God-given gift for people to have the patience and skill to discover formulas for such complex things that us humans outside of the scientific can't understand. But I must admit the farther I read into this section the less interested I became because all of the changes and equations reminded me of the reason I changed my major.
Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics didn't interest me much because the experiments were pretty basic and didn't peak my interest at all. In the beginning it was just basic mathematical assumptions that lead to someone else discovering it was wrong. Typical story of an experiment but this experiment was never eye catching to begin with. Don't get me wrong, it is important for someone to know and be able to explain to the world, just not something I would prefer to read about.
"An Education in Germany" wasn't bad, but I wouldn't say I found it less interesting than the rest because it was based on completing a few tests and thesis's without following a class curriculum. I personally prefer a class curriculum because it helps me keep track of how I am doing and what I need to do to get where I want to be in the class. But I do admire the different approach the professor took instead of the usual. Especially back in those days.
I think Sensation and Perception would be the most useful section in this chapter to understanding visual systems. Vision is what we as humans are most dependent on, so the majority of our focus throughout our days are on our sight. The book says that in Perceptions they studied positive/negative afterimages, visual contrast, illusions, and the perception of size, depth, and motion. All of these are key components when it comes to vision. It was only a short section in the chapter so it is definitely something that would need more elaboration for the broad topic of visual systems.
I would like you to elaborate more on Mental Sets and Imageless Thoughts in class. Seems like they would be interesting to learn more about.
Weber’s experiments with the two-point threshold and his weight lifting experiments were very interesting. The two-point test is a fun thing to do with other people as well, especially if they don’t know what this used to be used for. It blows their minds when they find out that they were being touched by two points the whole time. When it came to his weight experiments it was difficult for me to be able to tell what it had to do with psychology. When I had finished reading the section and discovered Weber’s Law it made more sense to me. I typically think of Psychology as a science that studies how we think and why we think a certain way. It had never occurred to me that studying how the mind perceives weight differences as a part of this. I had always thought that Psychology dealt with higher order thinking. I suppose you have to start from the ground up though.
Wilhelm Wundt this and Wilhelm Wundt that. The last half of the chapter was completely dedicated to this guy on all sorts of different things. The rewriting of Wundt, The real Wundt, the Rediscovery of Wundt, the Wundtian Legacy. It seems to never stop! I understand that the guy was crucial to the founding of Psychology as an observable and legitimate field of science, but this is ridiculous. It may have just been the titles of these sections that drove me crazy. I see the word ‘Wundt’ in my dreams now, ever haunting me.
I have the 2nd edition of the book and throughout the chapter there is no mention of anything relating to the visual system. A whole lot about memory and forgetting, but nothing on the visual system.
If we could go further into some of Wundt’s most important discoveries and contributions that would be very helpful. As I said before, there is so much about him that it is hard to pinpoint which items were actually crucial to the history of Psychology.
Between Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner I found it to be pretty interesting how they were able to notice the difference in weights and they were able to create precise equations for their experiments. The ideas and theories we look at today, they looked at them in a whole different meaning. Fechner’s idea of thresholds poses a positive idea on how we can tell the difference from one item to the other. I also found it to be interesting how they were able to come up with a “jnd” just noticeable difference. Other Weber’s two point threshold and Fechner’s elements of psychophysics, I really did find this chapter to be all that amusing to me. I didn’t really enjoy reading about Wundt’s theory on creating new science or his study on the mental process. It just seemed like I got bored reading it this time. I think visualizing Weber’s and Fechner’s idea on jnd’s is the easiest. You can picture in your mind what a just noticeable difference may very well be. In all aspects, you can feel the difference in ten pound weight versus a five pound weight. However, can you actually feel the difference in 30 paper clips versus 35 paper clips? I would like to know more about jnds in class and who was to branch off Fechner’s principles? I want to know what was the next idea that came into play under the work as Weber and Fechner.
A couple of the things that i found to be very interesting in this chapter were the ideas of sensory circles, and i also found the methods of finding the limits of sensation to be interesting. I found the sensory circles to be interesting because i find it interesting how the body has nerves to cover everything, but to save space it combines lots of them into groups where they come together into only a single nerve to the brain. I found the methods of finding limits interesting because I have always found the limits of perception to be very interesting, and I had never heard who studied these limits.
A couple of things that i found to be not interesting were Weber's law, and the personal equations. The reason i found both of these topics to be uninteresting because they both reminded me of reading a math textbook while i was going through them, and while the subject is interesting, the math styled approach to it was what i found to be boring.
I believe that the subjects i would be most interested in hearing more about would be the section about mental Chronometry, and also the sections about voluntarism and apperception.
Wundt
Wundt is the found of Experimental Psychology during is quest to create a new science. His new science focused on studying consciousness as it was happening rather than memory. His experiments were held under his set laboratory conditions for each subject. His biggest interest was the human mind's ability to organized information as it gets received by the brain. His system was called voluntarism.
I found this very interesting because I can only imagine how tough it was to figure out how to study consciousness on the spot as opposed to after it happened.
One thing I was interested in was psychophysics. Psychophysics is the study of the relationships between stimulus events and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. This originated in the sensory research of Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner. Ernst Weber made two major contributions: mapping the relative sensitivity of various locations on the skin and demonstrating a mathematical relationship between the psychological and the physical. he was also the leading authority on the tactile senses and discovered the two-point threshold. The two-point threshold is the point where perception changes from feeling one point to feeling two. Also, his discovery of the ability to discriminate between two weights did not depend on the absolute difference between them in weight or simply called Weber's law. Weber's law in formula form looks like this jnd/S= K. The importance of this is that Weber subjected mental events to measurements and mathematical formulations, showed there is not one-to-one relationships between changes in the physical world and psychological changes, and it showed that mental and physical events could be related mathematically.
Gustav Fechner then continued to elaborate on Weber's research. Fechner was consumed with trying to defeat materialism. Materialism is the belief that all events have causes that can be traced to physical and chemical changes. He saw it as the night view and wanted to replace it with the day view. The day view stated that the universe as a whole has a form of consciousness to it that went beyond the individual consciousness of the organisms within it, Fechner then went on to reformulate Weber's law. He believed that sensations could be subjected to exact measurements by assuming the jnd's were subjectively equal in magnitude. This reformation looked like this S= k log S. He also discovered multiple thresholds. There included: absolute thresholds, the point where sensation was first noticed and difference thresholds, which is above the absolute threshold. He also created methods to establish these thesholds. These included: method of limits; in which a stimulus is presented above the threshold then gradually reduced, the method of constant stimulus; where sounds varied in intensities are presented randomly, and the method of adjustment; where the subject directly varies the intensity of the stimulus until is seems to be at threshold.
I was not so interested in Wundt and his new psychology. Wundt is known as the founder of experimental psychology. He wanted to desperately create a new psychology that emphasized methods taken from physiology. Wundt also created a critical distinction between self observation and internal perception. Internal perception was similar to self-observation but was a narrower process of responding immediately to controlled stimuli. Wundt rejected self-observation and used internal perception to help yield scientific data. He then created an experimental lab which helped him with this and to study many other things such as sensation, perception, and mental chromomerty which is also known as reaction time.
important words and terms- psychophysics, Erst Weber, Gustav Fechner, two-point threshold, Weber's Law, Materialism, absolute threshold, difference threshold, method of limits, method of constant stimuli, method of adjustment, internal perception, mental chormonerty, Wundt