What I would like you to do is to find a topic from chapter 6 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.
By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.
Thanks,
I decided to focus on the topic of the James-Lange theory of emotion. I didn’t understand the topic too well when I read the information in the book, so I was interested in a little more information about it. This topic fits into the subject of the chapter because his theory of emotion was a big component to the America’s first introduction to psychology. Psychology has a huge connection with emotion and the studies of it.
William James and Carl Lange came up with this theory to help describe how emotions work. Their theory on emotions stated that our automatic nervous system creates a psychological event, as a response to an experience. They called these responses emotions. They associated emotions to bodily functions. James and Lange theorized that experiences due to an event cause a physiological event. Such events are like muscle tensions, heart rate increase, shaking, or even sweating. They also theorized that certain emotions are associated certain parts of the body. Certain parts of the body seem to have a certain emotion related to it. Such an example is that when someone is afraid they tend to have their muscles tense up and may start to perspire sweat. However there is criticism over such this theory, because certain physiological reactions can be related to one or more emotions. They also may not be even related to an emotion at all. One example of this is shivering. Someone who is cold shivers and the body shakes to keep warm, but shivering is not considered an emotion, but it causes a physiological reaction. James and Lange’s theory is still a good theory though and it caused large research and increase the research on emotions more in the twentieth-century.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch09_motivation/james_lange_theory.html
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/James-Lange_Theory_of_Emotions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%E2%80%93Lange_theory
although we probably won't discuss this much in class, I decided to research spiritualism more. William James became increasing interested in spiritualism near the end of his career. Spiritualism is when people believed that consciousness survived death and that those who died could be contacted by mediums. Mediums were also thought to be able to predict the future and telepathically know details of other peoples lives. Spiritualism was popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. THere were even societies for it such as the Society for Psychical Research. Spiritualists were also nonbelievers in reincarnation. They believed that we could not be reincarnated because of the evolutionary process.
There are many forms of spiritualism.
Most people really wanted to believe that they could communicate with loved ones who had passed, despite obvious evidence that mediums were highly manipulative. For instance, James believed, and his medium was well known even though when she communicated with the dead the person would say things that didn't seem important and when james asked the dead person who was french questions in french, the dead person was never able to answer.
Spiritualism was not accepted among most scholars and James was ridiculed for his beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism
http://www.kheper.net/topics/bardo/spiritualism.html
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/spiritualism.html
The topic I choose to talk about is Hall's genetic psychology and how it connects to evolutionary and developmental psychology.
Genetic psychology can be defined as gaining personality traits from your parents. Essentially the Darwinian theory of acquired characteristics denotes the personality traits offspring will have for a given set of parents. Although this would make it seem like nature is much more important than nurture, Hall also did experiments which showed how the environment affects our development. An early developmental psychology theory showed that the environment can affect our intelligence. Hall asked 200 Boston children who were just beginning school a series of questions from many subjects. He was astonished on how low the children scored on the tests, but also noticed something intriguing. The children from the country scored higher than those who were raised in the city. Hall noted this higher scoring to the natural curiosity that is encouraged for country children compared to the very sterile memorization of classroom learning.
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Hall's study shows that children develop biologically the same, but mentally, being in a certain environment can be beneficial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_psychology
I decided I would write about spiritualism since I didn't mention that being an interesting topic in my first post. Spiritualism is the belief that one can contact the dead through mediums who can provide info. on afterlife. Spiritualists believe the soul continues to evolve, even after death. It was very popular after the Civil War because many loved ones died and those relatives grieved and some believed their spirits were still around. There was actually a newspaper printed during the end of the Civil War that was called "Banner of Light," and it would be printed each week, with "spirits" of soldiers contacting the medium, and then their messages would be sent out in the newspaper for their family members and friends to read, although there were never specific names addressed, this seems to me like a bad joke and a fraud. The newspaper lasted for about ten years. I don't believe (back then) that these messages in the newspaper were real, but it did give peace and hope to families of those who had lost someone.
Spiritualism back then was looked at as a religion in a way. I guess it must have been weird back then not knowing what happens after one dies, and strange to think that people could actually communicate with the dead. When I'm in deep thought about this kind of stuff, I do wonder what REALLY happens with my spirit when I do die. It's a scary thought, but it's also reality. Religion was and is still a huge factor for all of this talk. Those who don't necessarily believe in God, or religion, believe that the body just decays after we die, others who do are religious believe our body is with God, and others believe it goes beyond that, our spirit is living in different form, like reincarnation. Then there's those who believe in ghosts, and that the spirits can communicate if not at peace. I myself, don't really know what to believe. I'm kind of the person who is the "see it to believe it" type but then again, everything has two sides and there will always be questions that cannot be answered. (Like the Big bang theory)
http://www.intuitive-connections.net/2003/spirit_world1.htm
http://civilwartalk.com/forums/showthread.php?35390-Spiritualism-during-the-Civil-War...-the-dead-soldiers-return
http://www.helium.com/items/245747-Speculations-Criticisms
The topic I want to learn more about is Hall and his pioneering of developing child studies. Hall studied children and then teens. Hall believed that high level of recklessness and impulsiveness found in adolescence reflected a time in evolutionary history. My favorite part of Hall and his experiences are the adolescence and sexual behavior studies. This was first interesting to me because I watch a documentary series about what in our brains make us attracted to certain things. In this documentary they took different factors that are basic attractive features and then simplized them. For example they put up the same persons picture twice one with more “feminine” features and one with regular features and then a survey was used for people to see which one was more attractive. And then also another study was the way people walked. The study found there was a difference of both sexes of how they walked normally and then how they walked when they knew someone was watching them. Both of these studies can be seen in the youtube clips below. I think that Hall was the first one to believe that the mind had something to do with how we picked partners and what we were attracted to.
http://www.askmen.com/dating/curtsmith_100/105_dating_advice.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVhKSzSpXMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwdlq95Tnqc&feature=relmfu
James-Lang theory of emotion got me thinking about this study I learned about in Social psych. It was done by Fritz Strack in the 1980, I think. Some of the sites I looked at also credited Davis and Palladino in 2000. I think they just repeated Fritz Strack’s study. They had people hold pencils in their mouth and underline vowels or something then rate some cartoon drawings on their funniness. Some of the participants in the study were holding the pencil in their mouth horizontally, with out touching their lips to the pencil so that they would be smiling the others in the study were holding the pencils in their mouths so that they were not smiling. The participants that were holding the pencil and smiling rated the cartoon drawings they were shown as much funnier than the participants that were not smiling. This supports James’ argument that our body’s response to a stimulus produces the emotion. In this case our facial movements was the body’s stimulus and the participants reacted emotionally toward this stimulus, by either rating the cartoons funny or not so funny. The theory was named Facial Feedback and supports James-Lang theory of emotion.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/11/just_smile_youll_feel_better_w.php
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/humor/a/000802_smile.htm
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/james_lange_emotion.htm
http://heartcurrents.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/pencil-boy1.jpg
I decided to do my topical on spiritualism, because I came across it in the reading and thought it sounded interesting and was pretty peculiar. The basic element of spiritualism is the notion that man is a dual being, comprised of two parts—a physical part and a spiritual part. The belief is that when our body dies and disintegrates, the spiritual part, or the soul, lives on. Spiritualists further believe that we can make contact with those who’ve died by way of a medium—somebody who can contact the dead.
Elements of spiritualism were seen around the sixteen hundereds when a Swedish scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg claimed that he could communicate with “angels” who were both from “heaven and hell.” Spiritualists often believed that our physical life is our lowest form of life, and that the spirit world after the physical one was much bigger and better than anything that could be thought of here. Some say this is an attempt to soften the idea of such a rigid view of the ever-glamorous heaven, and the terrible burdens of hell by creating an ever-pleasant spirit world where all people go, and the bad are councelled by the good veterans. And with such a pleasant and general outlook on life after death, it attracted many followers of different religious backgrounds around the mid 19th century. It was a theory that the soul after it has left our body continues to evolve and learn, because those who had been “contacted” by mediums after they had passed often showed signs of progression and evolution.
Through these séance’s with mediums, people would often sit around in the near dark and hold hands to symbolize the movement of energy and wait for the spirit to materialize itself in some way. Those who participated in these meetings would say that the spirits would materialize by speaking through the medium, or even more outrageous ways by moving furniture or other household objects.
obviously spiritualism came with it’s share of negative critics, which were particularly religious groups and organization that depicted the science (or religion) as unorthodox, and spoke out against it so that it was not in any sort of way affiliated with the churches.
I think this relates to psychology because it, in a way, is an attempt to understand how and if we function after our bodies our dead.
http://www.thecse.org/Principles.htm
http://www.kheper.net/topics/bardo/spiritualism.html
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/spiritualism.html
For this week’s topical blog I chose to do some research on introspection. Introspection was used by William James to describe how he felt observation should take place. The definition of introspection as given by our text is, “careful self-observation, an examination and reflection on the states of consciousness that characterize one’s mental life.” Introspection was somewhat of a debatable idea, since it was based on one persons interpretations and understandings of their own mind; it could not be verified or credited by others. Introspection is a process that has many different outcomes which lay in the eye of the beholder. One is able to learn about his or herself through introspection, but it is within limitations of their own mind.
It was stated among the articles that introspection is a difficult process to engage in. Since one cannot both experience a mental process as well as introspection at the same time he or she must rely on memory. Many scientists believe that having a true introspection is quite a difficult task since it should be taking place or at least being stored in ones memory during a mental process.
I believe James stated that we must rely on introspection in our observations because it comes from within ourselves. If we are not able to understand, or at least attempt to understand our mental processes, then we may not be able to fully understand the world around us. If we were not able to identify the difference between happy and sad through our own mental happenings, then we may not be able to differentiate between other people’s emotions, experiences, or happenings.
The video below is a lecture on overcoming the bipolar disorder, but he does a section on introspection. I think it is a clear explanation of what introspection is and how someone would go about doing it. Plus the video is kind of inspiring to get one to change his or her ways in life to make things better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9c364BrOio
http://www.iep.utm.edu/introspe/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/
I chose to do my topical blog for chapter 6 on the James-Lange theory of emotion. I think that this section in the study of psychology is one of, if not the most, interesting topics. I find it interesting because of how our mind reacts before we can actually grasp what the reaction is.
Many have critiqued his theory and to give an example of this is by using crying and sadness. The James Lange theory says that we are sad because we cry. Thus saying that the change physically happens before we actually feel the emotion. The Cannon Bard theory of emotion states the exact opposite. They say that we cry because we are sad. This is interesting because it really makes you think which way it actually works. Studies are still being conducted on how emotions work and critiquing both of these theories.
Some examples of how the James Lange theory works are as follows: You are walking down a dark alley and hear footsteps coming closer behind you. Your heart starts to beat faster and your breathing deepens. You notice your bodies change and interpret it as the bodies way of preparing you for fear. You then experience fear. So the actual steps of the pattern are event - arousal - interpretation - emotion. This is a little easier to understand than the way the book put it and made me able to understand his process of thinking more clearly.
One other important aspect of the James Lange theory that I found was its effect on the future of psychology at the time. It opened new doors to new studies such as the hypothesis of reaction and the hypothesis of response. James' theory was so strong that it was considered sometimes as the basis of mental life and how we live as humans. It is neat to think about because nobody has blank emotions. They are almost involuntary because we don't think about it unless it is extreme. We react and respond to everything in our daily lives and have different emotions to each event that plays out during our lives.
http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/3018-james-lange-theory-of-emotion/
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/emotion.html
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1415404
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf5t-nujzQE&feature=related
This video is an example of the difference between the two theories I mentioned above of the James Lange and the Cannon Bard theories.
For this assignment I researched E.B. Titchner, who was mentioned in the reading a couple of times but I didn’t know who he was.
Turns out, Titchner was born in England and died in the U.S. He attended Oxford and studied under Wundt and Leipzig. This is where he found and fell in love with both Wundt’s idea’s and psychology. After receiving his Doctorate he accepted a position at Cornell University in America. He later became the head of the psychology department and editor of the American Journal of Psychology. He also published several textbooks.
Titchner emphasized psychology as a science and not a technology, because he had no interest in applying it. In moving to America he brought with him Wundt’s ideas. He attempted to systemize these ideas. In his work the coined the terms ‘Structural psychology’ and ‘Functional psychology.’ He eventually showed the limitations of structural and introspective positions, which were Wundt’s ideas and this freed developmental psychology from structuralist boundaries.
Structural psychology is generally concerned with components of mental processes. He characterized mental processes as having quality, intensity, duration, clearness and extensity. Titchner had three aims of this field:
1. Describe components of consciousness in terms of basic elements
2. Describe combinations of elements
3. Explain connections of elements of consciousness to nervous system
He also came up with the Core-Context Theory of meaning. Which states that new mental processes (the core) acquired meaning from context of other mental processes within which it occurs.
http://www.answers.com/topic/edward-b-titchener
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/titchener.shtml
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edward_Titchener
I chose to blog about William James’ theory on consciousness. He believed that consciousness was not a bunch of points interconnected, but instead it’s just there and a state of being. He compared it to a stream in this chapter and claimed it was the most natural way to describe consciousness. James’ idea of consciousness included his belief that it was personal, constantly changing, sensibly continuous, selective, and active. I found it interesting how they related James’ take on consciousness to Darwinian thinking. The function of consciousness helps us adapt quickly to new environments, learn new things, and solve new problems, similar to animals in new environments. This topic fits into Chapter 6 because there is a whole section on William James and his findings, consciousness being one of them.
James considered consciousness to be a function of life when many others thought of consciousness as a function. When he was questioned why the brain conducts mental life he replied, "For the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself." My reaction to his reply is that he believed a person experiences so many different things that if they were to respond individually to each individual event, they would be unable to function because their everyday life would be like they were being born again. We remember things from the past and are able to form reactions to them if they are presented to us again in life. For example, if you set your hand on a hot stove and get a really horrible burn, you are most likely going to be cautious of hot stove tops for the rest of your life. Or if you have a friend that tells one of your secrets to other people, you are likely not to not tell that person another secret along with using a better sense of judgment with others. Individuals respond to stimuli all day, every day. From the time we are born, we start consciously reacting to the world around us.
After recognizing that consciousness had certain characteristics, the one that caused the most controversy, was that consciousness was a continuum. This idea was controversial at the time because it went against Aristotle thinking. Aristotle claimed consciousness was similar to a chain or train of linked life experiences and thoughts. Consciousness though, never stops. It keeps going and flowing.
Another thing I found interesting about consciousness is how personal it is. Everyone has a conscious and they are all different. When you wake up in the morning, you still have the same conscious, ideas, beliefs, and routines. Consciousness is not something that changes over night or is necessarily comparable. There are certain characteristics that everyone has when it comes to consciousness, but everyone feels differently about it.
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/hunt.html
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin10.htm
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2010/02/11/the-self-consciousness-flow-of-william-james/
My research focuses on Mary Whiton Calkins and paired-associate learning. First off, a little bit about Mary. She believed in self-psychology which states that the conscious self is the primary focus of psychology. Also, she wrote over a hundred professional papers on the topics of psychology and philosophy. Another thing she is well known for is the fact that she served as the first woman president of the APA in 1918. One last thing she is well known for is for inventing paired associate learning. I wanted to look further into this because it seemed interesting from what was presented in the book.
Mary Calkins invented paired associate learning in 1894. This type of learning involves pairing two items, the first being a stimulus, and the second a response. Mary’s study consisted of participants who were presented a series of paired colors and numerals; each number was paired up with a color. She discovered that that numbers paired with brighter colors were retained better than those associated with neutral colors. However, the key ingredient to memory of the pairs was frequency of exposure. It was this experiment that made her realize she discovered a new memorization method. She called it her “one slightly significant contribution to experimental psychology” (being a little modest I assume). Coming up with my own example based off of an online example helped me to grasp the concept even better. An example would be that the word paper (the stimulus) and the word park (the response) are paired together. When the stimulus word is presented, the correct response would be to say the word shoe.
Paired associate learning has been important in the field of psychology for several reasons. It allows researchers to study the associations between stimuli and responses. When people learn paired associates, they are engaging in two separate mental processes: learning the response and forming a connection between the two items. We tend to remember words/items as a unit. Also, psychologists believe that it represents the kind of learning that people engage in every day. For example, when we learn a new word, we must pair the word with the concept of that word. I can see how this fits into our everyday lives and that is why I think it is very significant and important. We aren’t aware of all of the paired associations we make everyday, it is something we just do.
This topic fits into the chapter because Mary Calkins was a pioneer in psychology and she came up with something that we use in our everyday lives. To me this is interesting and important because I am always fascinated with how our mind works and in this case making paired associations. We pair things and aren’t aware at the time that this is what we are actually doing.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0002/ai_2699000247/
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/calkins.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio/_marycalkins.htm
I wanted to delve into the topic of free will. Free will is what William James determined existed because he chose to believe in it, which helped him through a depression while studying phiolosophy. Free will is the idea that we make choices of our own accord and life isn't just chance events due to ramndom movements of physical matter through space, which is the opposing view. The first article from Psychology Today doesn't much deal with whether or not free will exists but if there is harm in believing in free will. He brings up the example of Copernicus where even though he brought the fact that the earth revolved around the sun people still believed in a geocentric universe. He brings up that even if science dictates that there is no free will it may help people to believe that they have complete control over their own lives. B.F. Skinner argues that free will is an illusion and that infact we are influenced by thousands of environmental influences that affect our behavior, but these influences are so subtle we don't notice them, according to an article from associated content dealing with free will vs. determinism. Some Psychological approaches deal with this debate. Bio-psychologist believe that evertying is determined by genes and biological make up and client-centered therapy revolves around the idea that we as individuals make our own choices and we can choose to behave differently or change the situations around us.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-natural-unconscious/200906/the-will-is-caused-not-free
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1420996/free_will_versus_determinism_debate.html
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Revision:Psychology_model_answers_-_free_will_vs_determinism
The part of chapter 6 that intrigued me the most was William James’ interest in Spiritualism. Even though it was only a short part of the chapter I thought it was very interesting, and had some huge implications along with it. James approached this topic like he usually did, with extreme skepticism. He knew the tricks of the trade and what to look for in fakes. However, he was very surprised when he met Leonore Piper, a medium in the Boston area. His mother-in-law and sister-in-law had both attended séances with Piper before and referred James to her because they were convinced that she was legitimate. Eventually, James attended a session with Piper and was greatly surprised to find the room absent of the usual objects involved by other fake mediums like red lights, candles, or bells. It was simply held in Piper’s living room which looked like any other living room at the time. James was also impressed by Piper herself; she was a quiet and modest woman, which was very unlike other mediums he had met who were over the top. During James’ first experience he remained intentionally quiet for most of the session to provide Piper with little to no information to work with in order to see if she truly had supernatural powers. He was shocked when Piper gave him shockingly accurate information, family names and the death of his child in the last year without receiving any information from him or those close to him. James could come up with no possible reasons for this but he didn’t buy into it yet. He referred some friends to her and continually tested her and she continually passed. Upon doing a bit of research it turned out that Leonore Piper had her first taste of the supernatural when she was eight years old. She had been playing in the garden when she had a sudden pain in her ear followed by a whisper, “Aunt Sara, not dead, but with you still”. It turned out that Piper’s aunt Sara had died just earlier that day. Piper continued to amaze others with the accuracy of the information she attained during her trances. She was studied by many, and was continually proven truthful; that is until she lost her ability around 1908. Apparently, while she was being tested in the authenticity of her trances experimenters would treat her very harshly to make sure she wasn’t faking it. She eventually became terrified of what people would do to her during her trances to the point that she could no longer enter them. After this traumatic experience she lost reliability rapidly. It is more than likely that she continually attempted to give accurate readings because she thought she needed to, or was expected to, even when she had lost her ability to fall into these deep trances.
Throughout this time James began taking a lot of flak from his colleagues for looking into these things. James wasn’t ever a definite believer in these things, but that didn’t matter to others in the scientific community. This attitude taken by his colleagues bothered James and other researchers because these people who were dismissing the afterlife/supernatural without any scientific proof were just as bad as people who believe in it with no proof either. As I was researching these things I came across a YouTube video (cited below) that spoke of how some of these supernatural events are fake but how there are others that are unexplainable. This individual pointed out that when it comes to the afterlife that one can truly not know one way or the other whether it exists or not. I am also familiar with the quote, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. However, what James and others were alluding to is that claiming that there is no afterlife/supernatural is just as extraordinary of a claim as its inverse. I firmly believe that this is true and that people need to be careful what they deem as truth before they do a good amount of research. In the end, no matter what one believes about the afterlife/ supernatural there will always be some degree of faith.
http://www.prairieghosts.com/piper.html
http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/toc.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvUvLqLwb3A&feature=related
As I was reading chapter 6 I found that Calkins’ study on paired associated learning was rather unique. The paired associated learning told me that when a person is asked to learn to associated one syllable or word with another, the influence and response similarity on transfer of learning. I liked it how she performed an experiment with matching colors with various types of numbers. I look at this observation when either teaching or raising children. For example associated quiet by turning the lights off or when a student wants to ask a question that he raises his hand. Calkins manipulated frequency by presenting the same color several times. She would study the recency by comparing the recall of two numbers paired with the same color. While I was reading the passage I noticed that Calkins was able to find that the frequency was the most critical factor. It is very interesting for someone to make this discovery, especially from a woman, due to the fact that not many were noticed with some of their achievements. I was really inspired to find out that she was able to publish two writings based on both philosophy and psychology. It seemed like Calkins was really able to express her mind when she wrote “The Persistent Problems of Philosophy” and “The Good Man.” My belief towards Calkins is that she really opened a lot of doors and inspired a lot of women during this time. A lot of women were very limited to many things and with the help of Calkins I feel like women felt like they were able to really achieve a lot more in life and really make an image of themselves. Just look at how far the world as come today. I found it pretty intriguing when the males in Calkins’ philosophy class dropped out due to the fact there was a female in their class. Since Calkins was a women she had several obstacles that she had to overcome. The experiences in which she endured shaped many of her views on women’s rights and cultivated her into somewhat of an advocate. It was interesting how she challenged Joseph Jastrow, with his study he asked both male and females to write down one hundred words as fast as possible. In his study he found out that women repeat one another’s words more than men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whiton_Calkins
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/marycalkins.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_marycalkins.htm
For this weeks blob i decided that I would do a little more research on Christine Ladd-Franklin and her theory of color vision. I decided to choose her because she was important in the history of psychology, and it didn't really say much about her in the book. I decided to focus mostly on her color vision theory because all it got from our book, despite being influential for several decades, was a couple sentences that never really said what it was.
Ladd-Franklin was one of the earliest women psychologists, especially in the united states. She attended multiple universities, including some in Germany where she was able to work with Helmholtz in his lab in Berlin. While she was in Europe, she developed her theory of color vision.
Her theory of color vision came about as a result of her first getting interested in the horporter, which is where the images of both eyes form together into a single binocular image. This was a common topic for both mathematicians and psychologists at the time, which was good because at the time she was interested in math more than anything else. After developing an interest, she applied to go to Muller's lab in Gottingen, Germany. It took some persistance, but she was eventually allowed to work in Muller's lab and he would even tell here the lectures she wasn't allowed to attend. From Gottingen she moved on to Helmholtz's lab in Berlin. Here she was actually able to study normally because the Germans weren't afraid of here staying to study in Germany, they knew she would go back to the states. While she was in germany she was exposed to two seperate versions of color vision theory: Mullers, which said that there were "three opponent color pairs", and Helmholtz's, which said that there were just the three separate colors that make up color vision. Ladd-Franklin decided that neither of these seemed right to here, so she synthesized the two, taking the best ideas of both, and throwing the rest out. This led to the Ladd-Franklin theory of color vision, which went on to be one of the prevalent theories of color vision for the next few decades.
The Ladd-Franklin theory of color vision basically says that first we were able to see black and white, and varying shades of gray, next we are able to see colors in the yellow-blue spectrum, then finally we're able to incorporate the red-green spectrum in gaining full color vision. Although research today is showing this to be at least partially incorrect, for a long time this was the best theory about color development in the eyes of psychologists.
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/christineladd.html
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/ladd.htm
http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?Ladd-Franklin+theory
This week I really found the James-Lange theory to be very interesting. As I was researching this topic I found the best example of this theory as "fight or flight" to be described. Another way to describe the theory as is you see something you don't like (Event) your emotions start to change, i.e. heart rate increases (Arousal) your mind thinks about what to do in the situation (Interpretation) then you start to feel fear or happiness or whatever your feelings are based on your situation (Emotion). I wanted to do some more research on how your brain actually triggers your emotions. An excerpt that I found interesting on the last link, "Special organs within your limbic system recognize the patterns of events in your life and respond. Their signals trigger emotions, which instantly decide your attitudes and modify your behavior. Aroused emotions trigger restlessness, excitation, and agitation, preparing you for action. Anger and fear are such emotions." What I got from this was that from your childhood you experienced you remember that and hold on to it and you remember how to react even if it is something that is not meant to be fearful at the age of 20, but it was fearful to you when you were 4. I thought it was interesting that you hold on to the things you do for a reason just based on your initial reaction. An example I have is when I was 5 I saw a tree fall on my daycare while I was inside for a tornado warning during a severe thunderstorm. To this day I still hate thunderstorms and I cringe when I know they are coming.
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/James-Lange_Theory_of_Emotions
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/james_lange_emotion.htm
http://www.effective-mind-control.com/what-causes-emotions.html
Free will can be the act of choosing one’s actions or chasing their desires. David Hume describes it as the power of acting or not acting. There are many debates in philosophical circles as to whether or not free will exists. Descartes states it simpler as the ability to do or not do something, saying that man has a will in nature that cannot be contained. Renouvier believed that the act of believing in free will proved it’s existence. Many combine free will with morality this was discussed in Man’s Moral Nature. Man, according to this, has free will to act in accordance with what is moral. John Calvin came along and spurred the debate that man does not have free will, but came along according to a predestined plan. Calvin’s ideas came out of the reformation and brought the argument of free will into religious debates. Determinism has been coined as the opposite in free will in Christianity, where free will has been turned to meaning one’s decision to follow Christ and determinism (also pre-destination) is where our paths have already been chosen and we were created to either accept or not accept the principles of Christianity. Daniel Dennett is a modern philosopher who has written books on free will and determinism and he takes an interesting stance as provided in the video below. What I drew from it was that he tried to tie the two together and draw parallels, but what it shows is that it is still an ongoing debate today.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utai74HjPJE