What I would like you to do is to find a topic from section chapter 4 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 a youtube clip that illustrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use 3 or more quality resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say what your topic is, b) how exactly it fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
By integrating/synthesizing I mean to take what your read/experienced from the internet search (and from chapter 1 if you like) organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using that information. This is hard for some people to do - many students write what we refer to as "serial abstracts." They are tempted to talk about the websites rather than the topic proper and this what you DON'T want to do! They will talk all about website #1, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #2, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #3, and then write some kind of conclusion. Serial means one after the other...again, this is what you DON'T want to do! If all three sites are on the same one topic it will be easier.
Additional instructions: For each URL (internet resource) you have listed. Indicate why you chose it and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
The topic I chose to research more in depth was the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. His revolutionary forgetting curve interested me so I wanted to learn more about him and his curve. This topic relates to the chapter in that I chose a psychologist from the chapter whom we also talked about in class to see if I could find a little more information on him. The reason this topic interests me so much is that I want to be a teacher and the forgetting curve will not only aid me in how quickly children may forget, but also how often I must stress important things in order for them to remember. Also I was curious to see if there might be more in depth information regarding the curve on the internet.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was a pioneer in experimental psychology. Throughout his life he was able to further the science of psychology. His most famous contribution to this field is his forgetting curve. He began his life in Germany as the son of a local merchant. After a brief stop in his schooling due to a war in which he enlisted, Ebbinghaus went on to receive his doctorate in philosophy in 1873. His desire was to study the higher mental processes of the human mind through the use of science instead of philosophy. This approach was very uncommon for the time he studied in. As a scientist he was most interested in memory and forgetting and how these processes work in the brain. He was very dedicated to his work and his laboratory. However, oftentimes he would have a little trouble funding what he was researching.
As he began testing aspects of memory he thought himself the best test subject. He thought that in order to get the best results he would have to do the study so that it was non-relational to something he had already learned. He found a solution in non-sense syllables like wid and sco. He would memorize these and then record himself saying them back over various spans of time. This time would range anywhere from an hour to a month. The results he got produced a significant curve. This curve drops significantly over a short amount of time and then after a long enough time gradually levels off.
There are many practical applications of this curve. One application would be in schools where kids are learning something. In order to increase the time and influence on something that is remembered one must go over the important topic and review on occasion what the students have learned. Another application as we discussed in class is during a criminal investigation. When someone is being interrogated or when someone is looking for a particular individual who disobeyed the law it is important to remember this curve. The memory decreases steadily over time so therefore the longer the time between the incident and the trial or interrogation the more likely that there will be less remembered from the situation.
http://helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus
The above links I used to get a general background on the subject along with the information in my book.
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Ebbinghaus.htm This link i used to get more detailed information about Ebbinghaus as well as the forgetting curve.
I found the section on Gustav Fechner to be an interesting part of chapter 4. I found this interesting because he dedicated himself to his experiments to the point of damaging his eyes and becoming engulfed in depression. Because of this interest, I decided to do more research about his work and contribution to psychology.
Fechner was born in Germany in 1801. He enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study medicine. While there, he studied anatomy under the supervision of Weber. Once Fechner received his medical degree, he found interest in math and physics.
In his research, he dedicated himself to staring at the sun to study after-images. Shortly after the article about this research was published, Fechner had an emotional collapse. He experienced a lot of pain in his eyes, headaches, depression, and anxiety. Within a few years, Fechner recovered from these symptoms and returned to the university.
Due to his eye difficulties, he began to look at the mind-body problem. He had an insight into the connection of the mind in relation to the body, and said that the mind is prone to mathematical treatment. This means that psychology could potentially become a quantified science. This was the basis of psychophysics. He then wrote Elements of Psychophysics, which is considered the first book about experimental psychology. Fechner was one of Wilhelm Wundt’s inspirations in creating the “new psychology.”
Much of Fechner’s work is still used today. Three of his methods still used today include the Method of Limits, the Method of Adjustment, and the Method of Constant Stimuli. People are still using Fechner’s work, and are also still trying to allow more to be known about him. Some individuals are looking into Fechner’s diaries to see how his relationships with his friends and colleagues connected with his contribution of psychophysics. There is a topic of “Inner Psychophysics” in the Elements that has not yet been interpreted in English, which is currently being worked on.
I found Fechner's life to be very interesting. He dedicated himself to his research to the point of creating physical strain for himself. He then regained control of himself to come out of a depressive state to go on and found the field of psychophysics. I am glad that I researched more about this individual and his accomplishments.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gustav_Fechner#Legacy This resource gave me good information about his life and background
http://web.sau.edu/WaterStreetMaryA/gustav_fechner.htm This page, while oddly organized, gave a very good layout of Fechner's life.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Consciousness.html I used this resource to help myself to understand his views on the mind-body problem.
http://psycnet.apa.org.proxy.lib.uni.edu/journals/hop/13/4/409.pdf This article helped me to see his contributions to psychology and how is work is still being used today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tQ7pNV_Mo This video was used to help lighten up my research. It is about various psychologists, and while it spends hardly any time on one specific person, it is a nice visual about them. I didn't use it much except for the visual break.
I chose to research Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve because I became more interested in how it is used presently in class on Tuesday. Ebbinghaus fits into the chapter because he was an early psychologist studying complex operations of the brain and not philosophy. I am interested in learning more about the forgetting curve because as a teacher I want my students to learn and remember what I have to teach them.
Today we use the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve to understand how the human mind learns and remembers information. For example it is harder for the brain to learn new information that has no relevance or meaning to the learner. In education we are taught to make learning relevant to students as a way to motivate their learning. Lecture or one way conversation is one example of “drill and kill” which isn’t the most effective method of teaching if the goal is retention. A good example of this can be seen in a clip from the movie "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off."
Another important aspect of learning learned from Ebbinghaus is learning takes time: Retention is increased when learning takes place over time. This makes sense as a teacher I would never test my students the day after introducing a topic. When introducing a new topic to students it is important to go over that topic multiple times. This leads to Ebbinghaus’ theory that learning is easier and takes longer to forget the second time it is taught. In teaching we use this too; we review important concepts before moving to more complex material. The biggest example of how teachers use Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve can be seen during the beginning of the year when teachers have to review concepts from the previous grade level before starting new instruction.
Without repeat instruction, normally students will remember about 50% of the information after three weeks from first learning. Reviewing twice in three weeks increases one’s retention to about 70%. However overtime we will still forget at the same rate. However some evidence shows reviewing that is done within 24 hours for just ten minutes can increase retention to near 100% and subsequent review only takes 2-5 minutes to achieve the same results.
From Ebbinghaus’ research others have continued to look at memory. One such researcher is John Medina. Based on Ebbinghaus’ studies Medina found the average human brain can hold seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds and if that information isn’t used the memory is gone.
I found the information on Ebbinghaus to be interesting and relevant to my career, which is why I chose to research him further. Even though I didn’t know about the learning curve before this week I did know students, and people, forget without meaningful connections or review. Knowing more about Ebbinghaus will help me as a future educator.
http://helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve I used this URL as a summation of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and learning. There was information on how making learning meaningful and reviewing increases retention.
http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-ebbinghaus-curve-of-forgetting
I used this URL for learning about the rates which we forget and how review and connections affect learning in the long run.
http://www.elearningcouncil.com/content/overcoming-ebbinghaus-curve-how-soon-we-forget
I used this site for information on how retention can be increased with daily review.
http://stuff4educators.com/index.php?p=1_13_Long-term-Memory
I used this site to relate some of the memory to teaching strategies; such as the lecture and short-term memory information. Also meaningful instruction was mentioned in this site, but it was similar to previous sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxPVyieptwA
This clip illustrates how “kill and drill” instruction isn’t meaningful to students learning and how retention is almost impossible in the long run.
I chose to read about Ebbinghaus and forgetting, which was discussed in the chapter (“The Experimental Study of Memory”). I’ve never had a terrific memory, and it is certainly much worse now. It is disturbing to realize how little I recall from my undergrad studies; and as far as picking someone out of a police line-up? Forget about it (ha ha). So I am curious to understand the process of forgetting - the how and why of it - so that maybe I can actually improve my recall skills.
The articles that I read primarily discussed Ebbinghaus’ experiments with forgetting. He created a master list of 2300 ‘meaningless’ consonant-vowel-consonant letter combinations, and he would memorize groups of these combinations in order to test his recall over time. He concluded that a person’s recall drops sharply after 20 minutes; about half of the information is lost after an hour; and about two-thirds of the information is lost after a day. He elaborated on the recall process with the serial-position curve, which describes how we are more likely to remember the first items on a list (the primacy effect) - because we repeat them more times - and the last items on the list (the recency effect) - because they are the freshest in our minds.
I can see where he’s going with this, but it’s interesting how we have read that the Empiricists put such emphasis on association, and here Ebbinghaus has decided to base his memory experiments on lists of meaningless syllables for the precise reason that they have no associations connected with them. I understand that he was trying to investigate the roots of ‘pure’ memory, but it makes me wonder if this is really an accurate measure of how memory actually works, since we do rely on association to bolster our recall of information.
The "Employee Retention” video was interesting in that it discussed how to understand and apply the principles behind the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve to improve your audience’s information-retention after presentations. I think that this would be especially helpful when putting together PowerPoint presentations. It’s interesting to see how you can use this kind of material in ‘real life’.
Something else that I thought was interesting from the Wikipedia article was that Ebbinghaus was “also largely credited with drafting the first standard research report… [arranging] his research into four sections: the introduction, the methods, the results, and a discussion section.” This is just one of those things that seems so logical and straightforward that we take it for granted now, but it goes to show you just how cutting-edge these guys were at the time: they had to invent writing papers, for * sake.
“Hermann Ebbinghaus - Contributions to Memory”, Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus#Contributions_to_memory
Together with the chapter, this seemed like a fairly concise explanation of Ebbinghaus’ memory/forgetting/learning experiments.
“Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve: The Theory of Memory”, Brittany Olivarez, 09/24/10
http://helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve
An introductory description of Ebbinghaus’ experiments; not very thorough, but a handy overview.
“Ebbinghaus”, uploaded by kaninepete on 06/11/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPTQmRRPSQ
Another general description of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve experiments.
"Employee Retention & The Forgetting Curve", uploaded by ProfessionalDevlpmnt on 10/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCiyy6bAZJk&NR=1
Applied use of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve.
How do I know that your experience of an event is the same as mine? Interesting question. It was probably a question that Wundt asked himself many times. It was because of these questions that Wundt is generally known as the founder of experimental psychology. Wundt created the first laboratory of experimental psychology. It was located at the University of Leipzig. It was within these rooms, as well as his own private laboratories, that Wundt studied the scientific examination of the human conscious experience. One of his books, entitled Contributions to a Theory of Sensory Perception, was of great interest to me. Our textbook states that Wundt broke down the human conscious experience into two parts: the examination of "immediate" conscious experience using the experimental methods of the labratory and the study of higher mental processes, using nonlaboratory methods.
Our textbook gave the example of stepping outside and reading a thermometer as "mediate" experience, in terms of weather, or going outside and feeling the temperature ourselves, defined as immediate conscious experience.
While reading about Wundt and conscious experience, I was reminded of a test question that was recently on my exam in Organizational Psychology. The question was something like this: An organizational psychologist is asked to conduct a survey regarding how well employees manage their time without direct supervision of a manager. To aid in their research, the organizational psychologist was given a list of employees who attended a time managment workshop. The answer to this question was that the survey was contaminated. Contamination refers to the fact that other information was provided, therefore other things besides the concept are being measured. In relation to Wundt and the example of temperature, I kept thinking "mediate" experiences can be contaminated. If someone asked me if it was cold outside and I walked out the door to find out, I would be using my direct experience of coldness to answer their question. The answer would be bias to my opinion of course, but it wouldn't be contaminated with the number on the thermometer. The thermometer on my porch could be off by a few degrees. So I ask myself, what is the better way to measure temperature or anything for that matter? With a bias opinion involving self-observation or a mediated measure that could be consistently inaccurate? Hmmmm....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (as much as I don't like using Wikipedia as a resource, this site did help me in fully understanding the definition of introspection)
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/wundt.shtml (this site had great info about some of Wundt's ideas)
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm (this site went into more detail about perception and sensory than our textbook did)
I am choosing to look more into Wundt's concepts of Conscious experience and Internal Perceptions. This fits into the chapter because it helps paint a picture of how exactly Wundt contributed to the field of psychology and what effects he had. I also feel like this part of the chapter relates back to one of the last chapters when dealing with individual's memory and how perception changes from person to person. One thing that I was unaware of that the book brought up was the whole concept of intermediate and mediate expereinces. The book gave examples of reading a thermometer to see how cold is (mediate), vs simply walking outside without a coat you have a direct(immediate) reaction to the surroundings. When we perceive emotions attached to a series of actions or a memory directly it is accurate to label them as an Internal Perception because they happen immediately. It was interesting to read that usually the emotion comes first(immediately) then after it has passes the subject will try to analyze or understand where that mood came from, either from a present experience or a vivid past memory. I also was curious as to what would happen if someone lost parts of their memory and therefore could not "re-live" some of those moments/ feelings over in their head. I know there are certain memories in my head that I hope to remember forever because of the way they made me feel at that time, however, there are also some memories that are less fun and wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to forget. Because more than one person can view the thermometer and see exactly how cold it is this is a mediate experience, the same thing can be said fro driving in a car on the highway both people can see the speedometer to know how fast the car is moving. But what if there were no indicators like that ? Obviously some peoples perception of what is happening would differ significantly, just ask anybody who gets yelled at for driving to fast or listening to music to loud. Everybody would do things at a level that they themselves deemed appropriate. This could be an interesting concept but would probably end in some sort of chaos or at least heated disagreements. I find this interesting because I doubt we realize just how often we depend on mediate experiences everyday. Things like time, temperature in the house, and tv volume are all represented by some sort of scale to help us all get along, otherwise we could be at the mercy of the big bad wolf who things the house "feels" too cold at 75 degrees and wants to turn it up.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen06/gen06327.htm: I realize that this website is on a question-answer format, but i don't feel like that works totally against them. Sometimes those websites can give me exactly the answer i was looking for and I feel like this was the case here. I explains just how different perceptions between people can be and why. It covers a lot of ground without turning the reader off with a bunch of technological mumbo jumbo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1nvvaWX4gk: This is a scene from one of my favorite movies where the two men are discussing memory vs facts around the 44 second mark. This really ties into what we have been reading, but we discussed it a lot more last week, and I have found myself coming back to it more and more lately. I think it makes some very valid points that I didn't really think about until i saw this movie(Memento).
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/knowledge/clarify_perceptions.htm I used this website because it gave good base information and then began to clarify what it was trying to say in more simply words and gave real world examples that help to relate the information we are reading into reality.
One of the things that I had an interest in was Ernst Weber's second contribution, "muscle sense." I thought this was a topic that I related most to in the chapter. It relates to this chapter because Ernst Weber is one of the more popular German physiologists. Along with many other talented individuals at the University of Leipzig, Ernst demonstrated his abilities through is his contributions of the "muscle sense" and the two-point threshold. I am very interested in the "muscle sense" or what we call today, kinesthesis. I enjoy lifting weights and pushing my body to new levels of athleticism. I want to jump higher and run faster. I love to train myself to become a better athlete. I think Weber's "muscle sense" would be very interesting to research to see how sensitive muscles are.
Early on in Weber's career he began studying material involved with our sense of touch. He was interested in working with tactile senses, two-point threshold, and weight perception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
I chose this site because it gave more background to Ernst Weber. It provided more insight to his all of his contributions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-noticeable_difference
I chose this site because it branches off from the first site. I thought this demonstrated how one of his laws works.
One of the things that I had an interest in was Ernst Weber's second contribution, "muscle sense." I thought this was a topic that I related most to in the chapter. It relates to this chapter because Ernst Weber is one of the more popular German physiologists. Along with many other talented individuals at the University of Leipzig, Ernst demonstrated his abilities through is his contributions of the "muscle sense" and the two-point threshold. I am very interested in the "muscle sense" or what we call today, kinesthesis. I enjoy lifting weights and pushing my body to new levels of athleticism. I want to jump higher and run faster. I love to train myself to become a better athlete. I think Weber's "muscle sense" would be very interesting to research to see how sensitive muscles are.
Early on in Weber's career he began studying material involved with our sense of touch. He was interested in working with tactile senses, two-point threshold, and weight perception. I found it fascinating how Weber took his subjects and had them lift a certain amount of weight. Some of the subjects were able to notice a difference of a weight but could not notice the difference on another weight. If the weight lifted after the previous was too light then there wasn't a noticeable difference. If it was too heavy then there was a noticeable difference.
Weber took this data and was able to come up with a science to illustrate the jnd or just-noticeable difference. His contribution has had an impact not only in the laboratory but in gyms around the world. I have always wondered why they do not make dumbbells in every pound. Instead they go up by 2.5 lbs., or 5 lbs. Usually the lighter dumbbells go up by 2.5. Lbs. and the heavier dumbbells go up by 5 lbs. This makes total sense now. When I lift a 90 pound dumbbell it obviously feels very heavy. If I were to lift a 91 pound dumbbell I don't know if I would be able to tell a difference. However if it were a 95 pound dumbbell I would notice a total change in weight.
Something else that is very unique with this is Weber conducted more experiments not just with weights but with other materials that we identify with our other senses. One example is our eyes. Some lights in buildings use a knob to adjust the brightness. Weber was able to come up with a science to illustrate how much light our retinas can take in before having to adjust in size due to the light being too bright or too dark.
This was very interesting to study and something neat to mess around with to find out if you can notice just the slightest differences in change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
I chose this site because it gave more background to Ernst Weber. It provided more insight to his all of his contributions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-noticeable_difference
I chose this site because it branches off from the first site. I thought this demonstrated how one of his laws works.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
I chose this site because I feel a biography is the best way to learn more about a single individual.
Since many people have researched the topic I found interesting Ebbinghaus’ memory curve studies, I decided to look more into something else that interested me more, the study of savants which we talked about in class on Tuesday. In the video we watched there was a device called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. It focuses on the electrical connections that run through the brain controlling everything we do. The study in the movie was done to see if applying TMS to certain parts of the brain would interfere with the connections.
Professor Walsh, as seen in the video focused his experiments and studies on the language part of the brain. This is probably done a lot for example purposes because it is something that can be easily shown. In the clip he says humpty dumpty. When TMS is applied to the area of language he stutters and can’t finish his sentence, but when it is removed he can talk normally. An interesting part of the video was that he could still sing without real hesitation because singing is controlled in a different part of the brain. We can use this to help many people with problems they have to deal with a broad range, from migraines to depression. The more we can learn and understand, as we have learned from past psychologists, the better we can help improve our lives.
Through the study of the affects of TMS we have learned more about other syndromes, such as savantism. According to Wikipedia savant syndrome is defined as “is a rare condition in which people with developmental disorder have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations”. Many people with this syndrome have mental disabilities or autism. I think it’s incredible that out of these tough situations they are in, they have these amazing abilities. I’ve learned about this in my music of psychology class, one of the savants that we learned about had severe brain damage that happened after an unfortunate accident. He had almost no ability to form new memory, but he could recall any piece of music that he had ever played. Also the famous movie, Rain Man about a savant named Kim Peek. He had remarkable talent and yet people wanted to send him to a mental institution. Is it through our jealous and inability to deal with this that we immediately disregard any talent that someone like Peek has and shun them out of society? If we all can tap into our savant-like powers somehow then how could we judge them?
Snyder believes that he can summon our savantian powers. Using TMS he can turn off certain parts of the brain, which will enhance another part of his brain. In the video he turns off the higher thinking part of the brain so now it can focus on the closer details of things. By freeing up one area of the brain, another part takes over. Unfortunately this doesn’t last for very long, merely only an hour. In the experiment the participants improved greatly only many creativity tasks that savants are typically very good at. Would it someday be possible to unleash our inner-savant powers all the time? What else is our brain capable of that we don’t know about yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJtNPqCj-iA: Gives general information about TMS and it in action on the brain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2l1lPFMJvg&feature=related: Showed how TMS can activate savant like powers in normal humans for a period of time by inhibiting a certain part.
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks: had an example of a musical savant
http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/misc/kimpeek.html: Showed you the development of a Kim Peek or Rain Man.
Aside from being quite a handsome man, Gustav Fechner's main claim to fame is being one of the founders of modern experimental psychology. Aside from Wundt and Helmholtz, Fechner just might be the most important person to qualify psychology as a science known to us today. It is for this reason that I chose to research him. Fechner was discussed in this chapter of the textbook, but not in too much detail. He was mentioned in passing, as was his Elements of Psychophysics; however, I wanted to know more.
Born in Germany, Fechner was the main founder of psychophysics. He is perhaps known best for demonstrating the relationship between psychological sensation and the intensity of a stimulus. One of his most interesting discoveries was that bodily and conscious facts are different sides of one reality.
Fechner is also known for studying what we call today "the Fechner color effect," when colors are seen in a moving pattern of black and white. Interestingly enough, it was while studying color and vision that Fechner suffered an eye infection and had to resign from his research.
More importantly, it was Fechner who attempted to resolve the mind-body problem with psychophysics. We also have him to thank for discriminating between absolute/difference thresholds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Fechner
This website was about Fechner's past and contributions to psychology.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Consciousness.html
This was mainly about the mind-body problem and how Fechner sought to resolve it.
http://dogfeathers.com/java/fechner.html
This is a good example of one of Fechner's "color illusions."
The topic I have chosen is the relationship between pain stimulus and the response in the brain. This relates to the discussion and videos from class on Tuesday and is related to earlier studies that were introduced in chapter four. I am interested in this subject because I have a family member who suffers from a chronic pain disorder and I curious as to see if this type of therapy is used to treat that disorder.
Most of the website I came across discuss the benefits of this type of therapy the pros and cons and what it can be used to treat it for. Many of the websites were generic and it was hard to find an reputable, solid or educational research based reports on the extent of how effective this treatment is. A variety of sources expressed the difficult in discovering weather the therapy actually worked because of the double blind studies and the fact that psychologically a placebo could give an individual a sense or thought that maybe it did work an they were feeling better even though they were not treated be a magnetic shock. An example of this would be the video we watched on Tuesday in class.
Many of the sources I come across are various forms of health devices that can be administered at home to treat certain chronic pain conditions. Its devices like these that give the appearance of a get better fast hoax that doesn’t really work. While this may not be the case for everyone and may just be the crutch needed to give the person the psychological boost to change their mind set when reacting to pain.
Another source show TMS as a last chance for recovery or treatment for depression and chronic pain problems when medication and extensive counseling and other therapy does not work. This TMS therapy can work for some and they respond well to treatment. For some the treatment does not work. I find this topic extremely interesting and I hope that for the people who do not respond to the TMS therapy that psychologists and related fields find a way to improve on this method to help better the lives of individuals who need something more innovative than medication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_therapy I chose this source as a way to gain a basic overview of the topic and to see what sources where used to write this page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation I used this source as well because it was a linking information source from the above source. This gave a great background information and provided links to a large amount of sites selling at home magnetic therapy devices.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/10/13/last-chance-therapy-for-depression/3119.html This website provided information and news on upcoming developments in psychology and TMS studies.
I chose to do some more research on Wundt because he not only is known as the father of experimental psychology, but also because he had a huge influence on psychology as a discipline in the United States. In reading some more about him I found out he was very shy and reserved in public which is surprising with how aggressive he is in all of his work. He was very driven and focused. I also find it interesting how his work spans so many disciplines, not just psychology, but also physiology and philosophy. He concentrated much of his work on sensation, and said this was the medium between the physical and the psychic. He writes, it is a “fact of inner experience” that“every sensation possesses a certain intensity with respect to which it may be compared to other sensations, especially those of similar quality.” After reading some of this about Wundt and Sensation and perception, it makes me want to take that class next semester.
Brief overview of Wundt
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#WunIndPsy
Description of the work and schools of thought of Wundt, nice to hear something, not just read. How to see sensations and perceptions together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9teOvBIDaeE
Good comparison between Wilhelm Wundt & William James
Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founders of psychology’s first two great “schools.” Although they were very different men, there are some parallels: Their lives overlap, for example, with Wilhelm Wundt born in 1832 and dying in 1920, while William James was born ten years later and died ten years earlier. Both have claims to having established the first psychology lab in 1875. And neither named his school. As you will see, there are other commonalities as well, personal and philosophical.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
Breakdown of the William James award given to Wundt.
http://www.efpa.eu/awards/wilhelm-wundt-william-james-award
Herman Ebbinghaus was a psychologist that studied memory. He had many studies that made him famous. Like others have went into more depth about forgetting, or just researching more about him. I was interested in about the nonsense syllables and serial learning without those two important parts of memory we wouldn't know how to sound out words we don't know, and serial learning is the associations of the elements in a fixed sequence easier to remember lists and numbers in a sequence. To remember phone numbers and lists is easier in a sequence then it is just sitting in front of you.
The social learning aspect of Ebbinghaus's was supposed to be just to remember quick serial numbers in less than 10 seconds. Many learners can recall numbers in the beginning of a list and at the end and the middle numbers are harder to recall. For example a phone number of 515-965-8876, many would like at the series of number and just in ten seconds would remember it starts with 515 and ends in 76 the other numbers are harder to recall.
Nonsense syllables were three letter unit of RIY, TPR, and other three unit syllables. Ebbinghaus used these nonsense syllables to study because no one has studied them before, but found out that when other people tried to memorize the syllables the three unit words would make into actual or made up words. Ebbinghaus memorized over 2,000 nonsense syllables, and each syllable was a trial unitl he wanted to try to memorize and use the serial learning effect to memorize the syllables.
Ebbinghaus's experiment of memory using nonsense syllables, and serial learning was just one of the methods that were used for recalling memory.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0003/ai_2699000311/ - this website just gave background information about serial learning and how we use it today with lists of numbers.
http://memory.psych.upenn.edu/files/pubs/AddiKaha04.pdf - this pdf file was more about serial learning and more into detail from an actual schloraly source.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch06_memory/ebbinghaus.html- this site helped me understand and use examples of nonsense syllables and how Ebbinghaus used them to experiment with memory.
I also found Ebbinghaus's memory studies interesting, but I decided to research more on G.E Muller and his experimental influence and life. I was interested in Muller and his ideas because I have never heard of him, and it seemed to me he had many contributions that helped move psychology forward. Muller is important to learning the history of psychology because he helped move the science ahead, and make it more scientific with his experiments and findings. Muller spent a majority of his life focusing on experimental psychology. Muller wasn't known as well as other psychologists because not a lot of his work was translated into English and he did not like putting his name on his findings and work.
Muller was a hidden second in German Psychology and still not a lot is known. What is known is Muller started his career out at teaching and climbing the university ladder attracting students who were most interested in experimental psychology. Muller had four main areas psychophysics, thought psychology, color theory and memory. Ebbinghaus was overemphasized for his theory on memory (according to a couple sources) and he only did research from 1883-1884 and than published his results, Muller focused on the memory drum and other important theories influenced by Herbert. Muller also found about retroactive inhibition that new thoughts can interfere with other thoughts, which interfered with the interference theory of forgetting in the 60's.
In the 1950's Muller's work started to unfold and many psychologists started to find his experiements and ideas useful and under appreciated. Muller was a very important figure to the evolvement of psychology, especially experimental psychology.
http://web.sau.edu/WaterStreetMaryA/george_e_mueller.htm
This websit had an overview of Muller and his findings and why there isnt much on him in American textbooks.
http://chss-dev.montclair.edu/psychology/haupt/shaper2a.html
This website was my main source of information. It talked about all of his ideas, experiments, findings, and why he wasn't as recognized as others.
http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/6/2/77.full
This website had a lot of Muller and Pilzecker's expeirments and findings on memory
From our discussion in class today, I found myself extremely interested in the human memory curve. The book tells us about the first person who really did studies on memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus. His studies were very intuitive and really caught my attention. I myself have always had a hard time remembering things, it has actually hurt relationships of mine because I am so terrible at it. Upon researching more about Ebbinghaus's memory curve, I found what people are calling "holistic learning". Holistic learning is to help one engage into what they are learning and help retain information, instead of simply memorizing information. Looking at the drastic forgetting curve illustrated in a graph on one of my cites, Ebbinghaus found that after learning something, one will start to forget the information drastically just minutes after retaining it. After reading about these studies, I asked myself, "how can I overcome this forgetting curve?". This is when I came across Holistic learning. This is not your average memorization cycle (cram, take test, forget), it is the act of repetition and connection. Studies have shown that if you look over your notes and read things in repetition, you are more likely to retain the information in your long term memory. Also, there is a strong relationship with connecting what you are learning to things you already know. You are more likely to remember, when you can tie new information in with something you are already familiar with.
http://helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve -- This is a good overview of Ebbinghaus's study on the forgetting curve.
http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-ebbinghaus-curve-of-forgetting -- For the visual learners, here are great graphs of Ebbinghaus's studies.
http://www.jwelford.demon.co.uk/brainwaremap/holist.html -- This is a nice overview of what holistic learning is.
http://www.scotthyoung.com/lmslvidcourse_partner/index.html -- Here is an actual cite of a guy who has created a course on holistic learning, if anyone is interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic_education -- Don't hate on good-old wikipedia. This gives great incite on holistic learning.
I chose to do my topical blog on Hermann Ebbinghaus and his study of memory in developing the forgetting curve. It fits into the chapter because it was one of the main components of the chapter and still holds true today. Even after a hundred years his research is still applicaple, something that the scientists of early precursors to psychology cannot say the same thing about. I find it interesting because it still is in use today and after looking on youtube people refer to the forgetting curve all the time. It has applicability not just in learning for school, but also in the workplace from something your boss tells you or a presentation you attended. It has applicability everywhere and it can help everyone remember and learn more because of it.
Ebbinghaus created the forgetting curve which measured how people remember information, and the results of it were pretty surprising. Ebbinghaus came up with the measurements and curve all the way back in 1885. Herman Ebbinghaus developed the first forgetting curve by creating a list of non-sense syllables constructed of the letter pattern consonant vowel consonant, such as CAJ, that have no meaning. Ebbinghaus wrote lists of 20 of these syllables and proceeded to memorize them. He memorized these items by reading an item and then saying it to himself, then moving on to the next item. When he was developing the curve and having himself memorize lists he would try to have them be more of sounds than actual words. A complete run through the list was considered a single repetition. The more repetitions he completed the better he could recall the items. This occurred rapidly at first and gradually slowed until he had the list mastered. This was the first learning curve. Following this learning curve he decided to test his rememberance ability. After he could recite the list two times perfectly, he waited varying lengths of time and checked how well he was able to recall the items. The rate of forgetting occurred rapidly at first, then slowed until fewer and fewer items could be recalled. This became the first forgetting curve. After the information is learned or presented a person's immediate recall is 100 percent, but because people's short-term memory is only a few seconds it starts to decline dramatically. After 20 minutes a person only recalls 60 percent of the material, after an hour it declines to 40 percent, and after 9 hours it lowers to 30 percent. After two days or more the curve basically stagnates at around a mere 20 percent of the original information. The forgetting curve is particularly important for college students who sit in lectures and take notes for much of the day so it demonstrates the importance of reviewing ones notes soon after leaving class. Ebbinghaus created various tests of retention such as free recall, serial recall, recollection, and savings. Free recall is reciting the syllables in no specific order and serial recall was reciting the items in the order they were studied. For recollection, he made a large list of syllables and attempted to pick out which ones were in the studied list. His savings test requires a person to rememorize a list after a period of time and compare the times it takes to rememorize the list to the first time memorizing the list. Another interesting item of research Ebbinghaus came up with was the serial position effect. In the serial position effect Ebbinghaus found that in trying to remember a list of random words, a person is more likely to remember the first couple words of the list and the last couple words of the list. The first couple of words remembered are held by the primacy effect in which when a person tries to memorize a list they start by saying the first word once than moving onto the second word they say the first word again followed by the second word so now they have said the first word twice and the second only once. When the third word is added it continues in the same format with repeating the first word for a third time, the second word for a second time, and than the third word for the first time. It continues on in the same effect and explains why the first few words are much more likely to be remembered because it is said so many more times in a person's head. The recency effect is simple and means that since it is the last word said it is easy to recall right after because it is the last word we say. If the serial position effect is analyzed in a graph form it forms a 'u' shape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjAXlDBQuts- While this video is fairly jank, it gives the basic elements and data from Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve while also stressing the importance of reviewing material and notes that student's learn in class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPTQmRRPSQ- While this video is also fairly jank the narrator does a nice job of explaining the forgetting curve as well as the serial position effect while drawing graphs and making figures on the board.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html I chose this website because it gave a concise and easy to understand summary of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve and tests of retention.
I thought that Gustav Fechner was a pretty interesting guy. But instead of doing a report on him I thought I’d do something with afterimages. Fechner went through a lot while studying his theory so I thought that this topic has worth a second look.
Afterimages can also be known, or called optical illusions. Just like an optical illusion an after image will appear as the image in which you have just looked after it has disappeared. Basically, after starring at an image for a certain amount of time you would continue to see it when you closed your eyes. Afterimages are known to have two different forms, a positive and a negative.
There isn’t much known about the positive form other than it retains original color. The negative form however, is the most researched and the well-known part. What we do know about the negative form is that it cannot transfer an image from eye to eye. The reason why is because the image lies in the retina area instead of the visual cortex.
An afterimage can have different sizes. They can be small or they can be big images. The size all depends on how big the image is in the retina and the distance, far or up close to the image. The interesting part about this is that the size its self does not change, the only thing that changes is the interpretation of the size.
What is the best way to see an afterimage? Look at something bright, preferably not the sun. After looking at a light you may start to see something as you turn or look away from it. So how does the afterimage come into play? When you look at a light or something bright, it will enter you eye. This creates a chemical change within the retina. Because our eyes are sensitive to bright things, the retina starts to desensitize. After this happens that retina doesn’t respond the best to new incoming light, this is what we now know as the negative form or the negative afterimage.
A man by the name of Ewald Hering did some research on afterimages and the brain. He took three pairs of primary colors: blue vs. yellow, black vs. white, and red vs. cyan. Cyan is a little blue (I had no idea what it was, so I had to look it up). This is where we came up with the opponent color theory. The theory states that the responses of one color will oppose the other color. For example, green will turn out looking like a shade of magenta. The littler the green color the weaker/liter the magenta color will be.
Alright, I saved the best for last. A British psychologist by the name of Kenneth Craik, most not have gotten the memo about Fechner and the dangers of the sun. This poor guy permanently scarred a part of his eye by burning a small hole in his retina. This happened because he looked into the sun for a period of time, which was two straight minutes. He was “attempting” to find out if there was a lesion in our eyes. After this event he started to see orange when he closed his eyes. When he opened them he seen a dark afterimage.
And that is my report on afterimages.
http://www.psychologie.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/afterimage.html --> this is where I learned of Kenneth Craik. That’s all I got form this website.
">http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/afterimage/index.html--> this is where I got most of my information. It was really helpful and I liked it.
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/after.html --> I found this image and thought it was pretty cool. I had to try it out. :)
http://www.worqx.com/color/after_image.htm --> this another image I found, it’s fitting for this topic
One topic that interested me most in this chapter was about the two-point threshold, a theory developed and tested by Ernst Weber. Weber was born in Germany on June 24, 1795. He studied medicine at Wittenberg University, but spent a majority of his academic career at the University of Leipzig, where he conducted most of his research.
At a time when most scientists were interested in visual and auditory stimuli, Weber was more interested in the other senses, specifically touch. He developed a test in which a small device with two points at the end, similar to a mathematical compass, was pressed against the skin of an individual. To run this test the person would not be looking at the two-pointed instrument and it would be pressed against the person’s skin; at first they would feel only one point. This test would continue on, the instrument’s points being moved further apart each time until the person being tested felt two points against their skin; this is the two-point threshold.
He repeated this test many times and found that the smallest two-point threshold on the body was on the tongue, with a mean of one millimeter. The largest two-point threshold Weber found was on the back with a mean measurement of sixty millimeters. The reason there is such a high difference between these two measurements is that the receptors on the tongue are packed much more closely together than those on the back. Another reason it takes a certain distance to detect the two points is that surrounding receptors are connected to different CNS neurons. The fingertips are another set of body parts in which the receptors are closely packed together (2-3 millimeters). This is because the fingertips are very important when it comes to the sense of touch.
http://books.google.com/books?id=iZwXnfYAo3oC&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=ernst+weber+two-point+threshold&source=bl&ots=cAdPqaiKNo&sig=SpvAu89ywPbaTDUv2bcLixzTbG4&hl=en&ei=OKR7TsTtGca1sQKRlZytAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ernst%20weber%20two-point%20threshold&f=false
I used this website for information on Weber and his findings and measurements on the two-point threshold.
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/twopt.html
I used this website to learn further on why we only feel one point when the points are so close together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
I used this website for information on Weber and the studies he was most known for.
With all these German psychologists filling up chapter 4, I wanted to research one of the Americans that was talked about, James McKeen Cattell. I know the Germans were the authorities at the time, but as a patriotic American, I was interesting in learning what Cattell had to say. I wanted to study his life, his contributions to psychology, and possibly any other non-psychological contributions he may have made to America.
James was born on May 25, 1860 in Easton, Pennsylvania to a prestigious family. He went to college at the age of 16 and earned many honors as a student. After receiving an M.A. from Lafayette College, he traveled to Germany to work under Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig. While in Leipzig, he and Wundt studied reaction time and intelligence. Something interesting I read was that he was unhappy with Wundt and often wrote home complaining about him. He mentioned in his letters that Wundt called him a “typical American” and did not respect him. Under Wundt, he was able to write a dissertation called Psychometric Investigation, which made him the first American to write a dissertation about the field of psychology.
He later returned to the United States, where he became a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He started a psychology lab, coined the term “mental tests,” and began the first intelligence testing. Unfortunately, his tests were discovered to be unreliable and were later replaced with the famous Alfred Binet’s intelligence tests.
He moved on to Columbia University to become the Department Head of Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. During his time at Columbia, he experimented with hashish and morphine, among other drugs, for personal and professional use. He was also outspoken about opposing America’s involvement in World War I, especially the use of a draft. His stance got him fired from Columbia. He later sued the university and got a pretty nice settlement from it.
Cattell’s contributions to psychology go much further than just in the laboratory. He was a major advocate in making psychology a highly regarded science. At his time, psychology was looked at as a pseudoscience or philosophy with a different name. He wanted to implicate a more quantitative method for psychological research similar to what the other sciences used. He was one of the first psychologists in America to stress the importance of quantification, ranking, and ratings. He also created and edited many psychology journals, including Psychological Review, American Naturalist, School and Society, and American Men of Science. He also bought Popular Science Monthly from Alexander Graham Bell and made it into the well-known journal today, Science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McKeen_Cattell - This website discusses the life and contributions of Cattell.
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/jcattell.shtml - This resource focuses on Cattell’s goal to make psychology a more respected science.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/cattell.htm - This source gives more information on the life of Cattell and gives a time line of his career.
I have decided to do research on Ernst Weber since I found him the most fascinating in chapter 4. The research and experiments that were performed by Weber is important to psychology and ties in with the chapter because he talks about thresholds, which is perceived through sensation and the mind. This is known as psychophysics, which by definition according to the book is "the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event ("psycho") and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived ("physics"). I was only mainly interested in this because I enjoyed sensory circles drawing, and because it was fun to do the threshold experiment on myself and a friend. While in elementary school I remember doing experiments with my friends where we would run our finger along ones arm and see if they can pinpoint exactly at which point our finger stops on their arm. It was always fun because we always got this wrong, and were surprised at how off our sense of touch was. It is just interesting to know where the basis behind this game originated from.
To start with, a little background information on Weber. Ernst Weber (1795-1878) spent most of his time at the University of Leipzig as a student first, and then began as a teacher or anatomy and physiology. Weber was born of 13 children in Germany.
Weber came up with the two-point threshold, the point where perception changes from feeing two different points on the skin in order to examine tactile sensitivity. Places such as the thumb or fingers are more sensitive than the arm. Weber believed that these thresholds resulted from different sizes of sensory areas, called sensory circles.
Weber’s second great contribution came from his interest in muscles. Weber wanted to know at which point a person could notice a different of weight during comparison. This became known as Weber’s Law. This experiment dealt with thresholds. Weber stated that if someone cannot distinguish between 30 and 31 grams, or between 30 and 32 grams, but can between 30 and 33 grams, then their threshold has been passed. This is known as the just noticeable difference. The formula given for this is jnd/S=K. According to Weber, "observers would notice a difference between 30 and 33 grams, but not between 60 and 63 grams. If the standard stimulus is 60 grams instead of 30, no difference can be detected until the second weight is at least 66 grams (3/30=6/60).If S=90 grams, the njd will be 9 grams. The jnd is proportional to the size of S". For example, the difference between 30 and 33 grams is 3. 3 would equal the jnd. The smaller of the weights which is 30 would equal S. In all, Weber states that these physical events can be related to the mind and how we perceive. Also, importantly Weber relates these events mathematically, hence, the formula above.
Weber is also known for his discoveries in anatomy, in particular sense organs. He worked with the ear, and certain senses such as pressure, temperature. Weber ended up retiring as professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig.
I have come to the conclusion that Weber is a very interesting person in which he can relate sensory to mental processes.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
This website gives background to Weber’s life, where he grew up and what his college and teaching years consisted of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
This website explains Weber more in the context of his sensory and mental perception experiments.
http://people.usd.edu/~schieber/coglab/WebersLaw.html
This website explains the just noticeable difference of Weber's Law more thoroughly than the book. It really works in better understanding it.
I tried to search for the Psychologisches Institut, by which I typed it in a search box. And I didn’t find much actually but I found a pleasant description of critical listening which I included in my links. I was very surprised because I never really thought much about the effects of war. I find it sad that libraries, schools, museums, and things are victims of war. I am very grateful to never have been in the same town as a bomb attack. My classmates and I watched a documentary about Andrew Carnegie, the super-rich corporation Carnegie Steel guy. Andrew Carnegie granddaughter talked about how Andrew Carnegie, who passed away a long time ago, would compare war to cannibalism. He believed that in a future someday war would be taboo as cannibalism is to us now-and-days. I thought that was a powerful analogy.
I then set out to find the difference between apperception and perception. I had the understanding and guess that apperception would be like a distorted perception. I found I was wrong.
Apperception is like a focused perception. Or “a perceived new experience in relation to the past.” Kind of like learned from our mistakes maybe. If that is the definition, when why would the word “apperception” be used a lot much more?? I would consider that I apperceive whenever I perceive. I did find references to Descartes and Kant.
I read a little more and found some examples of apperception. A child or person who has never seen snow before might experience snow fall and be mystified and call it sugar or white butterflies. I like the idea of apperception vs. perception. Apperception relates perception to other perception. Apperception is economic sense as we have to choose what information to keep and where to put it. Efficient information soaking process. We all have different apperception. Different appoints of view.
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/tt14.html nice article on apperception characteristics and examples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apperception wikipedia on apperception
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie wikipedia on Andrew Carnegie
The topic that I liked and found interesting in this chapter was the information about the works of William Wundt. I liked reading about his contribution to the start of experimentation in psychology and most importantly the aspect that he chose to measure was interesting.
It fits into the chapter as Wundt was the one who basically set up the first psychology lab and started the process of experimentation in psychology and this chapter is about how physics and experimentation was used in psychology. I was interested in this topic as I think Wundt is one of the most important figures in the field of psychology and is also the first psychologist and the founder of the first lab in psychology.
I found a lot of information about William Wundt on the internet. The main and the most important information I found about him was that Wundt was the founder of the school of Structuralism in psychology. Structuralism was basically the school of psychology that dealt with how consciousness contributes to our experience. He studied the subjective experience of a person. Wundt has also been credited for establishing the first laboratory in the field of psychology.
The next most discussed contributions of Wundt was the founder of the concept of internal perception as a way of studying ones conscious processes, he separated the philosophical meaning of introspection from internal perception. Internal perception was basically a systematic way of observing and explaining ones internal experiences by a trained pe
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Wundt.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
http://library.thinkquest.org/C005870/history/index.php?id=historyp1
I struggled with this assignment for some reason. Usually once I start writing one of these blogs, getting started is the hard part, but after that I usually can do just fine. However, this blog was hard for me to write. I think it’s because my three favorite things from the chapter were tricky to write about. I ended up choosing to write about the two point threshold. This initially interested me because I’m very interested in all of our five senses, including our sense of touch. The sense of touch is extremely important on many different levels. It first and foremost helps with survival and therefore evolution. Being able to sense temperature is crucial in order to survive and be healthy. Not only does touch help your physical health, but it also helps your emotional health. Having physical contact with humans helps maintaining an emotional balance. Touch is important on many different levels, so it’s interesting to see Weber breaking down this physical sense into a two point threshold. I found a cool website to try it out on your own. I tried it out on myself while writing my first blog and couldn’t do it, but I tried it with a friend and that helped out a lot. It was very interesting. My two point threshold was a bit closer together than hers. I don’t know what that means besides my sensory circles are smaller than Alicia’s. Speaking of sensory circles, in my search for articles on this topic, I found an amazing article about how they had given a robot hexagonal sensory receptors. The receptors are shaped like hexagons, that are five centimeter squares, and there are thirty-one total on the robot. Therefore, the robot’s two point threshold would be five centimeters! I wonder if Weber would have ever imagined that this principle of his would not only apply to humans, but to robots as well!
http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/nerves-twopoint-threshold/
This site gave me the idea to try the two point threshold experiment with someone else, rather than myself.
http://awnmuhammad1.hubpages.com/hub/The-Importance-of-Sense-of-Touch
This URL described multiple reasons why touch is so important.
http://www.gizmag.com/hexagonal-plate-robotic-skin/19072/
This was the website that contained the article on the robot with the sensitive skin.
James Mckeen Cattell is the focus of my research this week. Cattell is an America psychologist, so that was the first thing that made me want to focus on him. He also had audacity to call the work done in Wundt’s amateurish after spending years working there. This is what really made me want to learn more about who this man was. I believed that someone who would criticize some of “the great” Wilhelm Wundt work was bound to do some great things in their own life. In that aspect Cattell definitely did not disappoint.
James Mckeen Cattell was born in Easton Pennsylvania in 1860. At age sixteen Cattell went to college at Lafayette. He graduated from college at age twenty. In college he was most proficient in English literature and mathematics. This is unique for a man who would someday become the president of the APA and one of America’s leading psychologist.
Cattell who is called the first professor of psychology became interested in psychology in a unique way. He started off by experimenting with different types of drugs. He used these drugs in order to try and get into his own mind and understand things. Cattell did a lot of things that showed he was committed to learning through research. A lot of his research was done in the area of intelligence testing. The term mental testing was created by Cattell. Cattell was so infatuated with studying intelligence because he believed that this would help psychology be looked at in the same way as the other sciences.
Along with all of his contributions to the field Cattell was also a very outspoken man on societal issues. This did not always lead to good things for him. He was forced to leave his position at Columbia University for openly disagree with the government drafting young men for World War 1. Losing one job did not do much to hinder Cattell’s success. In the years to come he would found with others one of the largest mental testing firms in the United States.
James Mckeen Cattell was a very successful man. It seems that no mater what he chose to do he was able to able to be recognized for doing great things. Although I feel that his criticisms of Wundt were a little like biting the hand that feeds you, he did go on to great things for the field. The fact that he was an American makes all the things he did me a whole lot more to me also.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/James_McKeen_Cattell - great overview of his life and works
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/jcattell.shtml - talked about intelligence testing and what he wanted to gain from studying intelligence
http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/cattelltext.htm -talked about how he was at Penn (outspoken personality)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McKeen_Cattell - facts about his life
There were many parts of chapter four that struck my interest. Among the most fascinating to me was Hermann Ebbinghaus and the experimental study of memory. Anytime I see the word memory, it automatically grabs my attention. I find it amazing how our memory works and how easy we forget things without really realizing it.
Ebbinghaus’s work on nonsense syllables is a good example to show how meaningless syllables are easier to forget when we can’t relate them to anything. This also led to serial learning which required recall of words and putting them in the order they were presented. We did an activity like this in my psychology and law class, or something similar to it. We were read words and when asked to recall what we heard, many of us could only think of the beginning words and the ending words.
Ebbinghaus’s experiments lead him to the forgetting curve. He wanted to examine the effects of time on memory. According to Ebbinghaus, the level that we can recall information depends on the strength of our memory and the amount of time that has passed since learning. There are also two factors when it comes to retention, which are, repetition and quality of memory representation. The reason I found this so interesting and why I enjoyed the discussion in class is because his ideas are still used today. Professors are always trying to convince us to study and read the book so that way we can do well on our tests. Instead, we find ourselves at midnight the day of the exam to pull our notes out to look through them. This is not allowing enough time or enough resources to help the information remain in our memory. We lose it much faster and when we sit down for the exam it is harder for us to retain anything because of the simple fact we didn’t store it correctly in our memory. Maybe one of these days we’ll learn and take Ebbinghaus’s ideas seriously, we may be able to do better in our classes.
The effect of memory research was almost immediate. Ebbinghaus’s work on memory found its way to the U.S. sparking their interest to do more research on it. Another fascinating thing I found was unlike some past experiments in psychology, the reaction to Ebbinghaus’s work in his day was mostly positive. Ebbinghaus also created sentence completion exercises which were used in memory research, particularly in tapping into implicit memory. He also discovered an optical illusion- the Ebbinghaus Illusion-which is an illusion of relative size perception. I found these things interesting just because the book really emphasized his work on memory so finding additional discoveries made him that much more interesting to me. I think we could learn a lot from Ebbinghaus’s work because it is still very useful even in today’s world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPTQmRRPSQ : I liked this video because it gave more of a visual idea of Ebbinghaus’s work and it’s nice to be able to see examples and have it explained in more simple terms.
http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-ebbinghaus-curve-of-forgetting : I liked this website because it talked more about Ebbinghaus’s learning curve and ways to overcome it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus : I liked reading through this just because it talked about Ebbinghaus’s research on memory but it also gave more information that helped remind me that he was just a normal person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQeNBsIpAg0 : This video just showed the Ebbinghaus Illusion.
Ebbinghaus and his research on memory or more precisley on forgetting is very interesting because memory is such a hard concept to grasp, but it is a major part of every ones life. Memory/ forgetting is still not even fully understood, which is why I find it so interesting. Ebbinghaus contributed a lot to psychology and the knowledge of memory, and his work is still used today. I know I definitely fall in the forgetting curve everyday because I forget so many things, and if I don’t write it down I may forget to do it. I also find this interesting because I am a Peer Academic Advisor In Residence (PAIR) and one of my roles is to help teach study skills, and Ebbinghaus’s work is great for study strategies.
Humans have three types of memory, semantic, short-term, and long-term. Semantic memory involves stimuli that come in through the senses and then is put into short term memory. Short-term memory is about 7 pieces of information that are not solidified memories, so it is important to do that task or write it down right away. The last form is long term memory, which is information that is permanently stored such as remembering when Christmas is, or fond childhood memories. Ideally we would want most information to go into long term memory. Like when you sit through an hour long lecture it would be nice to remember everything perfectly so when the test came around the information would be there without needing to study. Unfortunately, for most people this is not reality, and we fall under Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve.
Ebbinghaus’s work is helpful to college students or any other type of student because it makes us aware of the rate we do forget things. To decrease the chances of forgetting it is good to review the information, especially right after learning it, because that is the time of the most rapid amount of forgetting. doing this can help the information be stored in long-term memory, which will be beneficial when a test comes, because the information will be able to be recalled. However, it reviewing class notes does not happen, we are not back to square one because re-learning information occurs at a faster rate than learning it for the first time.
Memory is such an interesting thing because it cannot be pinpointed to one spot in the brain, but is the combination of a lot of different parts of the brain. It is also interesting that information can be heard and retained for a short time, and then completely diasappear like we have never heard it before. There is still a lot of research to be done on memory, and it may always be a bit of a mystery, but Ebbinghaus’s research was a great launching point for many researchers to come.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus
http://helpingpsychology.com/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/human-cap/memory.html
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This was a tough chapter for me to write about. After much deliberation, I eventually decided to write this week's topical blog about Fechner and psychophysics.
Fechner was not only a scientist, but a mysticist as well. He was one of those researchers who disagreed with Helmholtz and others at the time over the materialist argument. Fechner believed in an immaterial aspect of consciousness. He contrasted what he called the "day view" of the world with the dreary "night view" of materialism.
This mysticism was one of the inspirations that led Fechner to invent psychophysics, which was essentially a study of the way minds (psycho) perceive environmental stimuli (physics). Essentially, I think he saw the interaction between minds and material as an enigma, and he wanted to know how it worked. Part of this involves asking questions like "how much stimulus does it take for a mind to perceive an environmental stimulus?", or "What is the time lag between stimulus and response?" Questions like these naturally lead to Fechner's research, and helped pave the way for a science of sensation and perception that is still strong today.
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Fechner.html
This site gave me a little background info about Fechner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Fechner
This wikipedia page gave me a lot more background info about Fechner
I thought this video was a cool way to look at pain perception. The guy ends up being wrong, since pain reception is a different process from heat reception, but he's still pretty spot on when it comes to the idea of thresholds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S21VW2u7U50&feature=relmfu
(Throughout my blog comment, I’m adding the links as I feel they best fit. It’s not that each paragraph comes from each source, but that I don't particularly care for having them at the bottom in no-man's land. I figure if I do it that way, it's self-explanatory as to how that link is relevant.)
I'm surprised that more people didn't research Fechner, but I guess that's better for me ;)
Gustav Fechner was the founder of the field of psychophysics. He seemed a bit odd in his techniques at times – nearly going blind by staring at the sun – but his research into the mind-body connection made me want to dig deeper.
One thing I learned was that Fechner was the first to survey synesthetes (people whose brains are “connected” in a way to stimulate two separate senses with only one sense being tested… for instance: smelling flowers whenever you see the letter R). Gustav studied people who sensed color when seeing letters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia, but due to the timing of the research (behaviorism was becoming popular), synesthesia was pushed to the backburner. It was considered too subjective to be meaningful.
(I found a video while researching this that is unrelated to Fechner but covers synesthesia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3DbScY8Ais&feature=player_embedded . Thought I’d share!)
Fechner believed that our minds carry on into the universe after our bodies no longer functioned (physical death), which led him to research the ways in which our minds and bodies are connected. He seemingly learned his lesson about subjectivity of some kinds of mind-body research because he began searching for an exact scientific measure of perception and sensation. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Consciousness.html Gustav used mathematical equations to describe his theory that differences in weight can be perceived only when the difference is a great enough contrast to the original weight. Or:
dp = k (dS/S)
I’m a physics and math geek, so I found that to be very interesting. I like the idea of the experimental k in that equation – that the constant needs to be found through lab testing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber-Fechner_law
I also liked that Fechner named his theories: Weber’s Law. (Or as people call it now: Weber-Fechner Law.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber-Fechner_law I wondered if that was a tribute to Weber since he contributed so much to the field through quantitative measuring of response to physical stimuli.
While reading about Fechner, I found a lot of references to his after-image research, but only to the part about him losing his sight from staring at the sun. I finally found a source explaining WHY he stared at the sun: it was because he’d found a link between the brightness of an image and the strength of the after-image. Thus, he concluded that the sun would give him the brightest after-image. As a fun little ending bit here, I found an after-image video to help illustrate the phenomenon. http://youtu.be/My4pLdHrokw
I wanted to do my research on Ernest Weber. I felt like the book did not say much about Weber himself but said more about the Two Point threshold. Also about the Weber’s law. My goal was to find more about Ernst Weber. This fits into the chapter because Ernst was part of the chapter and the book went into more deail about his work then anything about him.
Ernest Weber was born on June 24, 1795 in Wittenburg, Germany and died on January 26, 1878 in Leipzig, Germany. Weber was the third child of 13. His father was Michael Weber whom was a professor of theology. I did not find who is mother was , which is sad. Ernest Weber was a German physician who is considered to be one of the founders of experimental psychology.
Weber was able to learn Latin in secondary school, and then studied medicine in 1811 at the University of Wittenberg. Ernest from there received his doctor of medicine degree in 1815, which he specialized in comparative anatomy. Weber became a lecturer at the University of Leipzig in 1817 and was promoted to the professor of anatomy the following year. He remained at the University of Leipzig until his retirement. Weber was known for his studying in touch, pain, sight, hearing, taste, and smell. He was one of the first psychologists to experiment. Weber tested human subjects to discover how they actually reacted to physical stimuli. I found this to be very interesting because back in the days one was able to study on humans and now a days were are subjected to test on rats and mice.
When Weber did research he was very detailed. Weber was very well noted for his discoveries in anatomy. Weber was later down the road knows for the just noticeable difference, Weber’s Law, the two point threshold, the sensory circles. He became very well known, and before he passed away his brother and him discovered the inhibitory power of the vagus nerve.
I know that my point is short, this is because I did not successfully achieve what I wanted to. I wanted to talk about weber more in detail and still being able to stay away from all his achievements in-depth. I was hoping the I was able to find more about him in general and not so much on his studies and research.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/638544/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber\
http://www.enotes.com/psychology-resources/psychology-historical-overview
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
All of my sites were informational; this is because I was hoping to find detailed information about Weber himself and not so much about his work!
thursday
Today in the northeastern Iowa I heard that some Purina went faster than the speed of life. How do those scientists set that up that experiment?? Dog food travelling through time. So I looked up purina speed of light on the internet.
I eventually found out that I had heard Neutrino on the radio and the rest of the story about time travel and that crazy business. I heard all this commentary on how all of Einstein theories could be debunked and our children’s science text books would need to be replaced. Check it out.
I think sometimes of certain intellectuals as the “end all” to some potential knowledge. Darwin had a theory of evolution. I had a theory…I survived.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UyIUcF57js&feature=related
link to Dr. Brule's rules youtube for your health.
http://www.vpaf.uni.edu/pubsaf/crime_stats/cleryreport10.shtml
link to uni safety and security report, very interest much.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=neutrino&view=detail&id=2647236B4481735ED46E8E041EC52D24B856ACB0&first=31&qpvt=neutrino&FORM=IDFRIR
a picture of a neutron enchilada