What I would like you to do is to find a PERSON or TOPIC from chapter 9
that you are interested in and search the internet for material on that
PERSON or TOPIC. Please use 3 or more quality resources.If you did a
Person: Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would
like you to say WHO your PERSON is, b) how exactly HE OR SHE fits into
the chapter, and c) why you are interested in THIS PERSON. Next, I would
like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your
PERSON, 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.
If you did a Topic: Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say WHAT your TOPIC is, b) how exactly the TOPIC fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in THIS TOPIC. 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.
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.
If you did a Topic: Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say WHAT your TOPIC is, b) how exactly the TOPIC fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in THIS TOPIC. 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.
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.
Something I found most interesting from this chapter was Wolfgang Kohler and his experiments on learning and insight with apes. I have always been interested in animals and how they learn. Kohler fits into this chapter because its about Gestalt theories and how people/animals see things as a whole to find a solution. Kohler believed that in his experiment with the apes, that they would look at the entire picture and rearrange elements till they found a solution.
Kohler got his idea to start experimenting with apes and learning behaviors when he started to work in the Canary Islands on a research facility with apes. Kohler did many experiments with the apes and regarding their food but creating obstacles for the apes. One of his most famous was to see if the apes could figure out a way to reach food that was placed outside the cage. The ape had two sticks in the cage as well, each a too short length to use only one stick to reach the food. The apes had to strategize or in Kohler's way of seeing things, view the problem as a whole and figure out what pieces to put together to solve the probelm. The ape than figured out that if the two sticks were put together they could reach the food. There were other experiments as well. Such as using boxes to stand on to reach bananas, or use sticks to knock bananas down for a higher place. Cats and dogs were also used in some experiements but they did not respond like the apes. This is not saying that they are dumber than chimps. There were a couple of factors that may or may not have affected the experiments. The apes in Kohlers experiments knew their surroundings, it was their cage where they lived in. They knew the openings and where they can reach. They've had the chance to explore around. The ape was also given the advantage of watching the food fall outside the window, wheras the other animals just saw the food sitting outside their cage.
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/kohler.htm
I really like this website because they give detailed information on Kohler and his experiements as well as reasons why his experiment worked better with certain animals.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
This website gives good information on Kohlers background and Gestalt psychology as well
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm
This website had a information on Kohler and his apes, as well as pictures and more experiments that he did with his other time at the facility
I chose to write about Max Wertheimer. This person fits into the chapter because he is a founder and major contributor to Gestalt Psychology. Wertheimer was born in Czechoslovakia in 1880, he studied law at the University of Prague and then later went to University in Berlin. Around the time Hitler came to power in Germany Wertheimer arranged for his family to move to the United States. This was done through the U.S. Consulate and he accepted a teaching position in New York. Wertheimer was Jewish and I didn’t find much information on how his family was threatened around the time that Hitler came to power. I was interested in Wertheimer and his family to see how prominent they were in the Jewish committee and if this affected his work around the time of World War II. There was not a lot of information available on this person online.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Wertheimer I chose this sources because it provides a brief over view of his life and some minor details regarding his family.
http://allpsych.com/biographies/wertheimer.html - This informational biography focused on his contributions to psychology throughout his life.
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/max-wertheimer/ This was the most informational of biography websites found on line for this person. It had the most in depth information that supplemented the other two website information that was lacking.
I chose to do my review on Max Wertheimer for chapter nine. He fits into the chapter as one of the founding members of Gestalt psychology and for some of his theories to go along with this science. I am interested in him as a psychologist because of how he founded this new way of how the mind perceives but also how he was able to apply it to productive thinking.
Wertheimer was born in Prague in 1880 where later in life he would go on to study psychology, philosophy, and physiology at the University of Prague. After receiving his doctorate he worked together with Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler to develop the beginnings of the Gestalt theory of psychology. He served as a professor in Frankfurt for several years. He then traveled to the United States and taught in New York City. He finished his theory on productive thinking in 1943.
Of the three early Gestalt theorists Wertheimer was the center. They worked to develop the idea of how something becomes organized as a meaningful whole. Wertheimer as a researcher was very interested in problem solving. The idea of this theory was to group stimuli in order to perceive an event or interpret a problem. There were four categories for grouping phenomena, proximity phenomena that are close together are often perceived together, similarity objects that are similar are grouped together, closure where similar elements complete each other’s shapes, and simplicity where simple objects are grouped together.
Wertheimer’s other recognizable theory is the theory of productive thinking. The Productive thinking theory focuses on how people who are learning group and recognize certain situations. The theory also focuses on the gestalt approach to how a problem needs to be analyzed in terms of how something is organized into a meaningful whole. This form of thinking also avoids random occurrences in information as well as summing successive information. Lastly this theory looks at how thinking should come to a sensible conclusion and that genuine thinking starts with a problem.
http://www.enotes.com/psychology-theories/wertheimer-max i used this link to gain background information and application of theory
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/gestalt/wertheimer.html i used this link to gain background knowledge of Wertheimer
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Max_Wertheimer i used this link to gain a good starting view of Wertheimer
I chose to write about Max Wertheimer, and he fits into that chapter because he is one of three men who helped to found Gestalt psychology. I am interested in this person because he was a Jewish intellectual whose career was threatened by the Nazi ideology that plagued Germany in the Years up to World War II.
Max Wertheimer was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1880 and died on October 12, 1943 in New Rochelle, New York. He was also Jewish, which is only mentioned, maybe as for one of the reasons for him to leave Europe. Wertheimer attended University in Prague and originally studied law, before then studying philosophy. He then studied at Universities in Berlin and Wurzberg, where in 1904 he eventually earned his doctorate. It is in the early 1900’s that Wertheimer did his famous experiments with the help of Koffka and Kohler. In 1923, as a professor in Berlin Max married Anna Caro, they eventually had four children. She was a physician’s daughter. They later divorced in 1942.
In the 1930’s & 40’s Wertheimer worked in Berlin and Frankfurt. Two of the website give some rather conflicting information on the specifics of where and when he taught in those specific locations. In around 1933 Wertheimer heard Hitler on the radio, and was concerned about living in a country with his family where Hitler and his ideologies were accepted. Wertheimer moved his family to Czechoslovakia. He soon realized that Hitler views were spreading. With the help of a U.S. Consulate Wertheimer moved his family to the New York area. He accepted a position with New School for Social Research in New York City and he joined its University in Exile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Wertheimer I chose this sources because it provides a brief over view of his life and some minor details regarding his family.
http://allpsych.com/biographies/wertheimer.html - This informational biography focused on his contributions to psychology throughout his life.
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/max-wertheimer/ This was the most informational of biography websites found on line for this person. It had the most in depth information that supplemented the other two website information that was lacking.
I chose to research the topic of the Zeigarnik effect. I found this section to be by far the most interesting concept in this chapter, and since it wasn't a very large portion, I decided I wanted to find out more about it. This fits into the chapter in that it was found inside the section on Kurt Lewin, a Gestalt psychologist who was the teacher of Bluma Zeigarnik herself.
Basically, the Zeigarnik effect can be described as the natural human tendency to experience intrusive, perhaps distracting, thoughts about a goal that was pursued but not yet achieved or completed. Although our minds may be focused on totally new goals, we are still somewhat fixated on that previous task that was left incomplete. This effect is evidence of our human nature to finish a task once it is started; if the task remains incomplete and the person is forced to begin a different task, they will experience some cognitive dissonance. This dissonance is taken care of only when the person returns to the previous task in order to finish it. Although the Zeigarnik effect is backed up by many different studies (plus, it seems pretty obvious, when you think about it), research has also found that motivation is also an influencing factor here. If the individual is not at all motivated or interested in finishing tasks once they are started, then the effect is basically a moot point. Memory also plays a huge role in this theory. Constant thoughts of such incomplete tasks cause it to remain in the memory for a longer amount of time; thus, thoughts of incomplete tasks must linger much longer in the memory than those of completed tasks.
Bluma Zeigarnik, a Russian psychologist,noticed this phenomenon in action when sitting in a restaurant in Vienna. She picked up on the fact that the waiters seemed to only remember the orders that were in the process of being served; once the orders were completed and brought to the table, the orders vanished from the waiters' memory. She decided to go back to the lab and test her theory; sure enough, after giving participants different tasks, she found that unfinished tasks remained in the memory much longer than completed ones. The participants seemed to want to continue with the previous tasks in order to finish them. Such results were replicated in other studies throughout the years.
Other research shows that the Zeigarnik effect can actually be a useful concept when trying to avoid procrastination. Since it is obvious that once a person starts something (no matter how small the start), the person will be inclined to finish it, regardless of distractions, the same rule will apply to students. Once you get part of a project underway, the rest tends to follow; however, this doesn't always apply to those who are totally unmotivated. But for most individuals, the first step of beginning a project will lead to the completion of a project, since we (as humans) usually don't like leaving things incomplete.
The Zeigarnik effect can also be used in other ways. For example, a popular technique for television writers is the "cliff hanger." The writers leave you hanging at the end of an episode, knowing that because of our human nature to finish something once it's started, we won't be able to resist tuning in. Such a technique is put into use by many different businesses: movies, TV shows, books, and advertising, just to name a few. Studies show that the Zeigarnik effect can also be used when attempting to make your home business a successful one. Such a thing is said to be a great marketing concept and quite effective.
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
This was a great psychological definition of the Zeigarnik effect. It described the concept and told about its history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAymFbPF5Kk
This was just a brief video about how to use the Zeigarnik effect in your home business. I just used it as an example of the many uses of the effect.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php
This was a GREAT little article about the origin of the Zeigarnik effect and its definition. It also gave many examples of how the effect is used in the media, as well as telling us how we can use it to our advantage.
I chose to look up information on the Zeigarnik effect. According to what I found, this is the idea that people will forget uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. For example, a waiter remembered the orders where he was not paid better than the normal ones where they were paid in full and with tip. I think this is true because at work I always seem to remember when I didn't finish something as opposed to everything else that I got done that day. This is related to us because it also applies to studying. Apparently students who stop focusing on what they intended to study and do something else like playing a game will remember playing the game more accurately than the information they were trying to study to begin with. Along with this it is important to note that it has an impact on all of us who tend to procrastinate until the last minute. A studied showed that it is much more beneficial for people to start on something small and work up to the bigger parts of the assignment, especially if you are confused about where to start it all from the beginning. all of the information that I gathered proved to be quite useful and diverse in regards to the overall topic, and I was pleased to learn that there are multiple ways that this Zeigarnik Effect could be used in the classroom by teachers as a new and innovative teaching tool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspense: This provided a good jumping off point for information, as well as providing me with two real world examples that made it very easy to explain the idea.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php: This was a cool website because it showed all the different ways that this Effect has been influenced and embraced by different types of people i.e. cliffhangers on shows like lost or a Novel by Charles Dickens.
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/04/05/what-is-the-zeigarnik-effect-how-did-i-apply-it-in-the-classroom-today/: This last website provided the least amount of actual information, but it was based more on application in life and in the classroom, which I think provides a nice supplement to the other articles.
I chose to research Wolfgang Kohler. I decided to research Kohler because he was in the espionage case during WWI and his experiment with apes. He fits into this chapter because he was also a founder of Gestalt Psychology.
Wolfgang Kohler was born in Reval, Estonia in 1887. His parents moved to Germany soon after his birth, since they were from a German decent. There wasn't a lot of information of Kohler's childhood. His family wanted academics in his life with his dad being a school master, and his sisters being nurses. Kohler earned his Ph.D. at a Berlin school between the years 1907-1909. Kohler married in his twenties and had four children with his wife. In his thirties he divorced his first wife and married a student, where he discovered he had a hand tremor. Working in Frankfurt, Germany with Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka they discovered the theory of Gestalt Psychology. Kohler had many contributions in the field of psychology especially the book about Gestalt Psychology, and his experiment with apes.
Kohler decided to test Thorndike's theory on animal behavior with the trial and error process. Kohler used dogs, cats, and chimps. Kohler used dogs, and cats first, and found out that placing food outside the dogs and cats ran right towards it instead of moving away from it. Kohler observed chimps on Canary Island. Kohler placed bananas outside the cage with two bamboo sticks in the cage, the chimps were supposed to use the solution to get the bananas in the cage. After his observation he learned that the chimps learned how to put the bamboo sticks together to get the bananas. Kohler also used the bananas on a roof, while the chimps had to figure out how to get the bananas. There were four chimps he used in his observation Sultan, Konsul, Grande, and Chica. Kohler chose chimps because their brains are like humans, and the intelligence of the apes.
The espionage case of Kohler was during WWI. He was on Canary Island, and that was owned by Spain. Kohler was being a German spy. After WWI Kohler still studied Gestalt Psychology until 1935 after Adolf Hitler came to power. Kohler wasn't Jewish, but Hitler wanted a new society with getting rid of the old people that knew a lot about science. Kohler fled to the United States, and continued to study Gestalt Psychology.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html- This website gave a lot of background information about Kohler's childhood, and early adulthood.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm#Theory- This website gave more detail about the theory of animal observation with the apes on Canary Island.
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/gestalt/kohler.html- This website gave detail about Gestalt Psychology.
I chose to look for more information on figure-ground separation because I find the images pertaining to the topic really fascinating. I think how our minds work to pick out what is important to look at is something that is difficult to understand but so interesting. This topic was discussed in chapter 9 as a Gestalt principle described by Edgar Rubin.
Figure-ground segregation is the perceptual tendency to separate whole figures from their backgrounds. Our minds separate the figure from the background based on many variables such as color, contrast, and size. The “figure” is defined as the part of the picture that we pay attention to. It is also called the “positive shape” in a composition. The “ground” is anything that is not the figure, or everything else that we do not pay attention to in a picture. It is also called the “negative shape.”
The figure and ground are inseparable entities, where the figure defines the ground and the ground defines the figure. Our minds can not physically see the figure and ground as two different figures either. A good way to illustrate this idea is to look at the famous Rubin vase, created by Edgar Rubin from chapter 9. This is called a reversible figure-ground, because there are two competing figures in the picture. Our minds can only see one of them at a time. One can either see a white vase (figure) with a black background (ground), or two black faces looking at each other (figure) with a white background (ground).
Many artists, photographers, and designers have used the figure-ground relationships to create optical illusions and creative depth images in their 2-Dimensional works. M.C. Escher, for example, has created many drawings with optical illusions, including Drawing Hands in 1948, Relativity in 1953, and Waterfall in 1961. All of these images are extremely mind-bending and fun to look at. The first video listed in the URLs has a lot more examples of the problem of figure-ground separation. The figure and ground compete with each other, where the figure should be the ground and the ground should be the figure. These “problems” result in the optical illusion our minds create.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u64HDXoKVM&feature=related - This video has a lot of great examples of figures using figure-ground organization. The last one on the video is pretty crazy, even though it doesn’t have much to do with figure-ground relationships.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgcJZSX5Sng - This video provides good information on figure-ground organization. It’s a little slow, but the text in the video was very informative. There are also some nice examples of figure-ground pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure%E2%80%93ground_%28perception%29 - This website has information on what figure-ground separation is, and how it is used.
http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~xren/research/eccv2006/ - This site has information on figure-ground relationships, and studies that have been performed on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher - This site talks about M.C. Escher’s works and his life.
I decided to look further into Wolfgang Kohler, one of few who contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology. The reason I chose Kohler was that I found his insight on apes study very interesting and wanted to learn more about that specific study and any others he may have contributed to. Kohler was born in Reval, Estonia in 1887 to a large family of German decent. Education was very important in his family, he received his education from the University of Tubingen, University of Bonn, and he received his PhD from the University of Berlin. He was married in his mid-twenties and had four children with his first wife. After their divorce, he married one of his students. Once the Nazi movement began, he openly criticized their ideals and fled to the United States. He first took a position at Swarthmore College and later Dartmouth. He became president of the American Psychological Association in 1959.
Kohler is most famous for his book “The Mentality of Apes.” This book was written from the studies he ran on the Canary Islands with chimpanzees as his subjects. Bananas were placed out of their reach, at first too high for them. The chimps would stack a number of boxes until they could get to them. He would also place the bananas too far out of their reach outside of their cages. The chimps were given two sticks, both too short to reach the food on its own. The chimps would then put the sticks together, making it long enough to reach the food. Kohler described this as insight as opposed to Thorndike’s trial and error theory. He believed that the chimpanzees were capable of problem-solving and that “we underestimate the influence of a number of external conditions on such higher animals.”
Kohler was also very vocal against the science of behaviorism. He argued that “behaviorism denies direct experience; Kohler suggests that behaviorists are unknowingly accepting it in this regard.” I find this somewhat ironic since his study on insight in apes directly displays operant conditioning. Once the chimpanzees successfully build an apparatus to obtain the bananas, they are rewarded or reinforced by getting to eat the bananas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
I used this site to learn more about Kohler’s insight on apes study and his opinions on behaviorism.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html
I used this site to learn more about Kohler’s biography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcBGAWNCipI&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLD19D8DBD54C65811
This site is in Spanish and German but is a good example of Kohler’s insight in apes experiment(only watch the first video)
The person that I have decided to research is Kurt Lewin. I have decided to do Lewin because his Field Theory and components are very interesting to me as well as the research that he conducted.
Lewin was born in 1890 in a small village of Mogilno. Lewin is recognized as the "founder of social psychology". In 1909 he entered the University of Freiburg so that he could study medicine, but decided to transfer to the University of Munich to study biology. While going to school he was an advocate for women’s rights and equality. When World War 1 came around, he served in the Germany army. He was wounded and therefore came home to complete his Ph.D at the University of Berlin. While studying behavioral psychology, Lewin decided to take up research at the Gestalt School of Psychology.
When Hitler came to power, Lewin had to move to the United States. He came in 1933 and officially became a citizen in the year 1940. Lewin worked at Cornell University and for the University of Iowa.
Lewin founded the term genidentity which correlates with his Field Theory. Lewin's Field Theory is about understanding that a person's behavior requires knowing about all of the forces acting on the person at a given moment. The particular field in which the person operates is called the life space. Lewin defined this as the psychological field that the "totality of facts which determine the behavior (B) of an individual at a certain moment.... [It] includes the person (P) and the environment (E)". Lewin says that these personal factors may be things such as poverty, beliefs, health, needs, as well as environmental factors. In all, it is how the environment is perceived by the individual which influences their behavior.
Lewin represented life space with ovals. These ovals contained various influences that could have effect on the individual. His students began to call these examples, "Lewin's Eggs." The life space is within the oval or the environment that is being perceived. Outside of the oval is what Lewin refers to as a foreign hull, because these are things or events that have no effect on the person at any particular moment. When all of a persons needs are satisfied, Lewin referred to this as equilibrium. When someone has a tension in life space for a desired object or need, this is referred to as a positive valence.
In Lewin's approach-approach conflict, a person has two goals of equal strength in which they desire. The example in the book was choosing lobster or steak for dinner. When a person is faced with two equally undesirable goals, this is called avoidance-avoidance conflict. When someone desires something, but does not want it at the same time, this is called approach-avoidance conflict. A good example for this would be having the urge to eat a chocolate cake, but avoiding it because you know it is bad for you.
Interestingly, Lewin set the foundation for what became known as the Zeigarnik Effect. While being in a cafe with his graduate students, he noticed that the waiter did not forget what they were drinking and eating until their bill had been paid. Lewin concluded that this waiter's life space had tension to it, and once the bill was paid this tension disappeared and the waiter had reached closure.
Lewin coined the terms differentiation and dedifferentiation. Differentiation implies that as a person grows older; their life space becomes more complex over time. Person’s developmental thoughts will proceed from less to greater differentiation as they grow up. That is not always the case though. Lewin states that when faced with stressful situations in ones life space, they can experience dedifferentiation. This is when a temporary shift in the opposite direction will occur.
Lewin conducted a leadership research study that was created for different groups of ten year old boys. In this research, these boys were given various projects to complete. While completing these projects, they were being led by authoritarian, democratic or laissez-faire types of leadership. When lead by an autocratic leader, the boys were very submissive, did not make high quality crafts, and tended to be aggressive when the leader was away. The boys under laissez-faire type of authority were not structured, and were confused, hostile and frustrated. Under a democratic leader, the boys produced high quality crafts, had high compliance and were more motivated.
Lewin is very interesting because all of his research and studies plays off of the idea of a person’s life space. Everything depends on their environment or internal thinking. He plays into this chapter because of his behavioral researches. He also played a role in expanding our knowledge of Gestalt Psychology. He set the ground work for other psychologists to base their research off of. Unfortunately, Lewin died of a heart attack in 1947.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin
Gives background information on Lewin's life and research.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_lewin.htm
Explains Lewin's Field Theory and its components.
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Kurt%20Lewin.htm
Information about Lewin's research on leadership styles and how the boys used in this research reacted to these certain leadership styles.
The person I found interesting, and chose to do more research on was Max Wertheimer. He fits into this chapter by his contributions to the founding of Gestalt psychology. I initially gained interest in him due to his work on productive thinking.
Max Wertheimer was born in Prague in 1880. He was introduced to social and philosophical thought by his maternal grandfather. For Wertheimer’s tenth birthday, his grandfather gave him a book of Spinoza’s writings. He became so obsessed with the book that his parents tried to ban him from reading!
Wertheimer studied law at the University of Prague. He disagreed with the way trials were held, with the defense and prosecution taking part in a contest of winning cases instead of trying to find the truth. He because interested in psychology, philosophy, and physiology. In 1904, he received his doctorate from the University of Wiirzburg. He did research in Prague, Berlin, and Vienna.
In 1910, he came in contact and worked with Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka developing the fundamental concepts of Gestalt theory. He was particularly interested in the nature of problem solving. Because of this, Gestalt theory a central idea of grouping. Grouping factors include proximity, similarity, closure, and simplicity. Wertheimer and Kohler worked together at the University of Berlin and founded a graduate school. While teaching at Berlin, He met Anna Caro. The two were married and had four children. Two days before Hitler became chancellor, Wertheimer heard one of Hitler’s speeches. He moved his family to Czechoslovakia, and later received an invitation to join the New School for Social Research in New York. Anna and Max divorced in 1942.
Max Wertheimer made many contributions throughout his lifetime. During World War I Wertheimer was a captain in the German army. He was a founder of the Psychologische Forschung and served as editor for Volumes 1 through 20. While teaching at Frankfort, he combined scholarship with teaching skill. Because he had a special interest in problem solving, he was able to make difficult problems easier by using a story or creating a drawing.
Learning about the life of Max Wertheimer was very interesting. I found it especially interesting that he was a Jewish psychologist during the time of Hitler, and was motivated enough to protect his family to move them out of the country. He made many contributions, and was dedicated to learning and teaching.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Max_Wertheimer.aspx This website gave me a lot of interesting information on his background, influences, and contributions.
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/gestalt/wertheimer.html This site gave me a short summary of his life and theories. It was used as confirmation of other sites and to get a better idea of Gestalt theory.
http://www.gestalttheory.com/maxwertheimer This site gave me information about his work regarding WWI and had links to information about Gestalt Theory.
I chose to look into Wolfgang Kohler for my topical blog, and he fits into the chapter because he was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, and his study of apes, while flawed, is still famous today. I found him interesting because of the ape study as well as the 'close-up' section in the text in which it discussed the possiblity of him being a spy.
Wolfgang Kohler made many contributions to psychology other than his study of problem solving in apes. His most important contribution was to the principle of psychophysical isomorphism which says that because the brain and mind are identical, the structure of conscious experience during perception, memory, or problem solving mirrors the physical structure of activity in the brain as well. Isomorphism was one of the founding assumptions of Gestalt psychology which Köhler did more than anyone else to study. Kohler and Gestalt psychology competed with the many other schools of psychology at the time which included Freud's psychoanalysis, the behaviorism of Watson and Skinner, and functionalism. Much of the work Kohler completed attempted to refute the assumptions of behaviorism, associationism, and classical introspective psychology. Kohler became stuck on the Tenerife of the Canary Islands when WWI broke out, and couldn't get back to Germany until 1920. During this time he completed his study of apes and has also been suggested that he was a spy. His research of primates was the first done, and all primate research following his work was built on the foundation of his study. During his time on Tenerife he wrote another book titled The Physical Gestalten at Rest and in Steady State in which he wanted to show that Gestalten could occur in purely physical settings, and specifically in the electrochemical systems that he assumed must exist in the brain. He used the term Gestalten to denote those mental phenomena and processes whose typical properties and effects cannot be derived from the similar properties and effects of their so-called parts. He also defined a Gestalt as a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. His work in the book predicted many of the concepts that are now the essentials of cognitive science. The concepts of self-organizing systems, parallel distributed networks, and attractor states are all physical Gestalten. In the last chapter of the book he introduced a new concept. This was his question: "When a dynamic process reaches a steady state, that steady state must differ somehow from the "unsteady" states that preceded it. But in what way? Physical processes tend toward energy minima, but what do psychological processes tend toward? Are their end states especially simple? Regular? Symmetric?" Köhler thought that all these candidate principles were inadequately defined, but he could find nothing better himself and struggled with it for the rest of his life although he quickly turned his interest to other places. On his return from Tenerife he was briefly appointed professor at Göttingen, but soon moved to Berlin as professor of psychology and director of the psychological institute. In the Berlin institute Köhler attacked a wide range of problems from the Gestalt point of view; these included psychophysics, apparent movement, and memory. With his student Hedwig von Restorff he studied the role of uniqueness in memory, establishing a phenomenon that is still called "the von Restorff effect." In 1933 Adolf Hitler, and the Nazis came to power. Hitler quickly turned his attention to the universities, issuing a decree that all Jewish professors and academics, whether they were Nobel Prize winners down or laboratory research assistants, were to be fired at once. Wolfgang Köhler was one of the few non-Jews who spoke out against it, publishing a protest that some say was the last anti-Nazi article to be published openly in Germany under the Nazi regime. In the same year the Nazis decided that all professors must begin their lectures with the Hitler salute, something Köhler openly mocked. For several months longer he tried to retain his job maintaining his academic autonomy while still objecting to the Nazi agenda, but it was a losing battle and he eventually resigned. In 1935 Köhler took up a professorship at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1946. At Swarthmore he conducted famous studies of "figural after-effects," which he presented as new support for the hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism. "These experiments showed that prolonged inspection of visual patterns can change the apparent shapes and positions of other figures that are shown subsequently. He had expected such effects because an electric current flowing in a medium may produce localized changes that alter the conductivity of that medium itself, and alter the distribution of any new current that uses the same conductor at a later time. If this happens in the visual cortex of the brain, it may have noticeable consequences for the structure of the visual field. Somewhat surprisingly, it turned out that such after-effects appear not only in frontal displays but also in the third dimension of visual space and even in other sensory modalities" (from author). Although "figural after-effects" were a real discovery, it is not clear today that they are best explained by Köhler's isomorphism hypothesis. Köhler continued to attempt to test his hypothesis more directly. He succeeded in recording direct currents from the brains of waking human observers, using scalp electrodes placed over the occipital region of the brain. Their experiments were initially successful with eye movements controlled, the direction of current flow changed in synchrony with the back-and-forth movement of a visible object. Similar flows were observed in the human auditory cortex during stimulation of the ear and also more directly in the cortex of a cat. Köhler was encouraged by these findings, but he was never able to prove that such currents play the key role in perception that is assigned to them by the isomorphism hypothesis. Kohler contributed considerable work throughout his life to psychology and science in general. In 1959 he was elected President of the APA.
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems&page=wkohler.html - This site gives a very in depth description of some of the work Kohler accomplished. It also, however, did seem a little biased in that when talking about the ape study, the author stated that Kohler was exactly right about apes solving problems on their own without trial and error, and also didn't question any of the writing of his ape study as the book did.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html - This site gives a large list of accomplishments and work completed by Kohler in addition to a biography on his life and work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler - Wikipedia, like always, keeps everything nicely organized on Kohler and gives lengthy descriptions on his most famous work as well as descriptions of events throughout his life.
I decided to do more research on Wolfgang Kohler. I liked his research with the apes and I would like to know more about him.
Wolfgang Kohler was born on January 21, 1887 to German parents in Reval (now called Tallinn). His family was originally from Germany and when he was six years old they returned to their home country. Kohler was surrounded by nurses and teachers; this helped develop his interest with science and arts. Like most of the psychologist we read about he went to more than two different Universities. He started out at University of Tubingen, he was only here for a year, 1905 to 1906. Next he ventured over to University of Bonn, where he also stayed for just a year. Next was University of Berlin. In 1909 Kohler got his doctorate in psycho-acoustics.
In 1920 after spending some time in the United States Kohler returned to Germany. Shortly after his return the University of Berlin appointed him as a director and professor to their psychological institute. He held this possession for the next fifteen years. During this time psychology became popular and was at its high point. This hasn’t all because of Kohler; at this point in time there were a few other well known psychologists around like Max Wertheimer, Kurt Lewin, Karl Duncker, Von Lauenstein, and Von Restorff.
Things were looking good for Kohler until January 30, 1933 when Hitler and his army of Nazis arose. As we all know Jewish people were the target of Hitler, and this included any Jewish professors. Max Planck was the first professor to take a stand at Hitler he said “if the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years”. Kohler was confused about why the treats against Jews had been made and did not stand up to Hitler right away; it was in April that he finally got involved. At first he didn’t really know what was going on, when the dismissal of Planck took place it was time for Kohler to step in. Sometimes words can be the most hurtful thing. April 28th, Kohler wrote an article called “Gesprache in Deuthland” in English that would say “Conversations in Germany. This article was an attack on the Nazis. The surprising thing is the Nazis didn’t come after him. Instead he got many letters from both non-Jewish and Jewish people thanking him for what he did. On November 3rd the Nazi party started too demanded more. One of their demands was that all professors had to open each and every lecture with the Nazi salute; Kohler did not believe in their beliefs and did not partake in this act. The Nazis party most have gotten wind of this event and in December, after one of his classes, Nazi were waiting outside of the classroom checking student I.D’s. Kohler was not pleased by this event and went to the head of education. It was a worthless trip; the head could not do anything about it and end his statement with ‘Heil Hitler’.
Now that Kohler was officially on the Nazis bad side he left for the United States in 1935. He became a professor at Swarthmore College and he stayed there for the next twenty years. In 1956 Dartmouth College accepted him as their research professor. He did not stay away from his home; he would make yearly visits back to the University of Berlin. In 1967 Kohler was to be given a golden medal but he never got it. He died before he was able to get it in Enfield, New Hampshire.
Kohler was married. While in his mid-twenties he was married and had four children. There aren’t a lot of details on his love life. We do know that his marriage was not good and he ended up getting a divorce. While he was in his thirties he remarried to a student.
There are two other facts that I found to be interesting about him. The first was his test on chickens. He wanted to demonstrate that even chickens can develop relationships. The other was that in 1934 he went by the name of William James Lecturer when he was at Harvard.
What I found the most interesting about Kohler was him and the Nazis. I think this part of history is very interesting and I like to learn about it. The research with the chickens was also a weird thing to find. I’ve never heard of anything like that before and there isn’t any more information about, that I found anyway.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kohler.htm --> from this website I got a little information from. This is where I learned about his other name William James.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler --> Wikipedia never fails! This is where I got most of my information. Most of it was for the part on the Nazis.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html --> this is a good website. I only used a small amount of information from it since the other two gave me all I needed.
A) Zeigarnik Effect
B) In this chapter we learned about the Zeigarnik Effect and its contributions to Getstalt
Psychology
C) I found this interesting because I waitressed over the summer and could relate to Bluma’s discovery. I became even more interested after I researched the topic and discovered it can help with procrastination.
My mother use to always tell me “If you can’t finish it, don’t start it.” This is because of her and her human nature to follow the Zeigarnik Effect. The Zeigarnik Effect is having a thought constantly on the brain until that thought is completed. Bluma Zeigarnik was the first to come up with this phenomenon. She first noticed this human aspect in of all places of coffee house. She noticed that the waiters only remembered the orders on open tables. Once they closed the tables, they completely forgot the order. She then took this back to her lab to do more research. I already talked about her in my Tuesday blog, and come to find out after research she was not the only psychologist to do research on her Zeigarnik Effect. In 1986 Johnson, Weiner, and Mehrabian conducted a study using the TAT. Participants, especially those labeled as high achievement motivators before the study, were able to remember unfinished questions easier than complete questions. There just happens to be something in our brain that is determined to finish something. The Zeigarnik Effect is a great tool to have and those in the entertainment business know it. Cliffhangers come from the Zeigarnik Effect. At the end of each television episode or at the end of each chapter in a book is an unresolved issue. The Zeigarnik Effect doesn’t allow us to forget about this unfinished business, and we keep coming back for more. Who knew that Bluma Zeigarnik would be helping writers make the big bucks! This can also be very helpful to students. Many college kids, including myself, struggle with procrastination. College is hard, and some assignments are so overwhelming you don’t even know where to begin, but after you get over that initial hump, more likely than not the task seems so much easier once you start it. This is due to the Zeigarnik Effect. This can be helpful in other areas in life, not just homework. Working out is the same way. You just need to START doing it, and then the rest of the hour flies by! Procrastination in general can be eliminated by the Zeigarnik Effect! Bluma, you might have just saved my college career and body with this revelation. =)
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
This website talked about other psychologists and their studies with the Zeigarnik Effect.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php
This site did a great job of applying the Zeigarnik Effect to everyday life and procrastination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluma_Zeigarnik
This site talked about Bluma Zeigarnik and how she came up with the Zeigarnik Effect.
The person I chose to do some more research on is Max Wertheimer. I found him interesting in the chapter so I wanted to see what else I could find out about him. I found a few more facts about him that I didn’t read in the book. He was one of the principal proponents of Gestalt theory which emphasized higher-order cognitive processes in the midst of behaviorism. The focus of Gestalt theory was the idea of "grouping", i.e., characteristics of stimuli cause us to structure or interpret a visual field or problem in a certain way (Wertheimer, 1922). Wertheimer commenced work at the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin, and was already on the faculty when Kohler was appointed a director of the Institute. He was interested in developing a lie detector for the objective study of testimony and devising a method of word association as part of his doctoral dissertation. He discovered that feebleminded children could solve problems themselves, when they grasped the overall structures involved. Kohler and Wertheimer used figure/ground terminology only for visual entities. Koffka was more liberal, possibly because he attempted to write a comprehensive Gestalt description of mental functioning.
I like this example of Wertheimer’s Gestalt theory.
The classic example of Gestalt principles provided by Wertheimer is children finding the area of parallelograms. As long as the parallelograms are regular figures, a standard procedure can be applied (making lines perpendicular from the corners of the base). However, if a parallelogram with a novel shape or orientation is provided, the standard procedure will not work and children are forced to solve the problem by understanding the true structure of a parallelogram (i.e., the figure can be bisected anywhere if the ends are joined).
http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/gestalt.html
This same site also stated these as the main principles.
Principles:
1. The learner should be encouraged to discover the underlying nature of a topic or problem (i.e., the relationship among the elements).
2. Gaps, incongruities, or disturbances are an important stimulus for learning
3. Instruction should be based upon the laws of organization: proximity, closure, similarity and simplicity.
http://www.gestalt.org/sherrill.htm
I also found this site helpful on his theories stating that His ideas featured the view that thinking proceeds from the whole to the parts, treating a problem as a whole, and permitting the whole to command or dominate over the parts. This was a synthesis (up - chunking to more inclusive concepts) approach rather than an analytical approach (down - chunking to details). Wertheimer thought reductionism was a fundamental problem of his time; he was particularly interested in the nature of problem solving.
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/gestalt/wertheimer.html
I have decided to do further research on Kurt Koffka. Koffka was interesting to me because he is considered responsible for introducing gestalt to America, which is why he is in this chapter. I also think Koffka is an interesting guy because he went to teach at Smith College which was a women’s college, where he influenced future talented psychologists.
Koffka was one of the three co-founders of Gestalt psychology along with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler. He is known for being the spokesman for Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology is most often referred to along with perception. However Koffka and his co-founders believed Gestalt theory was an alternative to perception producing criticism and better alternatives. Koffka and his co-founders are responsible for describing special configuration. An example of special configuration is seen with the Koffka ring. A grey ring set on two different shades of gray. When the two halves are separated the ring appears to change color, but in reality it doesn’t.
An interesting anecdote concerning Koffka’s love life begins in 1909 Koffka fell in love with a woman who was involved in his experiments. Before coming to America, while still at Giessen he fell in love with a student who recently earned her Ph.D. In less than a year that marriage had ended and Koffka was back with his first wife. It makes you wonder why he really took that job at Smith College.
Because of his work at Smith College he didn’t have access to conduct research, but he still wrote and talked about it. One of his best known productions was Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Koffka also worked with theories of learning; believing sensory learning, imitation, and most importantly ideational learning, which forces us to use language or understanding objects have names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Koffka
I used this site for background information on Koffka as well as some interesting information about his life.
http://web.mit.edu/persci/gaz/gaz-teaching/flash/koffka-movie.swf
This url shows an example of Koffka’s ring and gives explanations along with it.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Koffka/Perception/intro.htm
This site was used for information on Gestalt theory in relationship to perception.
Wolfgang Kohler was an influential psychologist, and one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. I think he is interesting because he did a lot of research in the Canary Islands with apes, and discovered some information that we still use today. Kohler fits into this chapter because he was a gestalt psychologist, and did his research in this area.
Kohler was offered the position to be the director at the Canary Island Anthropoid Station, and he worked there for seven years. In this time his greatest work was with apes and discovering that they use what he called “insight”. He discovered this by giving them 2 sticks and food that was out of reach and observed if they figured out a way to get the food. He discovered this process of solving this was not trial and error, but it was insight. This was an important discovery, because we still call this process insight, and it is something that we use a lot in our society.
One thing that I found very interesting was Kohler’s stance against the Nazi party. He was very overt about his dislike for the Nazi party and wrote an article attacking the Nazi’s. Kohler expected to be arrested for this, which he ended up not, he felt so passionately about this, that he was willing to sacrifice to get his voice heard. Kohler also refused to begin his classes by saluting Hitler which was a government demand. The Nazi party began to interfere with his work and he eventually moved to the United States.I think this really shows the type of man Kohler was, and he stood up for what he believed no matter what the cost.
Kohler worked with Koffka, and Wertheimer and they came up with gestalt psychology as a reaction to Pavlov and Watson. Gestalt psychology deals with perception and views things as a complete item to find its parts. One of the contributions made was something like a circle with a small segment missing, but we still perceive it as a whole circle, and we know it is supposed to be a circle. Another thing Kohler did was examine lights flashing on and off in a circle, which gives the illusion that it is a single light moving, when really it is just an illusion. This is what Kohler and the other gestalt psychologists are famous for.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kohler.htm
I chose to research classical conditioning. This chapter is all about behaviorism. It has some of the most famous thinkers involved with behaviorism. Ivan Pavlov is famous for his classical conditioning studies. I am interested in this topic because I like learning about how humans and other animals decide on things and the reasoning for it. I also want to learn more about why our body reacts to certain things our senses pick up. An example to help illustrate my statement would be why somebody would feel hungry after they see food on a table?
Classical conditioning tests were first performed by Ivan Pavlov. He conducted a famous experiment that is taught in classrooms all around the world. His experiment involved ringing a bell and then feeding a dog. After a while he would ring a bell and the dog would begin to salivate because it was expecting some food. These experiments I have realized can be conducted by anybody. They can be totally different than the one that Pavlov conducted.
I am curious if this kind of behaviorism is consistent with all living organisms. I think that what Pavlov and Watson did with their studies on classical conditioning helped people like me who are researching this topic understand that the classical conditioning theory can be accepted for humans and animals that spend time around humans. Like in Pavlov’s experiment, he used a dog. Why did he choose to use a dog? Why not use a rat, or a rabbit? Watson did an experiment where he used a young child. Most of the experiments that I have come across involved with classical conditioning test on humans or animals that spend time with humans. I think it would be very interesting to see if somebody would be able to conduct an experiment on an organism that does not communicate well with humans and see if the classical conditioning responses are consistent with the responses in the tests that have already been administered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7jcI8fAuI
This is a short video that illustrates a classical conditioning experiment. It is quite funny and it teaches you something as well.
http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/classical_conditioning.htm
This site talks about some of the more famous experiments conducted with classical conditioning. It talks about the Little Albert experiment and the Salivating Dog experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning
This site gave me some more background with vocab and other information that I did not already know. It helped me understand classical conditioning and the step by step process within it.
The individual that I chose to research was Wolfgang Kohler. I wanted to learn more about Kohler for several different reasons. The first reason was that Kohler helped change the direction of psychology. I also wanted to learn about him because I liked his theory on insight, and that he was accused of being a spy. All in all I thought Kohler was someone that had a lot going on during his lifetime and that sparked my interest.
I think that anyone who can claim that they had a hand in creating an area of psychology deserves some sort of recognition. Being one of the creators of Gestalt psychology says that Kohler made legitimate contributions to the field. He moved away from structuralism which stated that experiences could be broken down into individual parts. The loose translation of gestalt mean the whole and Kohler believe that experiences should be looked at based on the entire thing. Kohler believed that by using this approach psychology could become more applicable.
The theory of insight in animals challenged Thorndike’s theory of trial and accidental success. This theory encompasses the beliefs of Gestalt psychology. The challenge said that the belief trial and accidental success could only be considered true if you did not allow animals to see everything. In the insight theory research the animals where able to see all of the components in the experiment and they were able to accomplish the task.
In my research I found that the accusation of being a spy may not have been entirely false. When I read about this in the book they made the possibility of Kohler being a spy sound like a pretty far fetched idea. What I learned in my research was that the apes that he was studying were not native to the island so that makes it seem like there was something going on. I do not see why any researcher would want to take animals away from there natural habitat to study them. Secondly, as the book said there were a lot of ships that were sunk in this area. Given this information I do not see how anyone could say that the evidence presented was merely circumstantial.
Wolfgang Kohler is an individual who made a lot of contributions to psychology. He was able to do this by challenging the theory of past researchers. His approach was different from those before him, and along with two others he was able to create a entirely new field of psychology. Being accused of being a spy only adds to how interesting his life already was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz6uvIbWZE –national geographic chimpanzee problem solving
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler – learned more about his life and contributions to psychology
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler – learned about his life and being accused of being a spy
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html - contributions to psychology, Gestalt psychology
I wanted to read more about Karl Duncker’s concept of functional fixedness in regard to problem solving, having been intrigued by his research as described in chapter 9. In this chapter, the gestaltists were portrayed as reacting to the Titchenerian view that intellectual processes can be broken down into smaller component-processes (HMP, ch 7), and Duncker seems to have been one of the first psychologists to research what we now call ‘thinking outside the box’. Duncker described functional fixedness as a "mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem" (Wikipedia), or an “inability to think beyond the typical function of an object” (HMP, 308). I was interested in this because it seems similar to Heidegger’s concepts of ‘ready-to hand’, ‘present-at-hand’, and the ‘broken tool’, insomuch as each of these situations cause us to ask ourselves, “How can I possibly proceed from here?”
The Wikipedia article on functional fixedness said that “when tested, 5-year-old children show no signs of functional fixedness”, and that some argue that this is because children of that age don’t have preconceived ideas about the use of objects (Wikipedia). I think that this fits with Kurt Lewin’s concept of ‘differentiation’, which refers to the assignment of a fixed use to the object in one’s psyche (HMP, 314). While this makes it easier to use tools for a specific purpose (as it acts as a shortcut for understanding the tool’s use), it actually makes it harder to use the tool for something other than its normal use.
Wikipedia goes on to say that by the age of 7, children start to have fixed ideas about how objects are supposed to be used - in other words, that is when we begin to lose sight of the creative possibilities inherent in the object. Discussing Adamson’s replication of Duncker's Candle Problem experiment (HMP, 308), Wikipedia reports that when there is preutilization (i.e., a fixed purpose or use for an object is presented, such as when the boxes are given to the test subjects with tacks in them), the subjects are more functionally fixated - that is to say, they consider the box as having only one specific purpose (to hold the tacks). However, when there is no preutilization (i.e., the empty boxes are given to the test subjects separate from the tacks), the subjects are more likely to see different possibilities for the box - demonstrating how functional fixedness curtails creative thought.
I thought it was interesting that Duncker and the gestaltists were the first to empirically examine problem solving in this way, as it is still very relevant today. This Wikipedia article referred to a 2004 paper (Rath J. F.; Langenbahn D. M.; Simon D.; Sherr R. L.; Fletcher J.; Diller L. [2004]. The construct of problem solving in higher level neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 19, 613-635. doi:10.1016/j.acn.2003.08.006) that discussed the impact of emotional states on problem solving - which sounds very similar to Lewin’s work in 1941 (HMP, 314-315). Lewin demonstrated that, under stress (such as frustration), children “regressed to less constructive patterns” and “became more destructive in their play, easily distracted… and more emotionally upset” (HMP, 315). And I don’t think this is very different from an adult’s response in a similar situation.
There was one aspect of Gestalt problem solving theory that troubled me, however: while it seemed to offer a description of the phenomenon, it was rather vague on how it worked, exactly. It was described as a flash of ‘insight’ (HMP, 303), yet no explanation of the mechanics behind this ‘insight’ was given. Information Processing Theory, on the other hand, explains this as a heuristic approach to the problem, where the “problem can be represented as a problem space—a representation of the initial state, goal state, and all possible intervening states” with critical analysis providing “a strategy for moving through the problem space from one state of the problem to the next” (Mayer and Wittrock). I think that this accurately describes the process of problem solving, though it may omit one problematic aspect: it seems possible to me that we arrive at many of those ‘heuristic states’ out of functional fixedness - our mental shortcuts to the possible uses of an object. And I’m not sure how Duncker, Lewin and the other gestaltists can get around that.
Wikipedia: Karl Duncker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Duncker
Biographical info on Karl Duncker.
Wikipedia: Functional fixedness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness
Explanation of functional fixedness.
Wikipedia: Problem solving
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving
Info regarding research on problem solving.
“Problem Solving", Richard Mayer and Merlin Wittrock
http://www.education.com/reference/article/problem-solving1/
Detailed analysis of problem solving, with info on the Gestalt theory of problem solving and Information Processing Theory.
"Heidegger’s Camera", Adrian Park, December 18, 2010
http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/adrianpark/2010/12/18/heideggers-camera/
Another student struggling with Heideggerian concepts, with simple explanations of same.
"Gestalt Psychology 2 of 3: Michael Wertheimer & David Peterzell (2010)", uploaded by DHPPhDPhD on May 14, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-i8AKV0LFk
Gestalt’s origins as a study of cognition.
"Insight learning: Chimpanzee Problem Solving", uploaded by STGBree on Aug 19, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz6uvIbWZE
Supposed demonstration of ‘insight’ in problem solving by a chimpanzee (though some might see it as just another case where those working for psychologists are simply working for peanuts).
The person i decided to write about is Max Wertheimer.He is an extremely important figure and has made significant contribution to the gestalt school of psychology.This makes him fit into this chapter.I was interested in reading about him because of he created a school of pschology despite of the difficulties he had to face.
He was born in Czech Republic.He initially studied Law and eventually went on to do research in psychology.He established the guiding principle of the Gestlat school of psychology while travelling.In order to prove this principle he did a lot of reseach on apparent motion.
Unfortunately he had to leave his country of residence when hitler came into power.However that did not stop him from doing more reserch and making a name for himself.Although his sreserch was on perception its application is not confined to perception but can be applied to mental processes as well.
It can be said that he laid the foundation for the Gestalt school of psychology and his stuggle ,the tough time he lived in did not interfere with his professional work.His strong will was recognized and his work still guides and considered the most important in gestalt psychology.
http://www.mhhe.com/cls/psy/ch04/bio4.mhtml: This link is basically about his personal life.
http://allpsych.com/biographies/wertheimer.html: A short summary of his work.
http://www.gestalttheory.com/maxwertheimer:Information and importance of his work in Gestalt school of psychology
I was really interested in apparent motion, mostly because I used to make flip book movies as a kid and it took some time to get the timing right. I also thought the issue of perception was extremely important to the chapter since perception is just the first step to understanding how our minds work.
I thought I could probably find some interesting examples, at the very least, but the first thing I stumbled upon was a research article on apparent motion and synesthesia. (http://cbc.ucsd.edu/pdf/synesthesia_perception.pdf) The researchers found that when a person with synesthesia viewed patterns of black-and-white numbers, they experienced apparent motion, whereas the “normal” subjects (without synesthesia) just saw a jumble of lines and numbers. It makes me wondered how the two are connected, as the researchers theorized that the same part of the brain that causes synthesis could be related to perception.
There is a theory that the perception of motion comes from gaps between the “on” and “off” switches that are caused by the change from black to white (or colors). The theory of apparent motion is related to the phi phenomenon, which states that our brains perceive things such as flashing lights to be moving simply because the “stills” changed design or location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vANQlXAmq28&feature=related (This video is a good example of how the speed can alter the perception of the wheel… it goes faster and appears to be heading the “wrong” direction at some points.) http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150802110695405 d second video is an optical illusion I found interesting that was slightly/ by fun onethess.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion (Good source for information on apparent motion and used for the bulk of my post.)
This week I was very intrigued by Bluma Zeigarnik, one of Kurt Lewin’s students, the theorist who came up with the idea that people are more likely to remember things when there in tension in the situation. While discussing at a local café with Lewin and fellow students he noticed “The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory” (spring.org). She wanted to test this to see if people were more likely to remember things that were “in tension” or things that we fully completed. She found that “People were about twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they'd been interrupted than those they completed” (spring.org). After reading more about this I can think back to things that I have done that would support this theory. For example cramming for an upcoming test, you shove as much information into your mind before the test hoping you can remember what you studied and as soon as you finish the test, it’s gone. The tension is released and you forget what you just learned. (not the most effect way to study). More recent studies have also been done using the Zeigarnik Effect. “Kenneth McGraw and colleagues carried out another test of the Zeigarnik effect. In it participants had to do a really tricky puzzle; except they were interrupted before any of them could solve it and told the study was over” (spring.org). Surprisingly enough, after the participants were informed that the test was over, “nearly 90% carried on working on the puzzle anyway” (spring.org). People like to finish what they started to relieve this tension.
Psychology can be applied to many aspects of our everyday lives, especially the Zeigarnik effect. It applied to many marketing techniques and in the media. It is used in every TV series, it’s the cliffhangers at the end of the episodes or season finale. They end with something so big you have to keep watching it just to see how it ends. This is used in novels, such as Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, which was originally a series, movies, websites, etc. (spring.org). Specially in articles, “You need to steer away from actually completing the article, and leave some intriguing, ‘untied ends’, so that the reader desires to continue reading on, even if that means clicking through to your website” (mrarticlemarketing.com). People are more likely to “hang-on” to reading something if the thought is incomplete. His tip was to not give the answer what the article until the last paragraph of it so people have to keep reading through the whole thing. As human beings we want closure and if we don’t get it right away we will keep thinking about it until we get we solve it. For example trying to remember the name or lyrics to a song, we will keep thinking about it until we can remember.
I found out from doing more research into the Zeigarnik Effect that I’m affected by it all the time. It can be related to procrastination, (which happens frequently in the life of a college student) “Procrastination bites worst when we're faced with a large task that we're trying to avoid starting. It might be because we don't know how to start or even where to start. What the Zeigarnik effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere...anywhere. ” (spring.org). So as you’re reading this blog you can tell I’ve procrastinated it this week, but now I know how to combat my procrastination with the Zeigarnik Effect and get things done more efficiently. (This blog was easy to write because I found the topic so interesting)
http://mrarticlemarketing.com/146/zeigarnik-effect-how-to-use-in-article-marketing/: gave detail into how to make articles interesting and successful by using the Zeigarnik Effect.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm: Gave great detail into all of the aspects of his research. It also gave a list of all the sources that it used and many of them were written by Lewin, himself.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php: Insightful into how it is applied in everyday life. It was the first website that I looked at, sparking my interest into this topic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAymFbPF5Kk: he talked about “opening in the loop” and not closing it until you’re finished. He also talked about how to use it in marketing or just interacting with people. He directly used it, while he talked about how to use it. Also it was entertaining.
The individual I decided to look further into was Kurt Lewin. I chose him because he seemed to have a broad variety of interests and I was really wanting to learn more about him as social psychologist and her pursuits as an activist. His role in this chapter ranged from social psychology to development psychology and how he helped to advance gestalt psychology by by focusing not just on perceptual and cognitive ideas but branching into motivation, emotion, and personality.
Kurt Lewin was originally from Prussia and Jewish. This helped to fuel a lot of his social activism which he first picked up in his college years at the University of Munich. They eventually ended in the U.S. and it was interesting to me to find that he actually settled at the University of Iowa. Once there he continued his efforts in social dillemas such as morale of troops and psychological warfare. He committed himself to the war effort during WWII and become a sought after speaker for minority relations.
Lewin was also very interested in group dynamics. One of the interesting concepts I found of the interdependence of fate in group dynamics. It states that a group exists when the people in it realize their fate depends on the fate of the group. One person actions is linked to the outcomes of the group as a whole. This concept has been tested as well with an experiment done by Rabbie and Horwitz (1969). They took children who where strangers to each other and where divided into groups labeled blue and green. Some children were then told that a group was going to receive a reward for helping research, while others would not because they would run out. How received the reward was then decided by a toss of a coin. The children were then asked to rate each other. The study found that in groups where there was some interdependence there was some group influence over ratings. It is believed that he derived this theory from the Jewish dilemma in Nazi Germany.
Another interesting thing dealing with Jews and Nazi Germany that he discussed was about Jewish self-hatred. In 1941 he discussed this and stated," In a minority group, individual members who are economically successful… usually gain a higher degree of acceptance by the majority group. This places them culturally on the periphery of the underprivileged group and makes them more likely to be 'marginal' persons. They frequently have a negative balance and are particularly eager not to have their 'good connections' endangered by too close a contact with those sections of the underprivileged group which are not acceptable to the majority. Nevertheless, they are frequently called on for leadership by the underprivileged group because of their status and power. They themselves are usually eager to accept the leading role in the minority, partly as a substitute for gaining status in the majority, and partly because such leadership enables them to have and maintain additional contact with the majority." The person he describes here is involved in a form of self-hate and is called a leader from the periphery which allows them to De-Judiaze the Jewish community. This was interesting to me because you hear a lot of about the horrors of WWII but I have never heard much about immigrants coming to the U.S.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0018_0_17991.html
- talks about Jewish Self-hatred and some of Lewins views.
http://books.google.com/books?id=e-9OtYRo45cC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Interdependence+of+fate&source=bl&ots=KwVNGVEKTE&sig=qlhEN6vEyYj8gItIfgY7asjpgG4&hl=en&ei=x1-qTvn7B8LOgAfh99HvDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Interdependence%20of%20fate&f=false
- covers interdependence of fate more in depth and had information on Group processes
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
-gives general history and some insight to ideas he has presented.
We were introduced to Kurt Koffka towards the beginning of the chapter as being one of the three early gestaltists. Among the three, Koffka is responsible for introducing the Gestalt movement to America. What separated Koffka from the other two was that he taught at Smith College which was a college for women. Not only did I find it interesting that Koffka was a professor at a women’s college, but that he had also influenced the careers of several talented women psychologists. The reason this is such a big deal, I think, is because women often times were not given a chance to go out and get any further education, little lone a career. So when reading this, I thought that this was a big step in proving that women were capable of having a career while contributing to it at the same time.
Koffka along with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler were responsible for the development of gestalt psychology. I thought that it was interesting to read about how each one had a different personality and academic style; yet each made equal contributions. As years went by, each differed on the details of the theory and the investigations they made; however, they remained in agreement on the fundamentals of the theory and valued the others contributions. Even though Koffka was responsible for a good amount of experiments, his biggest contribution is his organized application of gestalt principles. In the “Principles of Gestalt Psychology,” Koffka summarized his all of his work in the area of Gestalt Therapy.
Koffka made many contributions to psychology as well as question other ideas. One idea Koffka had was that humans only identify whole arrangements. The example they used was a tree or a house are seen as whole object, not as a set of lines, colors, or other elements included in how it is made. Koffka also rejected the idea that vertical perception did not need to be explained. He showed that when certain elements are joined with other elements, our perception of those elements changes. Koffka also had a lot of theories related to learning, such as believing that a lot of learning occurs by imitation. Many of these learning theories Koffka had are ones that are still used today.
I really enjoyed learning more about Kurt Koffka. I didn’t think that the book gave much information about him so I thought that it was important to look more into his work and the contributions he made to psychology. Koffka seemed very passionate about Gestalt psychology and did what he could to get the word out. Along with that, he did many studies and inspired many people. Many of the contributions that he made are ones that are still referenced to today; that says a lot about how many respect him and his work.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Kurt_Koffka.aspx : This website gave a biography of Kurt Koffka. Not only did it talk about the gestalt movement, but it also discussed Koffka’s contributions and where he stood.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kurt_Koffka : This website was helpful because it broke down Koffka’s work and contributions even further. This is also the website where I got the example of the house and the tree and how we see them as a whole rather than breaking down every element that is involved in making things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Koffka : From this website I found that Koffka had theories about learning and these are ones that are still used today.
I chose to research Kurt Koffka. He fits very knowingly into this chapter for his contributions to Gestalt Psychology. He was one of the first "gestaltists". In the earlier years of gestalt psychology, Koffka was well known as the man who brought it to America. Like the study of ordinary psychology, America certainly didn't start the process of the study. Of course the Europeans beat us to it. Germany is where Koffka met and became great buddies with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler in a famous apparent motion study.
Koffka talked a lot about perception and that the mind puts all different things into one single thing that is easier to understand. For example, we see a tree as a tree and a house as a house. They aren't a bunch of lines or squares or other objects.
Koffka was the first person to come up with the idea that infants don't perceive things as grown individuals do. He said that infants first perceive and respond holistically, and later they are able to perceive the individual sensations that make up the whole picture.
Koffka was the one man out of the three that published most of the works. It is said that Wetheimer found it difficult to publish his ideas, and Kohler was always busy broadening the idea of gestalt psychology in the lab. Therefore, Koffka came out with several books on Gestalt psychology.
Like I mentioned before, Koffka did a great job at spreading the word fast about Gestalt Psychology. He went on a 30 campus tour. An address to the APA and a few visiting professor lectures.
Koffka had a bunch of outstanding contributions in Gestalt Psychology. It wouldn't be the same today without his intelligence and prestige.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kurt_Koffka
--This is a nice overview of Koffka. I got a lot of good info out of this, like the bit on perception.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0005/ai_2699000521/
--This is where I got the information on infants perception. (also a lot more good info.)
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Kurt_Koffka.aspx
--This talks a lot about different publications of his.
I chose to learn more about Kurt Lewin. We discussed Lewin in my Organizational Psychology class and spent time learning about his B=f(P,E) model. This closely tied into our chapter in Organizational Psychology in relation to how individuals “fit” into the organizations in which they work. I was glad to see that Lewin also fit into Chapter 9 of this class as well. While reading more about Kurt Lewin, I found his ideas on nature/nurture to be quite interesting. Lewin said that one was not more important than the other, but that they work together to shape an individual. Another one of Lewin’s ideas that I found interesting was the three-step process of change. Lewin said that the first stage of change was “unfreezing.” This basically means that the first step that one must experience in order to change is to get rid of their old ideas or mindset. The website I used stated that in this stage, “defense mechanisms must be bypassed.” I thought this was a very interesting point. The next stage in this three part system was the change actually occurring. This may be a time of confusion. We know our old ways, but may not be quite sure how to replace them with the new ideas that have been learned. The last stage of change is called “freezing.” One may return to their comfort level with the new ideas in place. I think there are many ways that I can apply Lewin’s theory to my life, especially in regards to events like transferring schools or moving. I also found that Kurt Lewin was the first to study group dynamics and organizational development. I also learned that Lewin was interested in Gestalt Psychology which is discussed in our upcoming chapter. I believe that Lewin “fits” very well into both my Organizational Psych and History and Systems classes.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/lewin.htm
(I learned a lot about Lewin’s study of group dynamics)
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
(this site was interesting, but I was more interested in his work of psychology than his life)
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_lewin.htm
(I often use this site because it provides great links to other useful sites)
Read Aloud:
I wanted to search for B = f(P,E) and I typed it in and I found little. It is not very well covered it seems. I do not think search engines allow for searching in equation symbol speak such as = =++= or maybe just in programming (ie. C++) so everything was like b f p e and it all led to Lewin’s change theory. I do not think that Personality or environment have a variability. There is no numeric digit for personality or environment. So I go less interested in this function equation thing. This relates to our class because there is no absolute way to be a “machinelike” [psychologist][individual][living being]. There is not eliminating bias but instead only attempting to reduce it (kinda like the relationship between violence prevention and risk reduction). I am interest in this topic because unlike intelligence, identity cannot be calculated. Please come over to our pagoda sometime for some home cooked supper. We can be talkative or comfortable in silence or play music on board games. We can get off this smart computer. Thanks!!
typethisin.com
typethisin.edu
typethisin.guv
After reading chapter nine I was able to realize who I found to be interesting. I liked the parts in the book about Wolfgang Kohler. I knew that he was a great contribution to the creation of the Gestalt psychology Even though I was able to learn about Kohler and his attributes to psychology. However I wanted to know about him in general. Where he came from and what were his drives to get where he ended up.
Wolfgang was born in the port city of Revel which is now known as Tallinn, Russia Empire. His family were Germans and shortly after his birth they moved back to Germany. While growing up in Germany he was in the settings of teachers, nurses and other science fields. From this he developed the interest in sciences as well as music, outdoors and art. Academics were strongly enforced in his family. His father was a schoolmaster; sisters were educators and nurses while his older brother was a prominent scholar. I will have to say that Wolfgang had a strong interest in classical music, and music in general.
Wolfgang attended the universities in Tubingen, Bonn, and University of Berlin. Throughout the colleges he received a thorough scientific training in physics, chemistry, and biology. However his interests for psychology occurred in Berlin when he studied the famous physicist, Max Planck. Later down the road Wolfgang received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Berlin in 1909 with a dissertation on psycho-acoustics. His early work interesting enough involved a combination of science with music.
As many know he was able to develop Gestalt Phycology. He also worked with chimpanzees which was one reason why I wanted to look into Wolfgang. I love money’s any species of monkeys. He conducted many experiments with chimps and was interested on how they were able to retrieve bananas which were suspended from the top of their enclosure. He watched them stand on boxes, and even stacking boxes on top of each other to get closer to the food. His work with chimps led him to believing that animals are like humans. When he thought this it was all about how humans and animals are much alike on the problem solving level. From all of his studies he was able to see that animals are also capable of insight learning. He however did not have control if animals were learning their behaviors from watching others. He argued that they did not learn from trial and error, but from insight learning. Wolfgang did gain fame from the book he wrote: The Mentality of Apes, where he argued that his subjects, like humans were very capable of insight learning. Then later years an ape cognition facility in Leipzig that is named after Kohler in honor of all of his contributions. I found his findings to be very interesting and very realistic!!
Chapter 9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
This website gave me indepth information about him and also detail about his work with the chimps.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
This site did the same as up above but, I was able to gain more knowledge about him and not so much his work.
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/kohler.htm
This site gave me information about his reseach with the apes.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html
This site gave brief information about him and a general overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz6uvIbWZE
This video showed how his study was observed. As a money tries to get food out of a tube!!