Reading Activity Week #5 (Due Tuesday)

The first thing I found interesting is Psychophysics. I’ve heard of psychophysics before, but never really took the time to understand what it is or how it came to be. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. It originated from a man named Ernest Weber who made two major contributions to this thought. First he mapped the relative sensitivity of locations on the body and two by demonstrating a mathematical relationship between the psychological and the physical. This is known as Weber’s Law. Psychophysics became clearly defined thought with Gustav Fechner.
The second thing I found interesting is Weber’s law. Weber’s law is the mathematical relationship between the psychological and the physical. Weber had an interest in “muscle sense” (kinesthesis). Upon experiments he noticed that you could discriminate between two weights better by lifting them. Weber came up with the “just noticeable difference” between the weights and liked it to the standard stimulus. As the standard stimulus became heavier, a greater difference between weights was needed before the difference was noticed. This is Weber’s law – jnd/s=k.
The third thing I found interesting is G.E. Muller. The reason I find him really interesting is because I hadn’t heard of him before. I had always considered Wundt to be the founder of psychology. Muller’s lab studies were known for their precision, experimental control, and attention to detail. This was very unlike the other people in his day who were studying because most spent very little time in the lab. Little of his work is translated into English which is part of the reason he’s not famous. He didn’t really break any new ground either. He did, however, systematically replicate and extend the research of others.
The one thing I didn’t find very interesting in this chapter was on Wundt. I just feel like I’ve already covered him a hundred different times in many different classes that it’s just boring any more. There were some new things thrown my way and I didn’t realize that a lot of his work isn’t translated, but of the chapter this was the most boring section.
I think understanding that making new discoveries and breaking new ground is important, but replicating and extending research that has already been done is also very important. It’s also good to go back and check history again. Like with Wundt, how some of his work was never translated so a lot of people would just go off of what someone had written about him rather then what Wundt had said himself.
I believe this chapter builds by showing us how psychology came to be in a different part of the world and how we have to translate that work here to see how and what they did. I’d like to learn more about Muller and the work he did and why his work was never translated as much as Wundt’s. The idea I had during this chapter is if G.E. Muller’s work wasn’t translated there must be others out there that weren’t either. What if there is something that was found way head of its time and never translated or burned after the person died. There could be some things we just don’t know about.

The first thing I found interesting was how important Germany was in education and psychology. I have never heard anything like this before. I have heard of going other places but never really thought about Germany as a education “powerhouse”. I thought it was interesting and cool at the same time that the reason they were so popular for their education was because they were so invested in it. They had many schools because they wanted to be the best.
The second thing I found interesting was Hermann Ebbinghaus’s experiments on memory. The first thing I found interesting was he only did the experiments on himself. His research is also in almost every introductory psychology textbook of the twentieth century. To do research strictly by yourself, only experimenting on yourself, and still have that big of an impact on psychology is impressive.
The third thing I found interesting in this chapter was how wrong people were about Wilhelm Wundt. The text stated if I had taken this class 30 years ago, I would have learned information that was totally wrong about him. This makes me wonder, are we wrong about other things and other people? This is interesting to me.
The thing I found not interesting in this chapter was Mental Chronometry. I didn’t like it because I don’t do well with equations and trying to figure out how he did his experiments and come up with his conclusions with figures and equations.
I think understanding new psychology and psychophysics is important in understanding the history of psychology. If you don’t understand these concepts and why these people did what they did and their influence on psychology, then it is kind of pointless to study the history of psychology.
As the chapters continue to progress, so does the timeline of psychology. This chapter continues from the last ones by building on other psychologists and what they did. It explained what happened in Germany and what impact it had.
I would like to learn more about the study of memory and what all the aspects of it are.
The only idea I really had during this reading is after I read how wrong people were of Wundt. What if people are wrong about other people and other ideas? How could this change our society if we find out something we believe is wrong.

The first thing that I found interesting about this chapter was the concept of Wissenschaft, the schooling system mentioned that was used in Wundt's time. This schooling system, according to the book was one where teachers had a lot more freedom to teach what they were interested in and work on the research about stuff that they wanted. This also gave students the freedom to study what they wanted and also create their own discipline so they may pursue what they really want to instead of fitting into the mold of the already perscribed domain. This is where Wundt shined and i thought it was a really interesting concept that I don't know if it would work as well with today's youth because there is a greater majority participating in higher education but it would be interesting to find out.
The second thing that I found interesting was Fechner's idea about the "Day View" versus the "Night View". This was explained as the concept that was popular in German philosophy about the universe as a whole having a consciousness to it and that went beyond the individual consciousness of the other organisms within it. I was particularly intersted by the thought that after you die your consciousness merges with this larger cosmic concsiousness. This is really a thought I had never had before about death and dying. That there could be something bigger that we were a part of.
The last thing I found interesting was also kind of sad and that was that a lot of Wundt's work was misinterpreted just because it wasn't written in a language everyone could understand. The interpretation sometimes skewed and altered the original frame of thought that Wundt was trying to get across and due to that fact for a long while many people thought that his main area of research and interest was something completely different from the truth. This is just a further example of how history is not black and white and you can't always believe everything in your textbooks. Instead investigating for yourself is a great way to get the true answer.
The one thing I didn't like about this chapter is also something I'm not fond of in real life and that is the math. Although there were only a couple simple equations mentioned in this chapter I really didn't like it and I almost think trying to quantify people's behavior (aka using formulas in psychology) is an insult to the fact that the field is mostly qualitative. Yes surveys and such are very qualitative but when you put an equation into the mixture it changes everything. I get having one for reaction time but anything else was messed up to me. It doesn't help that my brain goes num whenever equations come into play.
I think the fact that Wundt did a lot more then is normally taught in psychology courses. All I had learned about the guy so far was that he was the founder of psychology and that's so far from the truth. They never even mention all the things that he has done and how he came to be considered the father of psychology. They just leave it at that one fact and I think knowing more about him will help me in the long run to understand more.
This chapter kind of went off on it's own tangent and moved backwards a little bit to talk about a key character in psychology (Wundt). I thin it relates to the other chapters because it further deepens the study of psychology being taken seriously by people and becoming a real academic field.
I would really like to learn more about Fechner's ideas on what happens with the cosmic consciousness and if that idea is still around today in any religious context. It's an interesting thought that I dont' think amny people have considered as far as the afterlife is concerned.
I had a lot of ideas about what it would be like to use the Wissenschaft school system here and other places. Like what if it could be used in an elementary school?
I wondered if anyone had thought more into the Night vs. Day View of cosmic conciousness and if there was any followers still today.

One of the topics I found to be interesting while reading chapter 4 was the topic on Psychophysics. I have heard of psychophysics before but never really knew what it was; according to the book it is the study of the relationship between perception of a stimulus event (psycho) and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. The previous chapter discussed a lot about perceptions so I think this is something really important to understand because it builds on to what we have already learned. Psychophysics first originated from a sensory research, which is ironic, and by a man named Ernst Weber; the book had also talked about different senses in the previous chapter. Weber first mapped out relative sensitivity on many locations across the skin, with this he demonstrated a mathematical relationship between the psychological and the physical, which was later defined as Weber’s Law. After more reading it was said that Gusatv Fechner clearly defined psychophysics.
Another topic I found to be interesting was the discussion of Weber’s Law. This was Ernst Weber’s second contribution from his interest in the muscle sense, which is also called kinesthesis. Weber wanted to know how important this sense was for making judgments about different weights of objects in ones hands. What he found was he could judge the weights and tell if one of was “heavier” than the other by just lifting them; he also came up with the “noticeable difference” between the weights. The ability to discriminate between the two weights did not depend on the absolute difference between them in weight, but on a more complicated relationship. This relationship became known as Weber’s law. The heavier the weights it was harder to tell the difference, observers could notice between 30 and 33 grams but not between 60 and 63 grams, but if it was 60grams and 66 grams they could notice. This is interesting to me because you wouldn’t think it makes sense but when you try it out I bet that it’s harder than you think.
Lastly, I found the topic on Wilhelm Wundt and his conception of the new psychology interesting. I found this interesting because he has already done so much he just doesn’t want to stop; he wants to fill his life with everything. His new psychology was called for the scientific examination of the human conscious experience. Basically, Wundt contrasted between immediate and mediate experiences. Looking at a thermometer and it saying 15 degrees F out, you are experiencing the phenomenon of temperature directly, mediate experience. On the other hand if you walk outside without a coat on you have a direct experience of coldness, an immediate conscious experience. This can go back to perception, which is something we have already discussed from previous chapters, just more in depth.
One thing I found to be the least interesting was Oswald Kulpe and the Wurzburg school. I found this to be kind of boring and I didn’t like that he declared higher mental processes off limits for laboratory research because he found them to be to complex. Isn’t that you why study something because you know nothing about them and most likely interested in them, but also because no one else has and you can make a difference in the world of a science/psychology. I took that as it was too hard for him and he just gave up.
What I read that will be most useful in psychology would be the different experiments people did and what they studied (perception, sensory, etc.) because these subjects we have already discussed and I think it is going to build on that. Psychology I feel that someone starts a study then when he or she dies someone else starts it up again and so we need to understand where it derived from. Like from chapter 3, Johannes Muller said that in perception we are not directly aware of the external world; rather we are only aware of the action of our nervous system, which conveys information of the world to us. This I feel is a start to what Weber’s Law was talking about and Wundt’s conception of psychology. Wundt’s idea of new psychology is something I really found to be interesting and would love to learn more about it; the book gave a good basic line and I understand the idea but learning more in depth about it would be very interesting.

1. Studying Immediate Conscious Experience- I thought Wundt’s perception of this experience is very unique. Due to the fact that I had never thought how much of a problem immediate research caused. Immediate research is basically experimenting firsthand, or self-observation. Wundt made a valid point stating that what someone else might experience as coldness could not be to someone else. I thought it was very interesting learning about Wundt’s view of introspection and how he rejected self-observation as nothing better than a philosophical speculation. However, Wundt used internal perception which is a narrower process of self-observation with controlled stimuli in his lab. Wundt only used his new psychology for his new experimental methods of conscious experiences.

2. Apperception- I thought this term was a very interesting idea of Wundt’s work. Apperception is when an event is perceived with full clarity and is in the focus of one’s attention. The example used in the textbook is when we see the word “dog” we see it as a meaning, instead of three separate letters. I find it interesting the Wundt even thought of this conscious experience that in today’s society comes natural. Many people do not realize how powerful our brain uses methods to organize information.

3. Ebbinghaus- The last thing I found interesting in this chapter was when Ebbinghaus used the savings method to recall a memory after a passing time. Ebbinghaus was interesting in when a person memorizes a poem, after a half a year of not recalling the poem after memorization, the memory is forgotten. Sometimes the poem may be recalled in sections. I found this to be very interesting because this happens to me all the time with song lyrics. I can relate to this issue with school or even after reading a book. However, Ebbinghaus used syllabus to relearn a passage after a fixed time. Moreover, I could not use his method because it would take too long.

One thing I did not like about this chapter was all of the numbers and research terminology. It was hard to focus on some of the short paragraphs that used descriptions I did not quite understand.

This chapter relates to the first 3 chapters in which, physiologists and psychology are used together in research. However, many of the German scientists in this chapter did not follow philosophical understand that was used in the previous chapters.

The topic I would like to learn about is more on Wundt’s work of sensation and perception. After reading the short passage, I want to take the class that is offered here at UNI called sensation and perception. I think I would be interested in it and I would know the background of Wundt’s work in his lab of how brain/mind is affected by our senses.

The main idea I had while reading this chapter is; were there any woman psychologists in this time period? Were there any young women that were interested in volunteering in the labs as subjects or to help with ideas? I find it very interesting that most of famous work is done by only men.

While reading chapter four on “Wundt and German Psychology,” the first thing that sparked my interest was Weber’s law. When Ernst Weber performed the experiment of making judgments on the comparative weights of objects and found the “just noticeable difference” that applied to the standard stimulus, I thought that was impressive. Weber gave importance to a new science, called psychophysics and made a relationship between mental and physical events that could be related through mathematics. The second thing I found interesting, and also a bit humorous (even though it probably shouldn’t be), was Fechner’s studies. His first one of afterimages, he would just stare at the sun, which resulted in him severely damaging his eyesight. He did however make the connection that staring at the brightest of all light resulted in the strongest afterimage. The study that made me really think though, was his challenge against materialism. His contribution to psychophysics, by measuring psychological sensations and physical stimuli that produced sensations, led others to see that, “psychological phenomena could be subjected to scientific methodology.” The third topic I found to be interesting in chapter four was Ebbinghaus and his study of memory. Although his experiments proved to be tedious and very time consuming, his overall discovery of how much the brain remembers after a certain period of time is something that I’ve heard throughout my education but never knew where it came from until reading about Ebbinghaus. One thing I found the least interesting throughout the chapter was all the mathematical equations and references. Although the research has paved the way to modern psychology, I still was not as intrigued as I have been in previous chapters.
What I think will be most useful in understanding the history of psychology was the discovery of Wundt’s original research and work. Much of his work was not translated into English, resulting in much to be lost throughout the years. However, discovery and translation of his writings has given modern psychology concepts and basics.
This chapter builds on the other chapters because it introduces a new physiology science that intertwines with the thinking of philosophy. The measuring of reaction times, recording memory ability, and testing the mind-body relationship has allowed philosophical questions about the mind and body to become actual statistics that psychologists can perform and experiment with today.
I would like to learn more about psycholinguistics. When Wundt studied the subject, he was able to break down sentences and figure out how humans interpret them and the structure of a sentence itself. His belief that a listener doesn’t necessarily recall the actual sentence that was said but instead the meaning of what they heard, was just astounding to me. I never would have thought of that.
Ideas I had during the chapter related to my friends that major in speech pathology. So many discoveries of how people communicate and interpret speech all came from past philosophers and psychologists. To know that I am studying and learning about how and why humans communicate the way they do makes me realize that no matter the major of other people, we all are connected in learning.

This chapter was personally interesting for me for the simple fact that it talked so much about Germany. I love Germany! I’ve lived there before and went back to visit. I can fluently speak the language and I am familiar (have been to many as well) with all of the cities that were discussed in this chapter. I also like how the chapter gave the German translations for many of the ideas that psychologists had. I think that my understanding of the landscape of the country helped me to better picture the cities and the surroundings that were discussed in the book. I found it interesting that they talked about American students having the opportunity to go to several of the cities to study psychology alongside Germans.

The life of Wilhelm Wundt is very interesting, and it is amazing how intelligent of a man he really was. He is known today as Experimental Psychology’s Founding Father. He was a philosopher, doctor, and psychologist. He finished his M.D. in 1955 and only practiced medicine for six months. In 1957, he became a Privatdozent, which is translated to “Outside lecturer”. Later, when he became interested in Psychology, he came up with the concept of Introspection, which is still used today. This can be defined as “self-observation of one’s life experiences to gain insight into one’s self.” His research was very influential, but it could only be narrowed to a few different experiences (sensory/perceptual/attentional) because in a laboratory setting, these had to be able to be replicated. I think the best part of his theory was that although he believed there was a biological aspect to perception, learning, thinking, and language, he also believed that these processes were intermingled with the particular individuals past life experiences. I strongly believe this, and it has been shown in many psychological studies, that most times it’s not just Nature, or not just Nurture, but a combination of the both.

As I mentioned earlier, I think it was a great opportunity for American students to travel to Germany at this time to study psychology. I like to believe that if I were alive at this time, I would have been one of those American Students. One of these American students that our reading talked about was a man by the name of James McKeen Cattell. In America, Cattell was a student at John Hopkins (a very prestigious school) in Baltimore. In 1883, Cattell traveled to Leipzig to study with Wundt. He was very interested in the reaction time method, and carried out this research while in Leipzig. He worked alongside his German Colleague Gustav Berger, who wrote a dissertation about the reaction time method for Wundt. One of their first experiments went as follows: a participant would sit in a dark room and look through a tube. They made 150 reactions of light with 8 different light intensity levels. They found that the reaction time was typically faster when the light was brighter. Berger and Cattell also did research with the reaction time of electrical currents to the left forearm to examine its effect on reaction time in the right hand. They discovered that the reaction time of the right hand would be faster with increased electrical current.

The part of the chapter that I found to be the most dry was the section over Gustav Fechner. The only reason that I thought this was the least interesting is because it dealt with a lot of physics. I’m not really a big physics buff, nor do I really care to learn about physics (although I know it is very important in the world that we live).

The thing that I thought about the most while reading this chapter was that we, as American’s, can claim bragging rights to a lot of different inventions and findings. Unfortunately, we are unable to claim the bragging rights to the start of many fields. At this time, the United States basically runs the entertainment industry for the world. While in Germany, I hoped to culture myself with German films and German music. This however was not the case. I turned on the TV and found myself watching “Jersey Shore” dubbed in German. I turned on the radio and found myself listening to Justin Bieber (fantastic….not). We are however, able to say that we have advanced many fields further than many countries have since the beginning. I’m not sure if we can contribute this to us being more intelligent of a country, or simply having more people. Take for example Germany: they have a population of 80 Million people, while we have a population of over 310 Million. You would certainly expect with more people, the better chance of an extremely influential person coming along there would be. (Obviously this is not proven, but just a thought). Basically, it amazes me how back in this time period Germany was influencing us so much, and now we are influencing them even more.

One thing i found to be interesting in this chapter was psychophysis.Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. Ive heard the term used before but until now never really knew what it involved. There were two different types of sensations that fechner was able to scale. The first one was the absolute threshold. This was where the first sensation was noticed. The next concept was the difference threshold. This is when they notice a difference from one threshold to another and then another. I found this to be really interesting because even today you can use these terms to determine what your thresholds are.
Another thing i found interesting was the two point thresholds. This is where the pereception of the device went from thje feeling of one point to two points. I found this interesting because it described how different areas are obvioulsy more sensative than others. For example, the thumb needed less space between points to notice the stimuli than say your upper arm. I found myself using a compass to test out the two point threshold. I was very weird to see how areas that werent that far apart from each other had totally different perceptions.
I found the first introduction of the chapter very interesting. It described how many schools there were in Germany and how versitile they were along with the students and professors. It mentioned that many students and professors had academic freedom and could go from university to university and still get their degrees. This was really suprising to me because after transferring from junior college i know how picky universities can be when it comes to cirriculum. It also discussed that they were not worries about polictical cesure or administaror punishment. I remember in previous chapters when people were afraid to do research because of things like religious groups making them outcasts. It just suprised me that they had such freedom to advance their knowledge along with the fields they chose to study.

One thing i didnt like about this chapter was all the equations they used in the middle of the chapter. I had a hard time reading the text and then trying to understand and figure out how to apply the equations to the text. They used these equations to try and describe such things as choice time,& discrimination time. The book even mentions that this procedure was called complication experiment which totally made sense to me after reading it.
This chapter relates to the previous chapters in that it expands on findings in psychology that still exist today. The beginning chapters just gave summaries of the history and of different people that were not all psychologists. This chapter really starts to seperate the changing of the times. Psychology is really starting to become a field that people acknowledge in the science world. In the previous chapters most people were doctors, scientists and only dabbled in psychology but not the chapter is starting to expand to its own field of study. This to me was the chapter that really started to focus on the history of psych and the main players involved.
I would like to learn more about equations in the chapter. As mentioned above i found those to be the most boring but its due to my lack of understanding. I think that with more knowledge and understanding i would be able to apply those to the equations and charts and be able to undertsand more of the research findings they discussed.The results on page 115 would be more interesting if i totally understood how to relate it to the equations. If i dont understand something fully i usually like to learn more about it so i can then determine if its boring or somewhat interesting.
I had a few ideas on the amounts of schools in Germany and europe in the 1800-1900s. It amazed me that there were so many schools available to attend. It also got me thinking how different that concept of small buildings that allowed students to go from school to school and earn degrees based on research and passing special exams rather than a cirriculum. This allowed students and teachers to venture from place to place and have different experiences. To me this makes sense that so many researchers were multi talented because they had the academic freedom to do several different things based on their own choices. It makes me wonder if those same ideas were applied today how would things be. Would they be the same? Different? Instead of a specialist we may have many multi talented scientists that are able to work on many different things.

Chapter 4

The first thing I found interesting in chapter four was the philosophy of Wissencraft that was promoted by the German educational system. I always enjoy the thought of new ideas or ways of seeing things. I guess my interest would be with the term open-mindedness and how possibilities can be endless and some things can be unknown. I feel like so many things are set in stone and not questionable, so it’s intriguing when there are certain things that don’t have proof and can only be theorized. Maybe it’s because no one has to be right and no one has to be wrong. The second thing that I found interesting in chapter four was Wundt and his interest in the mind’s ability to actively organize information. The term ‘apperception’ stuck out to me because I had never heard of it before. It is interesting to think about why different people perceive events in a different way and how they might be processing the information to make this perception. The mind is such an important, but complicated part of the human body, so it s crazy to think about all of the mental processes that are taking place to form a person’s personality and behavior. The third thing that I found interesting was the study of memory by Hermann Ebbinghaus. If you think of forgetting as unlearning instead, it sort of gains a new meaning. We might have more to do with forgetting then we think, which would mean we may be able to improve our own memory. If forgetting is unlearning, then would it be possible to prevent this from happening by making an effort to learn the stimulus so it can pass to long-term memory? Or maybe we can only remember or ‘learn’ so much that the less important stuff gets unlearned automatically. It is somewhat complicated to explain, but very interesting to think about how and why we remember what we do and the same for what we forget. What I found the least interesting in chapter four was Weber’s Law. I have learned about Weber’s Law in previous classes and it for some reason it doesn’t spark my interest as much reading about absolute and difference thresholds when the information has already been repeated.

I think learning about Wundt and all that he did with experimental psychology could be the most useful information when studying the history of psychology. Most importantly, I think it would be a good thing to know that he created the first laboratory of experimental psychology and the first journal devoted to describing the results of psychological research. I feel like when learning the history of any subject, people are an important topic to be aware of. Wundt was the founder of experimental psychology and plays an important role in the development and history of psychology in general.

Chapter four relates to and builds on the previous three chapters mainly because we are still on the overall subject of the mind and how it functions in order to make us function. Each chapter also includes significant people that were a part of the discoveries and theories that are written about in each chapter. From this chapter, what I would like to learn more about is Wundt and his studies in experimental psychology. Perceptual processes are something I find interesting and would like to research more. Perception is such a complex term that the amount of information or researching to be done is endless. This was a consistent idea I had throughout reading the chapter. I know how I perceive certain stimuli and I know that other people perceive the same stimuli differently, so it is a fascinating idea to think about why people’s perceptions differ and what the cause could be for these differences.

The first thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the section about Psychophysics, more specifically, the subsections about two-point thresholds and Weber’s Law. I took Sensation and Perception last semester and we spent a large amount of time on psychophysics so my knowledge on the subject expands a little bit further than just what the book explains in this chapter. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of the stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. Ernst Weber was the person that spear-headed the idea of psychophysics. Weber was interested in measuring what he called tactile sensitivity, so he developed a test called the two-point threshold test. This is where he used an instrument that looked like a simple drawing compass. He would blindfold the test subjects and then use the compass to measure the subjects’ objectivity on if they could tell if it was one or two points that they were feeling. This test essentially measures when the test subjects feels one point and then feels two. What was interesting was that he found that the thumb had a small sensation threshold. Meaning that it didn’t take test subjects long at all to distinguish between one and two points being felt. The upper arm was found to have a very large sensation threshold, meaning that it took the participants a while to feel the one or two point feel test. Weber believed that the different two point thresholds resulted from differences in the sizes that he called “sensory circles”. Weber’s law was derived from an interest in the muscle sense, in other words, the kinesthesis. He wanted to understand how important these muscles were in making judgments in comparing weights of objects. Weber coined the term “just noticeable difference” describing the discernment between different weights. For instance from not being able to tell the difference between 30 grams and 31 grams of weight, and being able to tell the difference between 30 and 33 grams of weight.

The second thing I found interesting was the immediate conscious experience. An immediate conscious experience is when your sensation is mediated by sensing a sensation firsthand rather than relying on a mediator to tell you what you should feel. Wundt made a critical distinction between self-observation and internal perception. Over the years these terms have been blurred together to produce just a single term titled, introspection. Self-observation is the traditional philosophical attempt to analyze life’s experiences through introspective reflection. Wundt unfortunately reject self-observation as merely a philosophical term. Internal perception was like self-observation but a much narrower process of responding immediately to precisely controlled stimuli. This was interesting because Wundt and his student assistants became experts in responding to these situations that they were testing without bias. In his lab, these types of responses that were being measured were largely limited to size, intensity, and attention span.

The third thing I thought was interesting was the mental sets and imageless thoughts section. Wurzburg did some interesting research on thinking and produced some interesting results. In one experiment talked about in the book, some observers were shown pairs of numbers after first being instructed that they would be performing some specific operation. Narziss Ach measured reaction time and also asked for detailed introspections. Interestingly enough, he found that reaction time was the same, regardless of the type of operation asked of the test subjects. Observers reported no conscious awareness of the instructions themselves, once the task had begun. Mental set was coined from this experiment. It is described as the mind being prepared to function in a specific way, once the person was presented with task, the action occurred automatically. Imageless thought was another finding that Wuzburg discovered in his lab. This term means that the element of thinking is an image of some form. Conscious attitudes are those things such as hesitation, doubt, and vacillation. The presentation of these three findings posed a threat to E.B. Titchener, who believed that all mental content under analysis would contain the basic elements of conscious experience. This section was interesting because it expressed three terms that I knew of, but I didn’t know real terms for these phrases or words. It also tells us a bit more about what Wurzburg and Kulpe studied and found.

The section that I did not enjoy in this chapter was the section about mental chronometry. Essentially I was just really confused by this section. I think this section was too much science for me, in other words the formulas really threw me off. Essentially this process measures reaction time by discerning between discrimination reaction time, simple reaction time, and choice reaction time. I vaguely remember talking about this in sensation and perception but I felt a bit confused by the explanation in this chapter. I found the sections about psychophysics really beneficial to the history of psychology because it introduced the law made by Weber as well as talking about the two point threshold. By understanding these two things, we can come to understand a whole new branch of psychology discovered called psychophysics and are now able to fully study it today. In Chapters 2 and 3 we gathered more context on the discovery of psychology in the nineteenth century. In this chapter we gain an understanding on how this experimental physiology combined with philosophical inquiry to create a new experimental psychology. I would like to learn more about the issue of immediate conscious experience. The ideas I had while reading this chapter were that I gained a better appreciation for Germany. I always thought that psychology mainly started in the U.S., and these European philosophers and scientists had attributed to the science. I was obviously wrong. Learning about these other philosophers and scientists was also interesting. I think it’s funny that most of the time these ideas about psychology were discovered accidentally by these other people that were trying to learn about something totally different.

The first thing I found interesting was learning about education in Germany. The sentence that really stood out to me was, ‘a semester abroad is a valued experience’ because I am really looking into doing that next year though I never thought about Germany as a place I’d want to go. I never thought Germany would be paired with psychology as a popular place to continuing education after high school or even for grad school. It was neat to hear about how much they valued education though they weren’t technically a country at that point. It was also great to hear that they had access to the best laboratory with Wundt at Leipzig.

I liked learning about Fechner’s absolute threshold and difference threshold. Again, it’s interesting to see how psychologists branch off of one another to discover something new as Fechner did with Weber’s law. The concepts of the absolute threshold and difference threshold were easy to understand with the example of the dimmer switch. Even thought the switch is slowly turned there will be no sensation of light. As we first notice the light coming on is known as absolute threshold and if it continues to be turned to where you can tell a difference in the brightness-that is the difference threshold.

Although this was a small point in the section, I found it interesting that Muller allowed women in his lab though they weren’t awarded graduate degrees at that time. I think I’d like to learn about that in upcoming chapters because mainly all we have learned about psychological findings are that they are from men.

The one thing I found the least interesting was probably about Weber’s law. I only say this because I read over the section a few times and was confused by it. I dislike this section of the chapter mainly because I couldn’t understand it. It brought up a lot of math and calculating which you do come across in psychology, but I guess it made the gap between physical and mental events closer.

I liked learning about how psychology came to play in Germany and how much it advanced by psychologists from there like Wundt and Fechner. As for how this chapter relates to previous, psychologists are still trying to connect the mental vs. physical sides to how our mind and body interact and connect. They started on sensation with the two-point threshold with Weber and touched on the memory drum with Muller.

An idea I came across was what do we consider ‘old psychology’ and ‘new psychology’ and should we even distinguish between the two? I wonder what makes something old or new in the realms of psychology. Another irrelevant idea I came across was I wonder what it’d be like to study psychology in Germany since I have been looking into studying abroad. It’d be really interesting to be where Wundt was in his time and kind of be a part of it in a way.

The first topic I found interesting was on absolute and difference thresholds. Absolute threshold is the point at which sensation is first noticed. Difference threshold is the noticeable difference that occurs when stimulus intensity increases. I found this interesting because this goes hand in hand with difference in perception that has been argued in the other chapters. Even further, while humans may all have similar thresholds different animals may have better or worse thresholds. A dog’s absolute threshold for smell is reach through much less intense stimulus.

The second topic I found interesting was “Immediate consciousness.” This is experiencing something, like temperature, first hand not through a thermometer. This topic also has the argument of perception in it. Someone who is used to living in cold weather and someone who is used to living in hot weather will have two very different experiences of how 60⁰F feels. The other problem, brought up in the chapter, is how inaccurate memory is. The way Wundt dealt with is problem was with immediate response. While that help eliminate most of the problem it is still not perfect, but no study that involves human perception will ever be flawless.

The final topic I found interesting was the section on “imageless thought.” That is being able to make a judgment on something without any image coming before it. The book uses Karl Marbe’s study on lifting two weights. Participants made judgment on the weights “automatically and without images” (128). I think this also corresponds to something like taste as well. When we eat something sour we have an automatic response to the sourness of whatever we ate before we have the image of a lemon or warhead in our mind.

The topic I found least interesting was the section on “Two-Point Thresholds.” This is the distance apart two points have to be in order for a person to feel two points. The reason this is my least interesting topic is because, first it seems very simple and second I don’t know if the discovery was really that important. I guess it is good to know which areas of the body a most sensitive and the data could be used for learning how far apart to place dots in brail so that people can read them. I feel that out of all the discoveries and experiments explained in this chapter, this was the least interesting.

I think the most helpful part of this chapter for understanding psychologies history was how it tied together Wundt, Weber Fechner, Titchener, Kulpes and others discoveries and ideas and how the built off each other or against each other. Seeing the relationship between student and teacher, like in Wundt, Titchener and Kulpes case with the concept of introspection and internal perception. I think being able to see how each came to their conclusions helps us understand why psychology has taken the route it has.

This chapter build off the last greatly with its further depth into sensory and perception. This chapter looks further into perception, where the last chapter focused on vision and other senses to argue perception this chapter seems to take it one step further into the realm of trying to research what people perceive and seeing if there are patterns of perception. This seems to be the case to me in areas like absolute and difference thresholds and immediate consciousness.

The subject I would like to learn more about is Mental Chronometry. Why I want to learn more about this subject is because it is in fact reaction time and learning and improving my reaction time is something that I could benefit greatly from. It has to do with my interest in sport. In most case if you can react quickly, to a gun shot, you have an advantage over your competitor. I would like to learn more on this subject in the hopes of increasing my advantage.

While I read this chapter one thing that I thought about a lot was, how do we know if test subjects are actually telling us the truth? Like in the section with imageless thought. First off, the subject might not really know what the scientists want and so they are just giving them their best guess. Second, maybe the subject are just goofing off and just making up responses. These both are very unlikely because if the later were true the data would appear more random and since logical theories have been made over the topic on imageless thought I doubt it is true that people made up responses.

One of the things I found interesting in the chapter is the fact that Germany was such a major influence in the field of psychology. When I think about psychology normally I don’t think about the fact that what I know does not actually come from the United States. I know that sounds ignorant, but when you think about all that we have discovered it is almost crazy that people cared enough to translate it to English. The second part of this chapter that I found interesting was Ernst Weber, or more specifically Weber’s Law. To even care enough about a topic to go into math is beyond me. He discovered Weber’s Law which is the mathematical relationship between the psychological and the physical. To even figure out that there could be a mathematical relationship is insane. Even thinking about the simplest equations that discuss the relationship between agreeable panels of judges for a study. We discovered that we could relate math to psychology through Weber. He also developed what we know now as kinesthesis, or eventually called psychophysical which is involved in muscle sense. The third thing I found interesting in the chapter was that Bunsen had such an influence on Wilhelm Wundt. It is so neat to think that all of these psychologists that had an immediate impact on each other developed a respect so deep that they practiced so many ideas off of one another. Bunsen invented the Bunsen burner, which is still used in so many labs around the world, and he not only lived at the same time as Wundt but influenced his way of thinking and allowed him to build off of his ideas.
One if the things I found most interesting that relates to the history of psychology was the study of memory by Hermann Ebbinghaus. He discovered that learning at a rapid rate soon follows forgetfulness, and as a college student, seems extremely interesting. I know that personally if I forget something after I’ve learned it in class I need to reread chapters and do more research and that actually remember what is going on. I would like to learn more about is William Wundt. I feel like he not only hold more that I would like to learn about (his biography in particular) but the fact that basically opened the doors for experimental psychology is mind blowing.
Some ideas I had about in this chapter were about William Wundt and his life and what kind of person he must have been. Most psychologists before him were doing experimental work in their living rooms on animals and here he is saying experimental is the way to go…because what will we know unless we try it out on our own?

What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?

What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?

How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?

What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?

What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?

I thought that Gustav Fechner was interesting. He was familiar with Latin at the age of 5 and he entered college at just sixteen! He was so passionate about math and physics that in his spare time he would give lectures FO FREE. This dude went all out to accomplish his research goals. He wanted to study afterimages so he just stared at the sun over and over again until his eyesight was damaged. I was amazed that he was able to get through the depression he suffered. The passage in the book that he wrote sounded very gloomy. His struggle with and constant focus on the relationship between mind and body allowed him to intuitively discover a means for way to measure this relationship. This insight led to his work on the first book on experimental psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt was a pretty cool cat too. His childhood sounded a lot like mine! Excessive daydreaming and lackadaisical performance in school described his earlier years but because his family had dough and connections he could swag out at a university in Tubingen. However, he got his M.D. at a different university in Germany some time later. He was influenced by the guy who invented the bunsen burner even incorporating some of his teaching methods in his own lectures. His interest in higher mental processes is also noteworthy. He wrote ten books on higher consciousness and three were on myth and religion alone! Myth is a pretty cool subject it seems to relate to every modern story.
Imageless thought was an interesting concept. It was determined that every thought has an image of some kind. But, some mental processes do not rely on an image such as a comparison between sensations or thoughts related to an emotion or feeling like hesitation or doubt. The discovery of this concept threatened the work of established scientists.
Again, most of the technicality of it all was uninteresting to me. I am very much a skeptic so I think that everything we find to be the "true" equation or the "true" answer will all change or be disproved at some point. It may not be true at all even though there is no defeating truth present at the time of its conception. But that defeating truth may be out there.
Most of the info on Wundt helps me to think about psychology as a whole but there was nothing that stood out too much.
I don't remember reading anything that "clicked" and made me think of the last chapter in particular.
I would like to learn more about the "true" relationship between mind and body. Are they two seperate entities? Or are they really a part of a completely symbiotic relationship? Is the body just an extension of the mind? Its a cool thing to think about.
I thought a lot about the mind body relationship. I thought about what life would have been like for Gustav. He seemed like kind of a sociopath or socially awkward. He really fell into a low in his mind and I admired his courage for pushing through. I thought about the fervor for knowledge when the world was younger and how our generation and our country is so lazy and uninterested in knowledge. We can just rely on other people these days instead of finding things out on our own.

As I have stated multiple times in past posts, I have a passion for philosophy and debates that stem from it. I particularly like the life and life after death debate. For this reason I enjoyed Fechner’s idea and the philosophical expansions that stemmed off of it. He had this proposal of a ‘day’ view and a ‘night’ view. I like this proposal as it looks at what happens to our consciousness after we die (German philosophy). This philosophy seemed to believe that our entire universe had its own, independent consciousness. Further, after one dies, their consciousness then goes into the giant pools of this universal, cosmic, consciousness that seems all knowing. It’s like a reincarnation where you don’t come back to earth but you consciousness lives forever and contributes to the colossal intelligence of our universal consciousness. I found this interesting because I have never viewed life and death from this perspective. I was awestruck by this idea and I found it incredibly interesting from the standpoint that it made me think and pushed me to consider something of which I had never before given much thought.

I also enjoyed learning about the world of psychological and physical junction-also known as psychophysics. I stated above that I found Fechner interesting in his theory of consciousness and death, additionally, Fechner seemed to define psychophysics. However, as a change of pace, I would like to address Weber’s Law as my point of interest instead. Weber looked at the sensitivity of various body (physical) locations and then used that to create an equation that relates psychological and physical aspects (thus psychophysics). The physical aspects included a look at kinesthesis or more specifically the muscles. Weber’s law ultimately suggested that the greater the physical difference or noticeability, the easier it is to psychologically notice and recognize this change.

As Germany was mentioned a fair amount, I started to find it even more interesting while looking at the history of psychology. Perhaps this is most interesting to me because when I think about German history, I think about more negative or war related aspects of the country and fail to think about their talents or how amazing and interesting their psychological contributions may be. Germany is an extremely competitive country. This is why it is interesting that they would also be so heavily competitive with their education. I suppose it makes logical sense. Wissenschaft was the name of the education system that Wundt used. This type of schooling system reminds me somewhat of the home school system and also the development of independence (personally). I think this also reflects some of the German culture. I like that the system allowed for teachers to focus on their personal interests and do research in what they wanted. This doesn’t always seem to be the case in modern times. I think this would be more interesting for both parties involved as it would be directly working with a passion and not something that is grudgingly being forced upon someone. Also, I think that students would get more out of their educations if they were specifically focusing all of their attention on their personal and academic goals. This chapter emphasized German contributions and I was shocked and interested in all the ways that the Germans contributed. It seems that this system of education helped German reach success.

The least interesting thing in this chapter is the fact that numbers and formulas had to be included. I can’t stand math or statistics. For this reason, it just wasn’t interesting to me. It didn’t really suit my personal interest and it just frustrated me as I had to dedicate more time to my attempt to understand.

This chapter relates to previous chapters as it continues to build off of the concept of philosophy. Philosophy continues to be mentioned prevalently throughout all of the chapters. It’s started to pound the idea that psychology is as much a philosophy as it is a science. I like how all of the chapters seem to link philosophy, science, and mental processes together as parts of psychology are discovered and built upon.

While reading this chapter my ideas revolved around my new intrest in German psychologists. I would like to learn more specifically about Wundt and the pros and cons of the Wissenschaft education system as well as how much it continues to affect our education today. It might also be interesting to explore the benefits that people may experience in this style of education (or perhaps the setbacks). My ideas are that this might be a positive way to hold all education. I wonder how much better it would be to only have students and professors with common interests share in the study and learn from each other. Especially once we beging studying in our major field, I think it would be important to get rid of the classes in which nobody had a common interests. However, with the set up of our education system, I can recognize the fact that this would probably not be a good idea. Still, much of my thoughts during the reading revolved around this concept/philosophy.

One interesting topic in this chapter was Ernst Weber’s two-point threshold research. To measure tactile sensitivity he used a technique in which he touched the skin with a device resembling a two-point drawing compass. The distance of the two-points on the skin could vary and the task of the blindfolded participant was to determine whether one or two points were being felt on their skin. Weber found that a two-point threshold existed for any area of skin, which is the point where perception changes from feeling “one” point to feeling “two” points on the skin. Areas of the skin with greater sensitivity had smaller thresholds while areas with less sensitivity had larger thresholds. These findings lead Weber to believe that the two different thresholds resulted from “sensory circles” found within the skin. Skin areas with greater sensitivity had smaller circles, making it easier to detect when two points were touching the skin. Although we know now that the sense of touch is much more complicated than these findings, Weber’s model still remains important. His model helped lead to new discoveries about how the tactile sense operates.
Another interesting topic in this chapter was Wilhelm Wundt’s dedication to creating new psychology. Wundt is known as the “father of psychology” because he set out to create a new psychology that emphasized the experimental methods borrowed from physiology. He also created the first laboratory of experimental psychology as well as the first journal devoted to describing the results of psychological research. Most of the research being done in Wundt’s laboratory dealt with basic sensory and perceptual processes. Wundt’s role in the history of psychology is obviously a large one and his contributions are still being referred to today.
Hermann Ebbinghaus and his findings concerning memory were also interesting to read about. He recognized that at this time very little was known about memory and what they did know was based solely off common sense. This inspired Ebbinghaus to learn more about memory using experimental methods rather than common sense. To do this he created a list of about 2,300 nonsense syllables (three-letter units made of two consonants and a vowel in the middle) and began spending countless hours trying to memorize these lists through repetition. He found that the longer the list he was trying to memorize, the more repetition was needed to recall the list without hesitation or error. His findings indicated that the average person can remember a list of up to 7 items (in this case nonsense syllables) with only one repetition of these items. Ebbinghaus’s research in regards to memory is much more extensive than what I have just summarized, but what I described were still important findings during this time. It should also be noted that Ebbinghaus conducted all of his experiments in relation to memory on himself, which is interesting in itself.
One thing that became less interesting as I read was the section on Wundt. I have learned a lot about him in previous courses and although I realize the significance of learning about him in regards to psychology, this section got to be a bit extensive.
I believe an important aspect to help people better understand the history of psychology is Germany and the role it played in expanding psychology. Many well-known early psychologists came from Germany. It would be impossible to fully understand the history of psychology without first understanding the role Germany played, especially during the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century a new form of experimental psychology was being created in Germany which attracted Americans to go over there and continue their educations and participate in the experiments taking place in the laboratories. One could argue that without the continued education and advances provided by Germany during this time period, American psychology wouldn’t be what it is today.
Previous chapters have discussed philosopher’s interests in fundamental questions about the human mind and behavior, which lead to the development of a scientific psychology. This chapter relates by expanding on experimental physiology combined with philosophical inquiry, which created a new experimental psychology. Basically, each chapter has been continually building off one another, expanding more and more on how psychology was created and made into what it is today.
I would like to learn more about how the research being done during this time period was translated into English. How was it decided what research was translated and what research wasn’t and did whoever translated it do so accurately? I was also interested in learning about drove Americans to want to go to Germany during this time period. Were these types of laboratories and experiments not offered in the U.S. at this time?

One thing that interested me from the chapter was psychophysics. This seems like a really interesting field of study, and a really difficult area to test. I would not want to be the one researching and testing in this field, but it was not bad to read about. The relationship between perceiving a stimulus event and physically experiencing the event is something that psychologists have not always believed to be two separate events. Ernst Weber was a pioneer in the field, particularly with his studies of tactile sensitivity. He hypothesized the existence of a two-point threshold. Weber believed that determining the point where perception changes from one point to two would be an accurate measure of skin sensitivity to touch. His work with kinesthesis is also interesting to me. Weber’s Law cites that the noticeable difference of two weights is proportional to the size of the smaller object. This work changed the way mental and physical events would be expressed in future experiments; they could now be related mathematically. The changes that a law can bring on an entire science are fascinating to me.
Another thing I found interesting from the chapter was Wilhelm Wundt’s first student, James McKeen Cattell. He was the first American to earn a Ph.D. in experimental psychology under Wundt’s supervision. I learned of Cattell’s work in another class. He was noted as coining the term “mental test” during his time at the University of Pennsylvania. I thought it was particularly interesting how the letters Cattell wrote to his parents while he spent time in Europe ended up being an informative source of the operations in Wundt’s early years at his Leipzig laboratory.
A third thing I found interesting from the chapter was, naturally, Fechner’s work in psychophysics. He took Weber’s research on thresholds to an even more significant level. He hypothesized that sensations can be measured exactly by assuming that the just-noticeable-differences (jnd’s) were subjectively equal in magnitude. This realization led to a reformulation of Weber’s Law. Fechner’s methods used to establish thresholds are still used today: the method of limits, the method of constant stimuli, and the method of adjustment.
The thing I found to be least interesting in the chapter was imageless thought. It was an important finding in the Wurzburg laboratory, yet it was very controversial. It seems like an incredibly difficult if not impossible element to study and went a little over my head. The fact that judgments can occur automatically and without images does not seem unrealistic by any means. I just do not see a way to study it without having shaky methods or outcomes.
The thing I read that will be most useful to understanding the history of psychology is Wundt’s curiosity about the study of higher mental processes. These processes are also of high interest to me. They are constantly subjected to study in today’s psychology and it I think it is important to know some of the big names and findings in fields like psycholinguistics, psychology of religion and myth, anthropology, social psychology, forensic psychology, etc.
This chapter relates to the previous chapter by describing the context from which modern psychology was born in the nineteenth century. Philosophers are interested in the same fundamental questions that interest modern psychologists today. A new experimental psychology arose in Germany in the late nineteenth century that combined experimental psychology with philosophical inquiry. Several key German psychologists are discussed including Wundt and his creation of “New Psychology.”
I would like to learn more about the topic of psycholinguistics. This is a topic I mentioned above while discussing important topics to understanding the history of psychology. I think it is important because it was studied in the nineteenth century, but largely ignored until the rise of cognitive psychology in the twentieth century. Noam Chomsky has also made some of the most fascinating claims in all of linguistics. It’s always been an interest of mine; I just have not pursued it in academia.
An idea I had while reading this chapter was that I had never really thought of myself as interested in the “physics” aspect of psychology. Something about reading into the origins of psychophysics (as opposed to having random scientists and studies pop up in textbooks) actually sparked an interest in my mind. I think it has to do with its innovation and complexity as a science. Studying reaction times seemed boring to me at the surface, until I read more about the methods used to study such phenomena.
Another idea I had while reading this chapter was that I usually withdraw when I see math equations in a textbook. But, seeing math equations relate to psychological studies kind of took the threat away. Using mathematical formulas to study psychological phenomena seems like a reliable method of study. I like having equations to plug numbers into, so these parts of the chapter made the experimentation element of psychology seem less intimidating.