What I would like you to do is to find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find a video clip that demonstrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use at least 3 quality resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say what your topic is, b) how exactly it fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
By integrating/synthesizing I mean to take what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using that information. This is hard for some people to do - many students write what we refer to as "serial abstracts." They are tempted to talk about the websites rather than the topic proper and this what you DON'T want to do! They will talk all about website #1, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #2, start a new paragraph and talk all about web site #3, and then write some kind of conclusion. Serial means one after the other...again, this what you DON'T want to do! Also if all three sites are on the same one topic it will be easier.
At first it is a real challenge to get out of the habit of writing "serial abstracts," but I assure you once you get the hang of it it is much easier to write using the integration method. And besides this is the way researchers and scientists write their technical reports and findings - many of you will have to be able to do this for other classes and for jobs that you may eventually be hired for so now is a good time to learn this skill. At this point don't worry about a grade, worry about doing your best to have fun with the topic and then integrate it into your own words to share what you found and now know. We will work on citing the sources later....
Additional instructions: For each URL (internet resource) you have listed. Indicate why you chose it and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
The topic that interested me most from the chapter was intelligence testing. It was mentioned early in the chapter to help explain presentist thinking. The chapter describes one particular intelligence test administered by an American intelligence tester named Henry Goddard that was designed to weed out immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in New York. This test was used to keep “mentally defective” immigrants out of the country. It’s important to study early intelligence tests like this because we can learn from mistakes. We weren’t “aware” that just because we can administer a test and get a result we can’t always trust the results and we certainly can’t claim to have the ability to pick out “mentally defective” people just by looking at them. The whole notion of intelligence is interesting to me because it seems that intelligence can be defined in many ways. If a man has lived in the wild and acquires intelligence through experience and survival and a man studies how to survive in a book is either of the men more intelligent in that area? They both know how to survive but one gained intelligence through experience and the other through reading a book. If one man knows how to read and describe things in great detail but can’t do math very well and another man can solve math equations in his sleep but can’t read is one of these men more intelligent than the other?
After some reading I found out that scientists believe intelligence is inherited. We may think that intelligence is related to brain size or a particular brain structure, but according to a journal article in Behavioral and Brain sciences, intelligence is not so much related to brain size or brain structure but how efficiently information travels throughout the brain as a whole. There are certain structures in the brain that have been identified as more critical when determining intelligence, those relating to attention memory and language, and this article proposes that the efficiency of communication between those areas may be a more accurate measure of intelligence.
But what exactly is intelligence? This is question that humans have been wrestling with for years. Some define intelligence as our over-all problem solving skills. Our skills in reasoning, calculating, analyzing, perceiving relationships, recognizing patterns etc have been determined to be our level of intelligence to this point. But is this accurate? One theory states that there are seven levels of intelligence: Logical-mathematical, Spatial, Linguistic, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalistic Existential. If there are this many levels of intelligence how can one person be exceedingly more intelligent than anyone else?
Some say that memory directly relates to intelligence and this caused me to look up information about memory testing. My search led me to a video of a chimpanzee taking a memory test. It turns out that chimps have better short term memory than humans! In a test using numbers, a chimpanzee was better at remembering their position on a screen after only seeing them for a millisecond. If this is case are chimps more intelligent than humans in that area?
Intelligence testing is a process that continues to baffle the human race. Sure we can come up with a million different tests to try to accurately measure intelligence but we still don’t have a bonafide example. Let a Harvard English professor and survivor man take an IQ test and see who fares better. Then let’s throw them both in the wild and see who fares better. I think it will be a long time before we get a solid definition of intelligence and solid way to measure it if we ever do.
http://www.brainmetrix.com/intelligence-definition/
-helped me to define intelligence
http://www.livescience.com/1863-theory-intelligence-works.html
-helped me to describe new thought on where intelligence comes from/how it is defined
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7ShiQqLQg
-just an example of animal>human intelligence used for entertainment purposes
The topic that I chose is simply a little bit of a background of “the father of experimental Psychology”, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt. The reason that I chose to write a bit about him is because I think it is very interesting to see where things all started, and why they started the way they did. This is also important because the way that we know psychology today, although some similarities exist, is much different than the way that Wilhelm Wundt saw it. I think it is important and also very interesting for students to see how far our field has come. This fits in with our text because the chapter told us that in 1979, Psychologists around the world celebrated the 100 year anniversary of the first psychological laboratory created in Leipzig, Germany. This is another reason why I am interested in this topic is because I have spent time living in Germany and have been to many of the places that are discussed while reading about Wudnt.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16, 1832 in the city of Mannheim, Germany. Wundt studied medicine at both in both the cities of Tübingen and Heidelberg. His first publication was on the sodium chloride content of urine. You may be thinking, “Wow! The sodium chloride content of urine? That’s not psychological at all!” This was only the beginning for Wundt, as he spent the following years (1857-1864) studying physiology. In 1862 Wundt starting lecturing about psychology and in 1875 he was invited to be a professor in Leipzig. Before long, Wundt was famous in Leipzig and the first laboratory use for psychological purposes was created in 1879.
The branch of psychology that Wilhelm Wundt founded was called structuralism. Wilhelm Wundt and his students did a lot of work with Introspection. Due to Wundt’s medical and physiological background, he wanted to draw a connection between what the body did and the mind thought. Introspection was a form of self-examination. Wundt did not invent introspection, but the way that he and his students used it was original. The experiments that were conducted in this laboratory were very simple. It was simply extracting sensations and matching them with feelings. Wundt and his students also did experiments with reaction time and word association.
The outcome of these experiments led Wundt and his students to believe that the interaction between our perceptions and feelings are what cause the psychological processing in our brains. The problem with Wilhelm Wundt’s introspection method is that it is subjective and therefore has virtually no interrater-reliablility. For this reason, neither Wundt’s theories nor his introspection are still used today.
Although Wilhelm Wundt’s theories and his introspection method have long been abandoned, Wilhelm Wundt still me be given the credit he deserves for setting up the first experimental laboratory for psychology. It’s also important to remember that he was the first person to refer to psychology as a SCIENCE. Before Wilhelm Wundt, (and by some idiots today) psychology was not viewed as a science.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
This website helped me figure out a basic timeline of his life.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website helped me define Structuralism and Introspection.
http://www.wilhelmwundt.com/wilhelm-wundt-psyhology5.php
This website told me almost anything I wanted to know about him.
The topic I honestly found most interesting is why study the history of psychology at all. The book gave some pretty good reasons on why it’s good for us to be studying the history, but the sites that I found gave me a little more insight on the topic. I’ve learned that studying the history of psychology isn’t really like the history of other sciences such as chemistry or physics. What makes the study of psychology so special is because it’s people trying to figure out why they do what they do. The word why is so hard to explain and most of use still don’t have a good answer for the reason why we do this or why we do that.
It’s good to study the history of psychology because it not only shows you the history, obviously, but it shows one how people thought during certain time periods. There was a time when people believed mental illnesses were really just some evil presence in the body. When we think about why people were thinking like that we have to believe that it had something to do with society and the environment and that time. It’s interesting to know that we could look and something now and partially be influenced by our society when interpreting what this something is or means. However, a hundred or so years from now people could look at us as history and think “what in the world were they thinking saying this linked to this”. But it’s due to outside factors, it always has been.
Psychology’s history is also interesting to study in the fact that it really hasn’t been around nearly as long as the other sciences have. Psychology is a very young field and yet it’s caught on so quickly by so many people. One has to ponder on why that is. What is so unique about psychology that makes it more appealing than other sciences? Maybe it’s our need to want to learn more about ourselves. It’s also interesting to learn about where in the world psychology first came from. It’s not something that just popped up out of the blue, but something that came from another field and simply merged away because people began viewing psychology as a science.
http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/jaynes_history.pdf
http://www.helium.com/items/1353220-studying-the-history-of-psychology
http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/videos/view/20751/
I just kind of combined all of these links together.
The topic I chose is comparative psychology, with a focus on the study of primates. Comparative psychology’s history was discussed on pages 12-13 in the textbook for this class. The book shared that early comparative psychologists wanted to know how much other species showed evidence of consciousness, which eventually became the study of behavior. I am interested in this field because I have always been an animal lover and am curious about how similar or different they are to us. I took an animal behavior class and this heightened my interest. I had an observation assignment where I watched gorillas at the Denver Zoo for two hours and this got me really interested in the social behavior of primates. Since primates are supposed to be our closest animal relative I think this is the most interesting group of animals to study. I wish I could take a whole class on this.
In the past there have been many famous psychologists who studied primates. The earliest work of comparative psychologists can be traced back to the late 1800s and there have been many changes along the way. In 1904 Linus Kline called comparative psychology Zoological Psychology. C.R. Carpenter was one of the first primatologists to study the natural behavior of primates. Robert M Yerkes also studied primates and founded the Yale University Laboratories of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Fla. Yerkes liked to study chimpanzees and even had two live with him. Yerkes book Great Apes published in 1929 was very respected as the authority of such information at the time. When Dr. Yerkes retired in 1942 Yale University renamed the Center the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology.
In 1956 Emory University took over the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology. Currently Emory University does a lot of research in the areas of not only social cognition but also memory and brain structure. Comparative primate cognition has a lot to do with evolution. Certain traits were beneficial for primates to posses and were then passed on to future generations. One of these hypothesized traits is social intelligence or adept social behavior.
Another area of interest in comparative primate psychology is language acquisition. Some of this type of research takes place at the Max Plank Institute in Leipzig, Germany and in Manchester, England. A lot of this is closely related with evolutionary anthropology and Primatology. The study of evolution and culture of great apes helps to “understand other individuals as intentional agents with their own knowledge, desires and beliefs.”
There are various ways that researchers study primates to test their hypotheses. At Emory monkeys are studied in various lab setting. One way social cognition is studied is by having a monkey identify other monkeys it knows on a computer screen. At the Max Plank Institute research on Social Cognition is divided into four main areas: theory of mind, gestural communication, cooperation and prosociality and social learning. At the Max Plank Institute the other main line of research is Physical Cognition with focus on three areas: spatial cognition, planning, and causal knowledge. A lot of research has shifted from naturalistic observation to laboratory observation.
Links: I found that three websites was not enough to cover all I wanted to know but below are a few which contributed the most info.
http://www.psychology.emory.edu/lcpc/- This helped me find out what Emory is currently up to. This was a very good official website.
http://www.eva.mpg.de/primat/files/cognition.htm- This helped me find out what the Max Plank Institute is up to. This website was very large and official.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/653037/Robert-M-Yerkes- This gave me info on Robert Yerkes. This is a respected source and gave me nice biographical info on Yerkes and Carpenter.
One topic that really interested me while reading the chapter was the brief material about intelligence testing. It was brought up as an example to help explain presentist thinking. Intelligence tests have always intrigued me, and I’ve always wondered who created the test and what one of these tests entails.
The first intelligence test was created in 1904 by a French psychologist named Alfred Binet. The French government had him create a test for children to find which were normal and which were inferior. The inferior children were sent to special schools, so they could receive more individual attention. The success of the test led to the Binet Scale being created, which is also known as the Simon-Binet Scale. The scale was simply just a guide to identify the children who needed special education in the school systems.
The success of Binet’s test caused the United States to find interest in administering intelligence tests as well. A man named Henry Goddard was the first American to administer an intelligence test. He used the test Binet had created once he translated it into English. He then administered the test on immigrants at Ellis Island around the time of World War I. His responsibility was to weed out the “mentally defective” immigrants. If he indeed found an immigrant to be “mentally defective”, then they were sent back to their country of origin. In some cases, Goddard said he could pick out “mentally defective” immigrants by just looking at them, which is a questionable method to say the least.
Many people don’t know what these intelligence tests actually measure. There are many different areas that intelligence tests cover. Some of the different topics on the test include: verbal, mathematical, spatial, visualization, classification, logic, and pattern recognition. These topics bundled together work on different kinds of skills. These skills include: logical reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and adaptation. Some of the questions one may see could be finding the missing number in a number sequence or choosing a word that doesn’t belong in a given word sequence.
Even after one learns what exactly these tests measure, there are still a lot of questions about the accuracy of the intelligence tests. Intelligence tests are often used on children to determine whether or not a child has a mental disability. With that being said, it’s very important that these test be accurate, so the children who take this test can receive the necessary treatment if that ends up being the case. Inaccurate test results could make a child who doesn’t need extra attention receive it, while a child who may need that extra attention doesn’t receive it. In one study, 99 researchers all looked at the same test, and the range of scores they got were much too big to provide an accurate conclusion of what the score on that test really was. The range in scores was from 63 to 117, which tells us that there are some flaws regarding these tests. However, it may not be the test being inaccurate. It could simply be the person scoring it incorrectly.
All in all, I’m sure these tests will continue to draw controversy for their questionable results. However, they are still being administered, and I feel they will remain being administered for a long time. There are no requirements to take any kind of intelligence test. If people do not believe these tests are accurate, then they simply should just stay away from them. When it comes to diagnosing whether or not a child is mentally disabled, there are plenty of other methods that can be used to determine this. Personally, I think the intelligence tests are accurate, because I haven’t seen a strong enough argument that they’re not accurate.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligent.aspx
-Part of the article focused on the accuracy of the tests
http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia014.htm
-Helped me find the origins of the intelligence test, and helped me figure out exactly what it measures
http://www.intelligencetest.com/questions/index.htm
-Gave me an idea of what kind of questions are found on intelligence tests
The topic that I found interesting while reading chapter one of the text was comparative psychology, or the evolution based study of animal behavior. This concept relates to the history of psychology, because comparative psychologists urged the transition of studying the concept of consciousness to studying the concept of behavior. The original study of animal consciousness also involved measuring their observable behaviors, and John B. Watson saw how these methods of measuring observable behaviors could also be applied to humans. This concept is interesting to me, because it’s a starting point of relating animal consciousness and behaviors to human consciousness and behaviors and using one to learn more about the other.
As I had said before, comparative psychology relates animal behaviors and consciousness to human behaviors and consciousness. However, this statement is up for debate between psychologists and scientists. Some believe that comparative psychology is simply the mental study of animals and/or non-human species, including the first comparative psychologist Pierre Flourens in the late 19th century, while others believe that the information obtained integrates between humans and animals and not just cross-species comparisons amongst non-humans.
Comparative psychology was strongly influenced by 20th century functionalists that behavior was not the aspect that had evolved, but the organism itself was what was evolving in contrast to what ethologists, also study animal behavior, think. Ethologists, believe it is the behavior that is what is evolving and not the organism.
URLS for the websites used:
http://www.apadivisions.org/division-6/publications/newsletters/neuroscientist/2010/11/historian-column.aspx
http://www.psychoid.net/comparative-psychology-comparing-studying.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/129669/comparative-psychology
The topic that I originally chose to search was to find more information about why psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and John Watson would want to destroy some of their unpublished data before they died. Unfortunately there was no viable information on why they destroyed data, rather websites just stating that they had.
The topic that I will talk about is one that I also took interest too and that was the ability to put bias in one's writing about history. Just this morning in my humanities course my professor mentioned that the author of my text book was obviously biased about some facts related to the industrial revolution. I thought it was really interesting that she would be able to pick up on something like that. Although I'm sure it would require extensive knowledge (that she has) to find out that something was mentioned more then others or something important was maybe left out, I still thought of it kind of as a skill to pick up and something that I would have never thought history writers would have to worry about. I believe this concepts fits into this chapter directly because it was mentioned in the "Interpretation Problems" Section of this chapter. The book looks to an example of Winston Churchill and how he allegedly said that history would be kind to him because he was going to be the person writing it. Brings up the question of what actually happened and how pliable history really could be.
One of the most shocking things I found when researching the web on this topic was that there was no mention of an unbiased source. Or there was even a reference to the fact that there could be no unbiased in a source. Everything was written by someone and everyone whether they mean to or not has bias. Now I know from psychology classes and other courses that nothing could be unbiased completely but history has always been one of those things that was kind of set in stone. You can't change it and the history books should be fairly consistent throughout the years unless there is new evidence for or against an event happening. I understand having a bias when talking about what the historical figures may have thought or why they chose to do the things they did because no one knows what they were thinking at the time. But the events themselves!? I was surprised by how many things could go wrong.
Now most of the links I found were ways that teachers could avoid bias. One source stated that the problem wasn't to find an unbiased source (which doesn't exist) but instead be able to teach your students how to spot the bias or at least be able to spot it yourself and warn your students of it.
There were several examples of how one could spot an authors bias in historical writing. Such as the author using extreme language, racial slurs or other harsh vocabulary. Another predictor of bias is when an author makes mention of one social, religious, gender or national group more then others. And finally if the author only seems to give one side of an argument or uses wording that favors one side of the argument over another.
History may be interpreted in many different fashions. This reason may be the cause for some bias in history as well. To my knowledge there are three different types of ways one can report history, all with a possibility of bias. First is the traditional way which differs based on where you are studying your history. The United States tends to use the "dead white guy" approach to teaching history and holds a slight bias towards white males because they were the ones considered to have the opportunities to make advances in history throughout much of what is covered in history classes today. The second approach is the revisionist approach which pretty much looks at the losers of history instead of the ever popular heros. This approach reports much on the people who didn't have that much power in history but were still essential to keeping things the way they were. And example being the slaves in the United States. The third and final approach to reporting history combines the first two approaches. This is called the post-revisionist approach to history and it can be the most difficult to teach without bias because you must take in both sides of an argument equally. Although difficult this approach can teach a more accurate picture of history by telling both stories.
http://us-intellectual-history.blogspot.com/2011/09/role-of-bias-in-historical-writing.html
http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/history/critical/bias.html
http://www.dur.ac.uk/4schools/History/Biasintro.htm
http://www.westga.edu/~history/FacultyUpdated/vasconcellos/Methodology%20Fall%202009%20Files/mccullagh%20bias%20in%20historical%20description.pdf
I decided to take a look into the man that founded that shaped and founded the field of psychology we know today. Every introductory psychology knows his name early on, and his research methods are what we still use today. Without his work, our ideas of psychology would have a different basis, as well as a different history. As a side note, how many well known psychologists are from Germany? And why is it such a hot bed of psychological ideas?
After graduating from the University of Heidelberg in 1856 with a medical degree, he began lecturing on physiology. In 1862, he began the first ever course based on the use of science in psychology. For the next 10 years, he continues his lectures and publishes articles. But 1870 and 71, he was called to be an army doctor during the Franco-Prussian war.
Throughout his time teaching, he was expected to be the successor as the director of the Heidelberg Physiological Institute, but after a huge disappointments he threw himself into his research. This era is aptly known as his “productive” phase in his a career. He began as a professor at the University of Leipzig in 1975, and soon churned out impressive accomplished works as well as the Philosophiche Studien, the first psychological journal. But the single most important thing he did was create the first psychological laboratory
Throughout the 46 years prior to his move to Leipzig, he wrote more than 54,000 pages worth of research and theory and trained numerous psychologist. His work is so fascinating because the field of psychology still had a strong connection to philosophy. With this, there was still this idea that everyone had a “soul”. His empirical research went against this notion. (Although I can’t entirely understand what it is he researched.) In addition, he also was one of the first people to examine and adopt the idea of introspection. Introspection is a way to self-examine one’s own thoughts and feelings.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/650018/Wilhelm-Wundt
A basic overview of his life
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
In depth discussion of his contributions
http://allpsych.com/biographies/wundt.html
More Basic information
I chose to research the APA or the American Psychological Association. I chose this because it is not only interesting to learn about this association but I also do not know much about this topic and so I would like to research it and expand my knowledge on it. The APA is first mentioned in this book on page 5. It is important to learn about the APA because it is made up of thousands of researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. These are the people that are changing the ways of psychology. They are doing research and testing our knowledge of psychology. I believe it is important for there to be an APA because that way psychologists with different ideas and theories can come together and share there ideas with each other and try to come up with new information.
The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 with 31 members but today has grown into an association with more than 150,000 members. The mission of the APA is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives. The APA studies more than 56 different fields of psychology. They also take on controversial topics in the media (such as same-sex marriage) and take there psychological views on it and come up with there on views of why people are they way they are.
URLs for the websites used:
http://www.apa.org/about/division/index.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psychological_Association
http://www.youtube.com/user/theapavideo?feature=results_main
For my topical blog I decided to explore the Association for Psychological Science a bit further. The book notes that in 2005 the APS changed its name from the American Psychological Society to the Association for Psychological Science. The name change highlights the scientific focus of the organization, while at the same time making it international in scope. According to Wikipedia, the APS is a non-profit international organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare. Furthermore, the APS is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation globally.
The APS was founded in 1988 by a group of scientifically-orientated researchers and practitioners who are interested in advancing scientific psychology and its representation at the national level. This group of psychologists felt that the APA or American Psychological Association, psychology’s parent organization, could no longer adequately meet their needs, and had effectively become a guild. So now the question here is what is the difference between the two? From an article written by Eric Wargo who is a staff writer for “The Observer” which is the publication of the APS, says from my understanding that the APA is strictly American in nature and deals with just the United States, whereas the APS is recognized nationally and worldwide. Continuing on, the Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychologists or ASAP formed to support another reorganization effort but ultimately this reorganization plan was rejected by the APA in early 1988, therefore in August of 1988 ASAP become the APS.
APS has more than 23.500 members and includes the leading psychological scientists and academics, clinicians, researchers, teachers, and administrators. In joining the APS, members gain access to the many publications of the association including Observer. The Observer is published 10 times per year by the APS. It educates and informs the Association on matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology; promotes the scientific values of the Association’s members; reports and comments on issues facing national interest to the psychological community; and provides valuable resources for all information on the APS. Finally, the first APS convention was held in 1989, less than one year after the organization was founded. George Armitage Miller’s keynote address titled “The Place of Language in a Scientific Psychology”, set the foundation for future APS meetings as a place to present new research, but also a forum of discussion to promote change and exchange ideas. This convention is prominent to the APS’s mission to promote research and education across all areas of psychology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Psychological_Science
-Helped me understand the organization as a whole
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1913
-This article helped me understand the differences between the APA and APS.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/about
-This gave me a brief understanding of the Observer.
What interested me the most in the reading were John B. Watson and his transition from comparative psychology which is the study of animal behavior to human behavior. I really enjoyed how the reading also talked about internal and external history which led into Watson’s work and how he didn’t focus on one specific part of psychology, but was open to trying new experiments on different subjects. Experiments were also new to the world of psychology so the work of Watson opened many doors for other psychologists such as Robert Yerkes and countless others. I believe this subject of using external and internal history is very interesting in the fact that it opens many other doors and fields of psychology leading up to I/O psychology which is my interest of choice to learn this semester.
The work of John Watson was mostly of the behaviorism point of view which led to his conclusion of his simple stimulus-response patterns of behavior. He found that conditioning is a process of learning that is a direct reaction to an environment. He gained much of his research from learning from animals and even testing on his own children.
In the video of the little Albert experiment it tells of how Watson does experiments on hundreds of babies testing his theory that when we are born we have a clean slate and our environment shapes how we act which called classic conditioning. The little Albert experiment consisted of Watson showing Albert a white rat many times finally accompanied by a loud noise that scared the child. After scarying the child with the loud noise Albert associated the scary noise with anything with fur which proved his theory popularizing behaviorism.
The last article I read also talked about how Watson took ideas from Pavlov’s dog experiment to his own experiments with the babies. Watson understood how stimuli and the animal experiments could be used the same way with humans and did many other experiments that led to the Little Albert experiment that helped to increase interest in psychology in his time period.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt0ucxOrPQE
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Watson.html
Something from chapter one that I would like to expand on is the influence Robert I. Watson had in the creation of APA Division (#26), which is the History of Psychology Division of the American Psychology Association. It started as just a “History of Psychology Group” formed by Robert Watson and other like-minded psychologists during the 1960s. It wasn’t until Watson was able to capture everyone’s attention by publishing an article in the American Psychologist entitled “The History of Psychology: A Neglected Area” that this group was taken seriously and eventually formed into an actual APA division. However, the text doesn’t go in to much detail about how Watson and his colleagues were able to turn what started as just a group of interested psychologists into a recognized Division by the APA.
I found that annual newsletters were keeping the interest of the history of psychology alive, some of which were written by Watson himself and others written by other members of the group. These newsletters were able to create conversation during annual APA conventions. More and more newsletters from the group were received by the APA, making it difficult for the group to be ignored. At this point the group was also gaining members, with 111 names on the mailing list. However, by the time of the tenth newsletter, the progress report indicated that the 200 necessary signatures had not yet been received, meaning the APA could not accept their division. It wasn’t until the twelfth newsletter, in the summer of 1965, that it could be announced that Watson had succeeded in getting over 200 signatures by June 8th, assuring the group their division. The final meeting of the History of Psychology Group was in September, 1965 at the Chicago convention, which was the meeting that governing body of the APA approved Division 26 with 211 members. Watson was elected president of Division 26 and the rest is history.
Since the 1960s, interest in the history of psychology has grown steadily and a good example of that is APA’s Division 26. In 2006 the division had just under 600 members, which is an obvious increase compared to the 234 members in 1965. My point is, that the history of psychology has become what it is today because of what Watson and his colleagues did in the 1960s. In one decade Watson was able to totally create a new field of study and sparked interest all throughout the broad field of psychology and for that we thank him.
Websites Used:
http://historyofpsych.org/historyofdivision26/foundingofdivision26.html
-Helped me understand the process of becoming an APA Division
http://www.apa.org/about/division/div26.aspx
-Gave me an understanding of what Division 26 is like today
http://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/history/
-Helped me understand the history of psychology
Topic: Importance of Primary Sources in Research
Primary sources fits into chapter 1 based on the advice to always using primary sources. According to the textbook, primary sources are far more creditable in history of psychology than secondary sources. I have found 3 different resources that back up why primary sources are important when evaluating history. I chose this topic because I have always used secondary sources in my papers, and want to learn more why people believe finding/using primary sources are more important.
1. The first resource I found was a video clip explaining on You Tube, what exactly a primary source is. The video is basically showing first hand experience from the JFK shooting. The video shows a diary that a woman took on November 22, and footage of that day. This shows the viewers that a primary source is basically something that happened that is documented on the day it happened, whether it is eye witnessed or proof. The video relates to the definition in the textbook, because the newspaper and diary entrees of the JFK tragedy happened first hand to these people, on that specific date. Therefore, the newspaper, video, and diary are the primary sources of that event.
2. The second resource is a website from York University that describes in writing that his educational website called psych classics want students to use primary sources in their history of psychology class. The website paragraph is basically educating professors and the public that primary sources are not hard to find, and many are available online. This website ties in with the importance of using primary sources because the author stresses to find the primary sources, instead of using general overviews, because it is more reliable in doing research in the history of psychology.
3. The final resource I read was in the online Library of Congress. This was one of the best websites I have found that explains in detail why teachers should have students use primary sources. Primary sources are an “unfiltered access.” I thought this definition was actually better than the textbook version. Student’s can use primary sources to analyze and critically think about the original ideas and events that happened in a specific time period. The importance of primary sources is rarely stressed about when a student is searching for research.
*I personally have always used websites or books that quoted the primary source. However, after reading this website step-by-step, I can now understand why the primary source can construct more knowledge and more reliable to cite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTtpYYbhm0 -Video example
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/suggestions.htm - Why important
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/whyuse.html -How teachers can help students use primary sources and the benefits from primary sources
I read through a few of the posts before I started this assignment, and I realize that many people have already chosen the topic of intelligence testing. I apologize for choosing this topic as well, but it is the topic that most interested me as I read through the chapter. Intelligence testing caught my interest because it is a concept I have always been interested in. The fact that we, as humans, have come up with ways to test our own intelligence really does amaze me. Also, the fact that we forced immigrants coming into our country to take these tests shocks me even more. This topic really interests me, but it also fits into our chapter because it is certainly a revelation for the field of psychology. Scientists can now test human intelligence, to an extent of course.
Intelligence testing, well over 100 years old by now, took psychological testing to a whole new level. Alfred Binet originally invented intelligence testing to identify learning-impaired children in the early 1900’s. Later, scientists could now test individuals such as people classified as mentally retarded, or just your average Joe on the street. Intelligence testing helped me decide where I could go to college at, even. However, I also found much debate on whether or not intelligence tests should be used on children to determine learning disabilities. Many scientists say “no” because even if the child is found to have a learning disability, we cannot accurately classify what the problem may be by just looking at this test alone. Moving forward with this, scientists also find this system to be flawed because we cannot determine a person’s intelligence with just one summed number. So, why would our country use this test as a determining factor in whether or not to allow immigrants into our country? Our country held a high standard for immigrants coming into this country, allowing those who scored high enough, and denying those whose scores were poor. Some say this was simply a way to allow only the “intelligent” people into our country, while others argue it was a matter of racial and ethnic discrimination. In my own opinion, I feel these tests were wrong. Who’s to say the people administering these tests would even score high enough themselves? Would they kick themselves out of the country? The answer is no. Intelligence tests should have been used more for the understanding of cognition, not as an answer of someone’s “whole intelligence”. After reading about all of this, I came across a simple definition of “intelligence”. People view intelligence in different ways, which is why I see intelligence testing as a possible problem. If people are given a score of how “intelligent” they are, they could take this many ways. They may see themselves as smart, dumb, lacking intelligence, or abundantly full of it. People are smart, or intelligent, in different ways, and I do not think someone should conclude how smart they are based on these tests. I also came across the term “multiple intelligences”. This states that there are eight different areas that people could be intelligent in. If this is true, then I feel that a person must take multiple tests that test different areas of intelligence. Again, not just one. Overall, I am on the line about intelligence testing. It is a good idea, and it certainly is widely used. But it does have it’s flaws, as does anything good in this world.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligent.aspx I chose this website because it displayed a good understanding of why scientists choose to use or not use intelligence testing on children. This website helped me greatly to write this post.
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/race_intel.html I chose this website because it shared information about immigrant intelligence testing. This website helped me, but it could have had more information about the immigrant testing.
http://www.aboutintelligence.co.uk/what-intelligence.html I chose this website because it shared information about what intelligence is, and how people view intelligence differently. I greatly benefited from using this website.
My topic that I chose to research is interpretation problems in psychology. I think it is very important to realize that there is never a full right interpretation. There are always going to be bias’. Another wrong interpretation is thinking that psychology history is just a bunch of information lined up in chronological order, where as it really is always comparing off of each other and learning new ideas and adding them. There is no direct order with just name and dates. The book uses the analogy that we shouldn’t just believe something is true if it is just black and white. There should be a good amount of skepticism. Another problem Wilhelm Wundt discussed is people thinking that psychology is just the “self knowledge of the subject”. A lot of people who aren’t psychologist interpret psychologists as making theories up without having actual evidence and falsifiable work. Psychology, just as any other science, does have ways to test their theories. The book talks about E.G. Boring in this section about how he interpreted that Titchener’s work on experimental psychology was identical to Wilhelm Wundt’s work. Many psychologists read other’s ideas, and then try and tweak it not knowing that they are influenced by the work they have previously read and not their actual personal theories.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1189952
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/wundt.htm
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
I picked a topic from the chapter that I found the most interesting which was the part explaining how some people are presentist while others are historicist. The book explained a presentist as someone who evaluates the past in terms of the knowledge and values apparent in the present and a historicist as someone who tries not to impose any modern values in the past. I found it interesting that people can view history in such vastly different ways. It makes sense because it is hard to truly imagine what life would be like in a time that you were not around for. I found out that historians view negatively of the term presentism for two ways: 1. the tendency to interpret the past in presentist terms and 2. the shift of general historical interest toward the contemporary period and away from the more distant past. Some even think that prensentism threatens to put historians out of business. The purpose of history is that it’s different and it allows us to study people that are not like the normal person that we know. Another negative of the term is that it makes up seem as if we are morally superior, thinking that this is the only way things have been done and nothing else has changed. There doesn’t seem to be a solution to presentism, so it is important for us to remind ourselves of the issue and respect the past because without it there would be no history. There were two other terms I came across that related to being a presentist. A paster is someone who romanticizes about a certain historical period and similar to the writings that reference classical Greek and Roman politics. On the opposite side of this are futurians who are primarily oriented to the future and may even live in a state of panic or terror for what lies ahead. These people are also more fascinated with technology. Historicism is all about scientific rationality. In order to be a historist you have to accept a meta-methodoligical claim which is that a good theory of rationality must fit the history of science. You must always accept a theory with the greatest degree of confirmation.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-historicist/#GenCri
http://bigthink.com/stay-attuned/are-you-a-paster-presentist-or-futurian
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2002/0205/0205pre1.cfm
When I initially read the information in the book about the Achieves of the History of American Psychology (AHAP), I blew it off and thought how boring in that. Furthermore, I thought why would anyone want to take all that time (essentially a lifetime or an entire career) doing nothing but gathering information from researchers of the past. However, as I began to think about it more I realized exactly the scope of what Marion McPherson and John Popplestone had done. They saw need of a group of professionals and filled that need and to be completely honest in doing so, they were able to save many documents in reference to the history of psychology before it was too late. How cool is that!
I mentioned this topic in our discussion in class and I never in a million years at the time would have guessed that I would be doing more research on the topic, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to know so I set out to figure out the answers to my questions.
I must first explain what the AHAP was. The AHAP was founded by Dr. Marion McPherson and Dr. John Popplestone in 1965, who were both professors of psychology at the University of Akron in Ohio. These two individuals pioneered not only the archives, but also the entire study of the history of psychology. Before them and other individuals of their time the study of the history of psychology was not even considered to a legitimate study. Being pioneers of the history of psychology the two saw the lack of information that was readily available to people in the field and as a result started the achieves. Until 2009 the AHAP existed as a repository of more than 1000 pieces of laboratory apparatus, more than 750 different psychologists papers, more than 20,000 photos, as well as films, tests, and rare books at the University of Akron.
Then in 2010 something huge happened, the Archives of the History of American Psychology became the Center for the History of American Psychology (CHP). This just shows how much the archives had grown in not only size, but also importance to the academic community. CHP not only includes the archives, but also a Museum of Psychology. The entire center is now based around the preservations of the history of psychology, as well as, it’s original purpose of collaborating primary sources of information for the academic community.
After my initial research my primary question was, why not put all the information online so that the archives are more readily available to people around the world. Well after not much time was I ever surprised to find out that this process had already begun. After Pobblestone retired as the President of the archives Dr. David Baker got the job as the president of the archives and not long after a team of individuals with the APA started a task for in charge of picking the “most important” documents to begin to be scanned into an online archive. This was based on the ability of Kristen Knight and Mary Skutly’s ability to get the copyrights cleared by Library of Congress. This process began in about 2004 and to this day is not complete and may never be, because of the size and magnitude of the project. One of my sources says that there are so many book and other pieces of information that there are pallets of books that have not even been gone through yet. Think of all that untapped information!
It is clear that the AHAP or CHP has grown to be something huge and for that we have to thank to individuals. Marion McPherson and John Popplestone started something the benefits so many people. For some they may say that it doesn’t affect them, but honestly what they have done effects everyone in the world, because they started something that preserves a piece of history and for that I am forever grateful to them. All their hard work and dedication to what they believed in has changed the study of psychology and ultimately the study of humanity itself.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=e107f2d1-62ae-437b-90d1-c86fa683d783%40sessionmgr11&vid=2&hid=24- I used this sight for about 20% of what I wrote, some of the stuff about Pobblestone and McPhereson.
http://www.uakron.edu/chp- I used this for about 45% of what I wrote, this sight gave lots of the specifics on the history of the archives.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/news/2011/11/psycbooks.aspx- I used this for about 35% of what I wrote and It contained the information on the digitalization of the archives.
I chose to do further research on one Edwin Garrigues Boring. He is a big name in chapter one for his role on psychologies history. I first became fascinated with Boring after reading the “Close-Up,” where it describes how boring would use himself as a test subject. The book gives the examples that he would swallow test tubes to try different substances effects and even severed a nerve in his arm to observe how it would regrow. That is insane! Anyone willing to go to that extent has to be worth learning more about. Perhaps one of the underlying reasons why I am so intrigued by Boring is because I have always thought of how cool it would be to use myself as a research subject for an experiment, mainly physiological in my case. This may just extend from my obsession with super heroes, but that is another subject entirely.
I was actually very disappointed with the research I was able to find on Boring. Any article that seemed like it would be interesting to read and could hold information on some of Boring’s experiments either needed a password to enter or required payment. The research I was able to find was mostly the boring stuff on Boring, but a little more knowledge never hurts.
Edwin G. Boring, also known as “Mr. Psychology,” published many books and was a very active member of the psychology field. He held positions such as the Secretary of the APA from 1919-1922 to President of the APA in 1928. The book that he is best known for publishing is his 1929: A History of Experimental Psychology. Today historians and psychologists alike blame Boring for misrepresenting Wilhelm Wundt’s and E. B. Titchener’s ideas on experimental psychology. Boring represents both of their ideas to be very similar in his book, when in actuality the two had differentiating views on the matter.
Another area of work that E. G. Boring is well known for was his work with IQ Testing during World War I. He was hired by Robert M. Yerkes as chief physiological examiner at Camp Upton, long Island. Here he examined a little less than 2 million recruits and wrote a 890 page report on the army’s testing program. He is known for being one of the first scientists of his time to not relate IQ Testing to ethnic background. He refused to believe that one race was superior to the other. Instead he stated that, “intelligence is like power as the physicist uses the word: the amount of work that can be done in a given time.”
Edwin G. Boring was very critical of himself and his students. While this caused him much stress during his life from 1886 to 1968 it also helped him to be one of the greatest historian psychologists of all time. He Published 9 books and held many important positions in the psychology community. While I was unable to find any information on Borings self-experimentation, I will still continue to look for that information and Boring is still a major part of psychologies history.
www.nndb.com/people/931/000117580/
- This is where I found Boring’s publications and jobs held.
www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx
- This is where I found information on Boring’s life from his early history to his defining moments.
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Edwin_G._Boring
- This is where I found information on some of Boring’s life experiences.
The topic I picked was to look at the two different associations for psychologists, the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS). It was discussed towards the beginning of the chapter that there are two associations for psychologists and that a lot of people have never heard of APS. Also, that a lot people wonder why we need two associations for psychologists. The book gives a pretty general overview of what makes the two different, but because I had never heard of APS before I felt like it would be a good idea to explore more into this.
According to the American Psychological Association their mission statement is, “…to advance the creation, communication, and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives.” They are a primary source for psychologists. Both of these associations are completely voluntary. APA’s focus is on helping practitioners and educators to help inform them on psychological knowledge. The dues one pays to be in APA are a bit more expensive compared to the expenses of being in APS. The association uses their knowledge to encourage policy makers to improve policies when new findings are found. Citizens need to be healthy and treated respectfully. So, clinician psychologists feel that APA doesn’t give one the latest information as soon or quickly as APS. The American Psychological Association has a long history of being representation figure of psychologists, especially clinical psychologists. APA is looking at psychology in a broad perspective and to make more people to see the importance of psychology to help us in our everyday life.
The Association for Psychological Science wants to encourage advancements in psychology as well, but scientific psychology. It was originally called the American Psychological Society. It grew very quickly because a lot of psychologists felt their interests were not represented well because APA didn’t spend a lot time looking closely at the science of psychology. It focuses on behavioral science investigations. This association has launches three psychological science journals that explore sub-fields of psychology in great detail the way a research would. The mission statement is to, “promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare.” APS wants people to learn the research and understand the research and APA wants people to understand how these findings can help to improve our lives.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/about - This website is the official website for APS. So, it is reliable gave me a good idea of how psychologists in APS view themselves and why they decided to become an association.
http://www.apa.org/about/apa/index.aspx - My reason for picking this website is quite similar to why I picked the APS website. It is the APA’s official website and explaining things about the association like their mission statement, something that is fundamentally important to its members.
http://psychology.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=72 - This website gave a little bit of information about both associations and was written by an active clinical psychologist. It was a different perspective on the view of these associations, considering she was a member of both.
One of the arguments on the why of studying of the history of Psychology, was that it gives us a better perspective of the present. The idea that there was a “good old days” of which we should bemoan the loss. Daniel Boorstin wrote an essay about it called “The Prison of the Present.” I thought this was a very good argument for the necessity of truly studying the history of Psychology.
This selective remembering causes us to forget some of the major problems that occurred in many areas of the lives of many people. We hear how kids were better off in these great times. However, child abuse was underreported, kids did not survive car accidents, and children with special needs were swept by the wayside. (http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8033/were-children-safer-in-the-good-old-days).The good old days weren’t really very good if you were a person of color either. I’m sure most of us don’t wish to have a KKK group at its prime or segregated restaurants just to name a couple of wrongs in the not so distant past. (http://thejosevilson.com/2012/01/26/dont-talk-to-me-about-the-good-old-days/). Has anyone in this class ever met a peer who has had polio, much less died as a result of it? It’s rare for a woman to not survive childbirth. Both of those were not the case fifty or one hundred years ago. This was also the time as the book states pollution really began. (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19761130&id=c4VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3xEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5300,6125609).
Although we are in the very beginnings of this study of history as it pertains to Psychology, I think knowing the past will help put some of the issues we face today in perspective. I think that regardless of the section of Psychology that we choose this knowledge of what happened when and why will be of value to us as we continue our studies.
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8033/were-children-safer-in-the-good-old-days
http://thejosevilson.com/2012/01/26/dont-talk-to-me-about-the-good-old-days/
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19761130&id=c4VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=3xEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5300,6125609
From the material in chapter one the topic of interest I chose was the difference between the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
I believe the topic fits in this section because the chapter talks about the split between the psychologists that practice science and the professional psychologists and how the two different organizations were formed in reaction to this split.
I am interested this since, when I took research methods last semester, we learned quite a lot about the APA format but not much about the APA itself. In addition, I was completely unaware of the APS before I read this chapter. I am interested in expanding my knowledge of both these organizations because they have both greatly influenced the field psychology.
The two groups have quite a few interesting differences, even within the common study of psychology. The APA was formed in 1892 at Clark University. Members within the APA tried to reorganize the association to improve the status of science. After this failed members of the Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychology (ASAP) split from the APA and became the American Psychological Society. The fundamental goal of this new group, according to their website, was to create an image of a more scientific nature to psychology.
The APS was created in 1988 (many years after the founding of the APA), and was originally called the American Psychological Society but, in 2005, changed its name to the Association for Psychological science. A major difference between the two organizations ere the goals of each group; in particular the APS is focused on the scientific research part of psychology and looks to advance psychology as a science.
Websites used:
http://www.apa.org/
This is the main website for the APA and has a lot of good information
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/about/history.cfm
This is the primary website for APS.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/anniversary/timeline.cfm
This is the link I found for the APS that was the most helpful.
I found the naturalistic approach to history and the study of “multiples” to be the most intriguing aspects of the chapter. I am also considering along with this topic Edwin Garrigues Boring, a psychologist who supported the idea of a naturalistic approach. E.G. Boring is not only mentioned in the introductory chapter, he is featured in a close-up because of his prominence in the field of psychology. While his name might suggest otherwise, his views are very interesting—the importance that he places on the Zeitgeist concept draws me in because of my own interest in the belief that a society is shaped by the ideas of their time.
Upon reading Boring’s faculty profile from 1963 in the Harvard Crimson, I have seen something in his personality that makes me want to read his work—he was a man with a lot of ideas, solid convictions, and a sense of humor. He fought to separate Psychology from Philosophy and succeeded in doing so while teaching and supervising at Harvard. He is the man who brought us Experimental Psychology and he did so by supporting his ideas and following through until the end justified the means. While working as a professor of graduate students at Harvard (a task that put him in charge of the entire department), he also served as secretary for the Ninth International Conference of Psychology and as secretary, member of council, and finally president of the American Psychological Association. Also during this time he wrote his famous book, History of Experimental Psychology (HEP); according to www.encyclopedia.com, “[t]here is no doubt that HEP shaped the way in which psychologists viewed their emerging science and the aims of experimentation.”
Interestingly enough, because Boring believes in the Zeitgeist concept, he credited the success of the separation of psychology and philosophy to it, “The Zeitgeist had this event up its sleeve all along. Thus I had another lesson as to how the free action of personal will in a naturalistic world is a delusion.” Boring’s quote about the Zeitgeist shows how much he believes in the naturalistic view—he even saw himself as a sort of puppet in the universe. Boring also went on to call the Zeitgeist a paradox because it is both controlled by and controls men.
My personal convictions were challenged while researching this topic, though, because while reading the information provided on the McGraw-Hill website I found a quote that exemplifies the idea of the Zeitgeist, but also of a personalistic history: “[s]ometimes a major historical development is a product of both a significant individual and the spirit of the time, of someone being the right person in the right place at the right time.” In support of this idea the chapter goes on to inform the reader about Robert Whytt, a physician who mentioned conditioned salivation long before Pavlov’s time; and of Edwin B. Twitmyer, a speech pathologist who published his doctoral dissertation about classical conditioning in conjunction with knee jerks just before Pavlov’s experiment, a publication that did not gain the attention that Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment did. While the intention of the quote was to make one think that both personalistic and naturalistic concepts are partially correct, the supporting information suggests that the person involved isn’t necessarily important to the discovery unless the universe decides so.
While learning more about the topics I chose to focus on my own ideas changed, but I learned a great deal more than I had and I now have a better outlook on the subject. As I mentioned in class: the more I know, the better suited I am to stand behind my convictions because I can support my ideas with the knowledge necessary to back them up.
The Encyclopedia website came up during my search and as I read I found that it was able to contribute to my blog post a lot of information about E.G. Boring. Most of the information I wrote about him during this post came from this source.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Edwin_Garrigues_Boring.aspx
McGraw-Hill is a trusted publisher and I knew the information provided on their website would be able to be trusted. The idea of a combination of personalistic and naturalistic history can be credited to this source.
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0072858621/581674/Greenwood1e_ch01.pdf
The Harvard Crimson was an obvious choice because it is a reliable source and because E.G. Boring was a professor at Harvard. The best thing about this source is that there are quote from Boring! Therefore,any direct quotes from Boring and most mentions of the Zeitgeist in my post can be attributed to this source.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/5/31/e-g-boring-pat-dinner-with/
I am interested in the topic of intelligence testing. I’m a big competitor and always have been. Being a college athlete definitely doesn’t help to calm my competitive nature any and I try to make a competition out of everything. In my head, I wonder if that is how intelligence testing came about. I compete with everyone over the smallest things…but some things don’t seem to have objective measures. I wouldn’t be surprised if the very first thought for intelligence testing came from a competition. It’s certainly used in a competitive nature today as people “compete” for college positions either in graduate or undergraduate schools. People also compete for scholarships that are based on intelligence. Sometimes even the organizations in which we can get involved our based on the measure of our intelligence….and of course, intelligence is measured through intelligence testing. The part that is most interesting to me is, how do they decide what to include in the tests? What types of intelligence are being measured? Is it even an accurate measure? I believe I am most interested in the logistics of intelligence tests.
This topic is discussed in the chapter when looking at presentist thinking. Also, if you think about it, all things that have been created in psychology within the last 150 years is relevant to the book as it discusses the history of psychology over the last 150 years. Alfred Binet and Henry Goddard both came up with intelligence test which are discussed in the book. Goddard created what I view is the “American entry exam” which he administered at Ellis Island, and Binet created a test that would help show the “average” level of intelligence (Simon-Binet Tests). Both researchers had an interesting stance on intelligence.
It’s interesting that when it came to the entry of individuals into the U.S., intelligence was so highly regarded that it was even used as a basis to keep people out. After learning more about Goddard, his research, and the follow through of his research, my interests slightly shifted from being simply, “intelligence tests” to being more specifically, “the use of intelligence tests”. It seems like the intelligence tests at Ellis Island were almost like an attempt to breed a “master race” or Americans in terms of intelligence. Even more interesting is where intelligence tests are at today.
Intelligence and intelligence tests are obviously still very prevalent in our culture. We all have to take different tests of our intelligences in order to get into desired education programs. Ex. ACT, SAT, GRE, ITBS, IQ, etc… It’s interesting how there are so many different ways to measure intelligence. There are many simple and free ways online (as shown below) and also methods that individuals have to pay for (GRE).
It would be interesting to know when or where specific individuals determined that they are intelligent enough to measure and determine the intelligence level and appropriateness of that level in others. I would be afraid to be in charge of the consideration for whether or not someone was “mentally defective” of defective in any way for that matter. What if those individuals had other forms of intelligence that could have bettered our country. What if they went on to shove it to the man and discover bigger/better things outside of the U.S. Perhaps they had the necessary survival skills to get through some other difficult experiences. Maybe they were great craftsmen/women.
In short, I believe that intelligence is too broad and vague to truly define or measure. I think that they should have individual tests to determine the abilities of specific subjects, which they do. I don’t believe that these tests should solely be called intelligence tests. Rather, they should all be specialized. How can we know or judge someone’s life, intelligence, or experiences just on a test? We can’t. Some people are poor test takers (like myself). Others may be intelligent but have difficulties with other facets of the test (like reading-I’m dyslexic). I would like to hear the defense lectures of the creatures of various intelligence testers. I think it would be fun, entertaining, and enlightening.
http://www.intelligencetest.com/ This site was used essentially to prove a point of how simple it has become to measure one’s own intelligence and how it’s no longer such a “major” role in deciding about one’s entrance into this country. Yet, test are highly administered.
http://www.begent.org/intelquiz.htm I’m using this site to further emphasis the fact the intelligence sites are easy to find, access, and take in today’s society. This emphasizes the remaining importance in measured intelligence.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/assessment.aspx- I referenced this website after it drew my attention in the statement, “The Birth of American Intelligence Testing”. That was precisely what my main interest was in. It’s also interesting that intelligence levels were such a competition that sterilization of “feebleminded” individuals was discussed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7ShiQqLQg -Perfect example of the faults I talked about in the Intelligence tests. unless we really want to believe that we are outsmarted by chimps in all intelligence...
The topic that interested me most from the chapter was intelligence testing. Earlier in chapter one it was discussed as a precursor to presentism. This really interested me because even today there are various ways to test the IQ’s of children and adults. This concept hasn’t gone away. This was interesting to me because throughout my research there wasn’t a clear cut definition of what intelligence is. The chapter discussed Henry Goddard and his screening of the immigrants coming into Ellis Island. This was a huge step in history because immigrants deemed unfit were sent back to their home country and not allowed in the United States.
Alfred Binet also known as the father of IQ testing is a French psychologist that created the first intelligence test in 1904. The main purpose for him to create this test was to test children to determine if they needed some form of special education due to their poor performance in the classroom. In 1905 he produced the Binet-Simon scale which was a test with 30 tasks from naming parts of the body to word definition. He believed that all the tasks involved basic processes of reasoning. He set these tests up so they would match a specific developmental level while arraging them in increasing difficulty.
The success that the Binet-Simon scales saw drew interest from the United States and they too wanted to get involved in IQ testing. Henry Goddard was the first American to administer an intelligence test. He used the test from Binet and converted it from French to English to test immigrants. Goddard believed that he could pick out mentally defective by simply looking at them. At the time this is how the U.S. determined who was “fit” for this country while also keeping immigration numbers controlled. Goddard believed that there was a difference between intelligence and knowledge. He felt that one was within us and the other was acquired. It was thought that humans can have an abundance of knowledge but not be intelligent if they didn’t know how to use it. This still seems to hold some truth to this day. Many people have a wealth of knowledge but don’t know how to communicate or interpret into practice. Today there are many different areas that intelligent tests cover ranging from verbal cognition to problem solving and mathematics. An example of a mathematics test would be you’re given a series of numbers and have to determine the next set of numbers in the sequence. IQ testing is still very important today even though it’s looked at differently than the 1900’s. Our society still uses forms of testing to narrow certain fields down. Colleges use such things as the SAT, ACT test scores to narrow down the list of applicants. Jobs use such tests to determine if you’re the right fit for their organization based on your test results. After decades of research and testing research have shown that intelligence levels can be inherited. It has also shown that environment can also relate to intelligence. Throughout the years intelligence testing has come a long way and even today there is really no cut and dry way to determine intelligence. There are several different theories and tests that are given to help determine IQ but none can be classified as 100% accurate. Even after these tests are given and measured there are still several questions on the exact meaning of the results. I think that tests will continue to be given to determine who is “fit” for what they are looking for. Although there is still much controversy, these tests can be a huge benefit in helping to eventually find treatments for such things as mental retardation.
I don’t think that intelligent tests should be given to determine just intelligence levels. There are certain skills that can be tested to help determine if you fit the criteria they are looking for. Intelligence means something different to almost anyone you ask. While these tests could be used to aid in the process I don’t feel they are accurate enough to determine the final outcome. An example could be a child that needs special attention in school. If they are a bad test taker and do poorly on the IQ test and deemed below average it could hinder their future learning ability due to class selection, confidence levels, and less opportunity. After reading more into this topic I believe that intelligence is to vague to define and to properly determine IQ levels. Specialized tests would be more beneficial to test takers because they would be able to be adjust the tests accordingly to what they are specifically looking for.
http://www.brainmetrix.com/intelligence-definition/
This website gave me the general concept and questions about what intelligence really is. It also gave me some statistics of the average IQ and the 7 types of components it consists of.
http://wilderdom.com/personality/L1-5KeyPlayers.html
This gave me the history of all the psychologists that were involved in the intelligence testing concept. It helped me break down the different time frames. It also helped me determine who created and then added onto the intelligence tests.
http://www.intelligencetest.com/questions/index.htm
This website gave me an idea on the different categories and types of questions asked on some of the intelligent tests I looked up.
The topic I found most interesting was the discussion of why study history at all? The book made some key points to why you should study our nation’s past; from understanding the different perspectives of others to how everything we live by now came to be (how it evolved). I find this interesting because studying history was something I thought you needed to do to understand the present, which I found my sources have agreed with me, but I find it interesting because others may not agree if the question still stands, why study history. The past is the past but what we have now is derived from the past and because of that it needs justification, it needs to be proven with our today’s knowledge. If no one ever studied the history of anything how would we research and find out answers to questions we are still unsure of, or even elaborate more on such topics. One main question you can ask yourself is how did things get the way they are today? How do we know how to do a heart transplant, or clean teeth, or perform surgery? Everything started from somewhere, sometimes places we can’t even trace back too.
http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/WhyStudyHistory.htm
-How things in the past need to be justified to today’s knowledge.
http://history.wisc.edu/undergraduate/whystudyhistory.htm
-Opened my mind to think how the world has come to be now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgmNkYUL_Cw
-Clip from earlier years to now (past to present) visually see how much has changed.