What I would like you to do is to find a topic or person from this week's chapter (or from the previous week) 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.
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.
I thought a lot of Max Wertheimer’s ideas were interesting so I decided to look more into his life and what he did. I wanted to learn more background knowledge on him. I thought that his ideas on what we think we see and what we actually see were just really smart and that he was able to make his conclusions in a way that made sense to others. I think he could have sounded really odd if he worded his thoughts wrong.
Max Wertheimer was born on April 15, 1880 and he died on October 12, 1943. He was born in Czechoslovakia to a father who was an educational career and a mother who was a pianist. I thought it was interesting that Max was originally interested in law, but decided in college that he would rather study philosophy and psychology. I thought it was a fun fact that he was friends with Albert Einstein for a part of his life. After graduating he became interesting in perception and how it affects people. He was first interested in lights and how they are perceived. One of his big contributions to psychology was the Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization that he developed with Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka. Max was able create the term phi phenomenon, which is the rapid sequences of perceptual events that create the illusion of motion even when there is none. Motion pictures are based on this idea of phi phenomenon. He also did some research with music and melody. He used his ideas on melodies to help understand and help feebleminded children.
With his students he had a major influence. He taught his students to document everything that happens in an experiment even if it seems minor and unimportant because you never know if that can be the answer to a question you have later, or if that one fact will become your new focus down the road. He taught them how to structure and restructure their research. He didn’t publish many of his ideas, but would sometimes be his students who he would help publish on the ideas.
Most people thought he was brilliant and that he knew everything. He was a very nice man and everyone really liked him. He was interested in random things that most people thought were unimportant. He stressed the need for teachers and textbook writers to present material in such a way that it reveals the structural feature of a problem: good teaching reveals the structure, bad teaching beclouds the structure, of the subject matter. He eventually moved to the United States in 1933 to be a teacher in New York City. The school was called the New School for Social Research, and thanks to his research done there the school became one of the leading schools for psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws.htm
I used this site to better help me understand Wertheimer’s ideas on perception.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesmz/p/max-wertheimer.htm
I used this site to help me organize my information because it gave a good outline of his life and gave me some ideas to work with
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Max_Wertheimer.aspx
I used this site to fill in the gaps that I had from the earlier sites. It was a really long website and I was able to get some good and interesting information from it.
After reading chapter nine, the topic I chose to learn more about was the Zeigarnik Effect. I thought the section in our book that talked about it was pretty intriguing, so I decided to learn a little more about it.
The Zeigarnik Effect is the concept that we remember things that we leave unfinished or incomplete. It is human nature to finishe what we start, and if we leave something unfinished we will experience dissonance. I can relate to this because I always have to finish what I start. I can't start a book and then stop in the middle, I have to finish it, even if its completely terrible, I finish it.
The Zeigarnik Effect also stated that we have a tendency to remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. I can relate to this as well because if I have homework that isn't completed and its the weekend, I tend to be constantly thinking about the homework that I need to do, rather than all the homework I already have completed.
All this ties into psychology because it is basically your subconscious reminding you that you have tasks yet to do. Which isn't necesssarily a bad thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspense
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
http://changingminds.org/explanations/memory/zeigarnik_effect.htm
Chapter 9
I was very interested in Wolfgang Kohlers’ ideas and theories. I decided to look more into depth of his life and research. His ideas about animals learning and problem solving were very interesting in my opinion. I feel it’s important to understand the minds of other species because our minds not very different, just more complex.
Kohler was born on January 21, 1887, between 1905 and 1907; he attended the universities of Tubingen, Bonn, and Berlin. In 1909, Kohler received his Ph.D. During the same year, he began to work at the Psychological Institute in Frankfort-am-Main where he met Wertheimer and Koffka. As stated in the book Kohler was a founder of Gestalt psychology along with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. This made him fairly famous when it came to psychology, also with his statement on insight of learning in animals. When Kohler began research on animal learning he was working at a primate research facility maintained by the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the Canary Islands. At this facility he had about nine chimpanzees for his use. The chimps were held in a playground “like” pen, which was provided with a variety of objects including boxes, poles, and sticks, with which the primates could experiment. This helped him get his research underway because of how convenient it was since his job included him to work with chimps at that facility. In order to determine the chimps problem solving and learning skills he set up a number of obstacles, each involved obtaining food that was not easily associable.
The details of the chimps' solutions to Kohler's food-gathering puzzle varied. One chimp tried to shinny up a toppling pole it had poised under the bananas; several succeeded by stacking crates underneath, but were struck with difficulties in getting their centers of gravity right. Another chimp had luck of moving a crate under the bananas and using a pole to knock them down. The common theme to each of these attempts is that, to all appearances, the chimps were solving the problem by a kind of cognitive trial and error, as if they were experimenting in their minds before manipulating the tools. The pattern of these behaviors; failure, pause, looking at the potential tools, and then the attempt would seem to involve insight and planning, at least on the first occasion.
The YouTube video I chose to provide shows a chimpanzee problem solving. During the video the chimp is given a peanut as a snack; however the peanut is at the bottom of a 12” inch cylinder. The chimp tries to stick its hand down the cylinder but that is just not possible. About ten minutes pass, and the chimp has chosen to use water to make the peanut float to the top of the cylinder so it could easily be reached. This video shows a great example of how the minds of chimps work. In my opinion the mentality of chimps is just amazing as ours.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm
I chose this webpage because it had a good amount of information and I knew it would help me understand Kohlers life more. The information contributed from this website was mostly on the background of Kohlers life before he started doing research.
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/kohler.htm
I chose to use this website because of the importance of the material. The length was not very long but the material was great for understanding the way Kolher put together his experiment and research on animal learning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz6uvIbWZE
I used this YouTube video to show what one of the problem situations would look like that the chimps were exposed to. I find this interesting; the mentality of apes is very familiar with ours. I find this topic very fascinating.
Wolfgang Kohler and his contribution to Gestalt psychology was the topic that interested me. The first site explained how he studied physics and psychology while living in Germany. Kohler researched psychoacoustics for his dissertation with Carl Stumpf as his professor. He later became an assistant at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt. There he was able to work with Wertheimer and Koffka, together they studied apparent movement which led to the founding of Gestalt Psychology. Kohler wanted people to realize that when it comes to how we perceive things, “The whole is different from the sum of its parts.” He became frustrated when his quote was translated into English using the wrong word “greatest” instead of “different” which changes the meaning of his statement. In 1913, Kohler was named director of the Prussian Academy of Sciences at the Canary Islands. For six years he remained there as he researched apes mental capabilities. He was interested in knowing how apes solve problems. He discovered if food was out of reach the chimps were able to figure out a way such as stack wooden crates on top of each other in order to climb up and reach the food. Kohler concluded that apes have the insight to form ideas when it comes to problem solving. He chose the chimps to study because the brain size is similar to human brains. Kohler wanted to see the capabilities of natural intelligence. Unlike the overt observable act of behaviorism, Kohler was interested in the covert inner thoughts and feelings. In 1920 Kohler returned to Germany and took over for Stumpf as professor and director of the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin. After Hitler took over in 1933, Kohler published an article attacking the Nazi Regime; many people admired him for his strength and bravery for standing up for what he believed in. Kohler also refused to start classes with the Nazi salute, and because of his rebellious nature Nazi soldiers would wait outside of his classroom and stop his students to examine their student cards. Kohler saw this as a raid and complained about the harassment to the Minister of Education, who told him, “There is nothing I care to do for you, Heil Hitler.” In 1933 Kohler immigrated to America, and in 1956 he was honored with the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, for his work in psychology.
The second site talks about Kohler and the principle of learning. In 1951, Kohler published a book entitled, “Mentality of Apes.” It was about the studies that were conducted between the years 1913-1917 on the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. Kohler chose chimpanzees because of their similar behavior and intelligence, he was interested in the way they think and overcome obstacles. Kohler explained, “As experience shows, we do not speak of behaviour as being intelligent, when human beings or animals attain their objective by a direct unquestionable route which clearly arises naturally out of their organization. But we tend to speak of “intelligence” when, circumstances having blocked the obvious course, the human being or animal takes a roundabout path, so meeting the situation.” Kohler set up his experiments using strings, sticks, and wooden boxes to see how chimps behaved while achieving the goal of obtaining food that was out of their reach. He discovered some chimps could learn to achieve tasks very quickly within seconds, and others could take several weeks to achieve the task. Kohler concluded the relationship between humans and apes show a similarity with insight and intelligence.
The third site acknowledges Kohler as a “Distinguished psychologist and co-founder of Gestalt psychology.” Kohler explored the theory of psychophysical isomorphism to learn more about the process of how our neurons are connected with the perception of problem solving. There were many different views and approaches to psychology during the beginning of the 20th century. Titchener believed in structuralism, Freud used psychoanalysis, Watson and Skinner relied on behaviorism, and the newest view would be Wertheimer’s, Koffka’s, and Kohler’s approach to perception through Gestalt psychology. When Kohler conducted his research on the island, he attended on staying for less than a year; however the First World War disrupted his plans. Ronald Ley suggested Kohler might be a German spy, although there was no convincing evidence other than the convenient location of British war ships and German submarines near the island. Most of Kohler’s time on the island was spent writing books about his scientific research using Gestalt psychology, and his main focus was to see how experiences consciously affect the perception of memory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
http://principlesoflearning.wordpress.com/dissertation/chapter-3-literature-review-2/the-cognitive-perspective/insight-learning-wolfgang-kohler-1925/
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems&page=wkohler.html
The topic I chose to do more research on this time was none other than Wolfgang Kohler and his study of the problem solving in apes. A research study that was later published in The Mentality of Apes and practically made Kohler’s reputation as a scientist. It fits in this chapter in a few ways, the first being that as we read about gestalt psychology we get the impression that it is only concerned with perception and the whole.
The study of gestalt was a system closer to a general psychology that studied thinking, learning, and problem solving. It was this last one that Kohler was able to do his ape study on that became one of the best examples of research in problem solving. I’m interested in this topic for the pure reason that Kohler was the youngest of three gestalists yet provided the most for the study of gestalt psychology and was brave enough to stand up to the Nazis in Germany and voice his opinion during the reign of Hitler. Also to be given the chance to go off to a remote location to do something one loves and find exciting is and would be awesome to do. I think regardless of the animal, I think we as individuals don’t give them enough credit on what they can accomplish or are capable of.
We all know about Thorndike and his preferred name trial and accidental success (trial and error) due to the fact that is was by accident the cats came to the correct response. Because Thorndike believed that the cats learned to make a connection between the stimuli and correct escape response we refer to his learning model sometimes as connectionism. It was Thorndike’s law of effect that was widely used to explain the learning in animals and man. Being we’re talking now about the gestalt movement, Kohler had argued this theory by stating that Thorndike didn’t allow for a “survey of the whole arrangement” (encyclopedia, p. 1) and no possibility for problem solving. The animal has to be able to see its surroundings and be allowed to use their abilities to reach a goal with experimental apparatus in a presentably means.
Kohler showed this a few different ways in his research, one being were the goal was to reach an object that was just out of reach for two individual sticks, but when put together could obtain the object. This became one of his more famous trials with an ape named Sultan, along with others involving objects of height and gradually proceeding on to more complex ones. It was due to the fact that Sultan’s behavior indicated insight, the perception of properties of an object to its problem situation. Giving Kohler the conclusion that the solution is a sudden and reflective reorganization of the perceptual field.
If one to take a closer look into his book The Mentality of Apes Kohler reports that Sultan was slow at first in figuring out a/the solution. This gives some support to Thorndike’s trial and error along with the challenging by the American psychologists on his methodology. Yet another controversy that arose was his attempt at separating learning history of an animal to the problem solving as independent of past experiences. As stated above we can clearly see in his experimental procedure of starting simple and working up to more complex tasks, that the problem depends on skills and knowledge acquired in the past.
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/kohler2.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Wolfgang_Koehler.aspx
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm
I chose to learn more about Wolfgang Kohler and his work with the chimpanzees on Canary Island. This is an interesting topic to me because I like learning about animal experiments, and it was really cool to learn about the mental processes of the chimps. We have learned about Thorndike's experiments with cats and dogs in the puzzle box experiment, but Kohler's experiment is interesting because he set out to prove that Thorndike's observation that the animals used trial and error to learn. Instead, Kohler promoted that the animals, when given the proper opportunity can use what he named insight to solve their problems. He inferred that the chimps can see the problem they are facing and think of possible solutions and act them out to solve the problem. I thought Kohler had an awesome idea when I was first reading the chapter, but by reading all of the material in the book, and by gathering more information online, I am not so sure that his experiment came up with results that can disprove the trial and error theory that Thorndike proposed. I did however like the way that Kohler set up his experiment a lot more than Thorndike.
Thorndike's puzzle box experiment involved putting cats and dogs into a box that he made. The animals were locked in but had a way out if they could find it. Their motivation for wanting to exit the cage was to get the food that was sitting outside. Thorndike observed that the way these animals learned was from trial and error, until they found out how the box was opened, then they could open it faster.
Kohler on the other hand had an interesting way to set up his experiment so he could make it possible for the chimps to use insight to solve the problem. For the chimps however, their goal was not to exit the cage, but rather it was to reach the banana while still in the cage. An interesting thing about Kohler's experiment was that he used the cage that the chimps were used to so they did not have to adapt to a new environment like the cats and dogs in Thorndike's experiment. In Kohler's experiment he first placed the banana in a number of different places. Each new place required a new technique for the chimps to get the banana. The most interesting one was the last one where he placed the banana just out of one of the poles that the chimps were given, but if the chimps could figure out how to connect the two bamboo poles, then the two combined would reach the banana.
His smartest chimp, Sultan, was given the challenge to get the banana that needed the two connected bamboo poles to reach. Kohler put his fingers inside the ends of the bamboo poles, but did not show the chimp how to connect the bamboo rods. After contemplating how to solve the problem Sultan was able to connect the poles and reach the banana.
By this observation of Sultan, Kohler, theorized that insight was used to solve the problem rather than trial and error. I thought it was interesting how even though Sultan obviously underwent some trial and error before realizing that he could connect the two bamboo rods, that he claimed that it was just from insight. I think that the trial and error is an important step in leading up to the process of insight. By spending time trying to prove Thorndike's theory wrong Kohler became biased towards his own research, so he saw his findings as validating his hypothesis. I believe that either side can validate the observations based on how they choose to view it.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm#Theory
This site gave details to Sultan and how he managed to connect the two poles for the experiment.
http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/kohler.htm
This site compared the experiments done by Kohler and Thorndike.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Köhler
This site provided background information on Kohler and his experiment.
For this week's blog I decided to learn more about the Zeigarnik Effect. This effect was discussed in the chapter we read this week. I am interested in this effect because it started out as a simple observation by a scientist and turned into a hypothesis that is still being tested and studied today.
In 1927 Bluna Zeigarnik was at a restaurant and noticed that the waitresses there were able to recall which customer order which items, but only before the meal was paid for. After the ticket was paid, the waitress was unable to recall who had ordered what. Intrigued by this phenomenon, Zeigarnik conducted studies in her lab to replicate these results. She gave each of her subjects tasks to complete. Some of the time the subjects were allowed to finish the tasks, other times they were not. The subjects were better able to recall the tasks that they were not able to complete. This is thought to be because the human mind wants to finish tasks. When tasks are left incomplete, the brain still wants to focus on them in order to complete them.
While looking up the Zeigarnik Effect on the internet, I found a lot of information on practical implications for the Zeigarnik Effect. One of these is the use in the Zeigarnik Effect to combat procrastination. The biggest problem with procrastinators is the feeling that the work is too overwhelming to do. It turns out that if you have someone work on a task for just a few minutes and do an easier part of the task, they will end up continuing to work on it. This goes along with the Zeigarnik Effect belief that your mind needs to finish a task once it has been started.
Another use of the Zeigarnik Effect in today's society is on television shows. TV series will use cliffhangers at the end of shows to keep the audience thinking about the show. Because the story has not reached a conclusion, your brain keeps thinking about it and wondering what will happen next. This tactic was also used by Charles Dickens. His works were first published in mini-series, and Dickens would use cliffhangers to keep people interested.
There does seem to be one important factor that influences the effectiveness of the Zeigarnik Effect. For this to work, the person has to be interested in the task that is being interrupted. If the person is not invested in the task, the brain will not hold onto it.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php
http://bizshifts-trends.com/2012/08/16/zeigarnik-effect-clever-business-spielberg-lucas-rowling-all-use-it-unfinished-uncompleted-cliffhangers-its-need-for-closure/
http://deskarati.com/2013/01/04/the-zeigarnik-effect-does-multitasking-actually-improve-your-memory/
I used the first article for information on procrastination.
The second was used for information on cliffhangers in TV shows.
The third article gave me more background on the Zeigarnik Effect.
I have been on a recent trend to do my topical blogs on the people that the chapter talked about. A specific person that I found to be the most interesting, and at the same time the person that the book did not go into much detail about. This chapter was tough because I was stuck between Kohler and Lewin. Both of these men were interesting, and I found myself wanting to know more about them. I decided to do my research on Kohler because I enjoyed the sultan experiment that he conducted. The book left his findings to the sultan experiment, so I wanted to know if there was any other information on him, or an experiment that he did that was significant. Like I mentioned, I like to know about the person behind the theory mainly because it helps me to understand how the came across the theory. I believe people are a product of situations, so I was curious to see what kohlers life was like, and how it came to be who he was as a psychologist. In my research I found some pretty interesting articles that gave me the information that I wanted. One in particular was really exceptional because it talked about what the book did, and then gave me a back drop on his life which was an added bonus to me.
The first article was the best on that I found because of the information that was provided. I got a look into who kohler was before he came up with his theories. Where he attended college that lead him to his discoveries. When he met his partners in crime Max and Kurt to come up with one of the six disciplines in psychology, gestalt psychology. Kohler was born in Estonia, and then later moved to Germany with his parents. He attended the University of Berlin where he received his graduates degree in psycho-acostics. His first job was at the psychological institute in Frankfort where he met Kurt and Max. There they came up with the grounds for gestalt psychology. They wanted to challenge the thinking of Pavlov and Watson, and basically wanted to focus on the nature of perspective. Since the war was starting at the time of their meeting it became quite the inconvenience. Kohler was sent to the Canary islands. I do not remember reading about this part in the book, but I went back to check, and sure enough it was there. He spent seven years there where he tested monkeys to see if they could use and devise simple tools. One thing that my research said that the book did not was that also while at the canar islands Kohler tested chickens to see if they could develop relationships. I thought that this was interesting because I think that is cooler than the monkey experiments that he conducted. Everyone knows how smart a monkey is, but to see if chickens can develop relationships is more interesting in my opinion. Anyways, the main experiment that the article and the book talked about was the monkey experiment that he conducted using his favorite monkey sultan. The experiment was that he placed a banana outside of a cage with two sticks in the cage(both short enough to not be able to reach the banana, but put together could reach the banana). Kohler wanted to see if sultan could use a main ideal of gestalt theory, and that was to use insight to reason and put the two sticks together to retrieve the banana. The article helped to explain the insight ideal to me in saying that it was an "aha" moment. I am glad that I was able to stumble across this explanation because it helped me to understand what I did not know. I results were successful and sultan attached the two sticks and retrieved that banana. The insight theory of gestalt psychology held true. Turns out that this was totally wrong. In his mentality of apes he wrote that sultan tries many different ways to try and retrieve the banana that Kohler did not mention in is original publishing. Since this was the case, Thorndike's theory of trial and error had to be true because that is the process that sultan went through. Also, at the canary islands, kohler acted as somewhat of a spy for the Germans in telling them if there were British vessels near the canary islands. This is a interesting part of history that kind of gets mulled over because of the big picture, so it was a cool thing to read about. In kohlers return to Germany he criticized the Germans for how the treated people. He wrote a letter that said you should only judge a person based on their character, intellectual value, and contributions to German culture. Not on the fact that they are Jewish or not. This was probably the most interesting thing that I read about during this article. Kohler was a German himself, and from what I can grasp from this article he was standing up for the Jewish population. I found this so interesting because the book did not mention this, and it tells me what kind of man Kohler was. This is why I enjoy doing these topical blogs about the person behind the theory because this is something that the book does not get into. Kohler was banished for this action and his research facility shut down. He was sent to America. While in America Kohler worked out of Harvard and soon became president of the American psychological association. He studied a little into the field theory which basically states that the brain is a physical system. I still do not understand the field theory that well, but this article did a better job of explaining it to me than the book, so it was beneficial in that sense. This article was the best on like I said earlier. It provided me with so much information, so my next article I wanted to see of there were any more finer details that I could stumble upon.
It was hard to find more information of Kohler, and that seems to be the theme with researching a specific person, but I get more information out of this than anything else so I continue to do it. As I continued my research I came across a pretty good article that talked more about kohlers life and some other experiments that he came up with besides the sultan experiment that he conducted in the canary islands. Like the other psychologists that I researched for the topical blogs, kohler, and his family were very strict about academics. His father was and mother were both educators. His sisters were teachers and nurses, and his older brother was a scholar himself. This was interesting to read about because the trend holds true for all of these psychologists. Academics is a main concern in all of the families that they grew up in. Whether they wanted to be academics themselves or not, they all had a decent education when growing up. Kohler wrote his dissertation on psycho-acuostics when he was a graduate at the University of Berlin. Kohler had a love for physics which is why he used much of his learning from physics into psychology. The article did not do a good job of explaining why he went from physics to psychology, but hopefully further research will help me to understand why this is true. One of the main points that this article tried to portray was Kohlers ideas into perceptual organization. This is the dots experiment that the book talked about. Proximity, simplicity, continuity, and closure are the main points that kohler used when describing perceptual organization. The book did a good job of explaining this theory, so it was mostly a review as I was reading this section of the article. Other than that this article covered what was talked about in the last article. I got a good look into what his up bringing was like, so that was very useful in understanding what kind of person that Kohler was like. I think that the trend is for intelligent people such as kohler and the other psychologists is a concerned effort in education when they were young. This was an interesting conclusion that I discovered while reading the section of the article that talked mostly about Kohlers up bringing. I am glad that I got to read about that because it really does help me understand who kohler was as a young man, and that is my personal goal while doing this topical blogs. As I continued m research I wanted to know more about kohler to see if there was anything else that I could find about to help me understand what type of person he was, and any other contributions that he made towards psychology.
The next article that I came across during my research was one on perceptual organization. The book had talked about this but only provided information of proximity, continuity, and one other thing. This article gave all of the points on perceptual organization, so it was interesting to read about them. The main point that I found the most interesting was the one on grouping objects in vision. The first one was nearness in proximity Other factors being equal, the nearer objects are to one another, the more likely they are to be organized into unified percepts. It is almost impossible to see the spaced dots as belonging together or, in other words, to break up the units based on nearness. The book had talked about this one, but the article did a better job of explaining the idea a little better. The next major one was similarity. Similarity is the greater the similarity among objects, the more likely they are to be organized into perceptual units. Without reading about this in the book or in this article I would have never thought of is in this light. I just took for granted that when things were close together that they were in a group. The third thing was common fate, which was that dots which move simultaneously at the same rate and in the same direction, share a common fate, are readily seen as a group. The factor of common fate belongs to the strongest grouping factors; it ties together objects that are quite distant and different in form, size or color, given that they share a sort of event similarity in their sameness of motion. Where grouping would not otherwise occur in stationary displays, it will occur as soon as parts of the display move. A well-camouflaged animal will remain hidden only as long as it is standing still; it becomes visible as soon as it moves. The book had not talked about this, so it was interesting to read about is in the article. Another grouping factor that the book talked about was closure. Closure is components that constitute a closed entity rather than an open one are more readily organized into a single percept. This factor of closure predicts that a closed line has an advantage over an open one. Closure also applies to the tendency to complete otherwise incomplete, partly occluded, objects. I think that the book did a better job of explaining this idea because an example was provided along with it. The last grouping factor was subjective factors which is the study of natural camouflage and concealment shows that those grouping factors that refer to objective or stimulus variables fare well in accounting for the utility of various surface markings of animals. The book had not talked about this, but the article paints a good enough picture that I can understand this idea. It was very interesting to read about subjective factors. Perceptual organizations was the main thing that this article talked about, and I am glad that I came across it. Even thought it did not deal with Kohler himself it was his theory. The last two articles did a good enough job of telling me about who he was as a person so it was good to look at one of his theories.
That was the conclusion of my research, and I feel that I got what I set out for. I found out about kohler and what he was like as a person. The article on the monkey experiments gave me a better understanding of how it was conducted and also some more information on how he was raised. My main goal was to understand more of who kohler was, the man behind the theory, and I know that I have the knowledge that I was seeking when I started my research.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kohler.htm
This article helped me to understand kohlers life and his theories. Really an all around great article, and the best one that I came across during my research.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html
This article was helpful because I got a good look at what kohlers childhood was like.
http://www.krivda.net/books/-international_encyclopedia_of_the_social_and_behavioral_sciences_8_-_perceptual_organization_393
This article was helpful because I got to learn about perceptual organization more in depth that what the book told.
After reading this chapter and hearing the discussion in class I decided to pick the topic of memory. In class we talked about the study done on waitresses and their memory of orders and customers. It intrigued me to learn more about the mysterious subject of memory. Memory is the process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. The process first starts with encoding. Your brain takes the information it is presented with and changes it in a way that it fits into the encoding process. After that the information is stored. Once it is stored then you can retrieve it at any time which is the third stage. There are three types of memory. The first type is sensory; which is information that is held for a few seconds or less after perceived. The items that are processed with your sensory memory usually aren’t stored. The second type is short-term memory; which allows recall for a period of several seconds to a minute without rehearsal. It’s capacity is very limited. The last type of memory is long-term memory; which can store large quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration. It can sometimes have duration of a lifespan. Within these types of memory there are two distinctions. There is recognition and recall memory. Recognition memory is asking someone if they have seen a movie before or eaten a strawberry Sunday. Recall memory is asking them to tell a specific story from their past or asking them to recite the names of all the presidents.
The last thing about memory I wanted to talk about was eidetic memory which you also can call photographic memory. It is the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme precision. People with photographic memory can recall not just pictures but auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfactory information also. People who have a photographic memory can have an overload of sensory information making it even painful to recall certain details. There is actually a slight difference between photographic memory and eidetic memory. Photographic memory is just recalling a picture and eidetic memory is recalling other senses as well as the picture. Memory is a mysterious function of the brain. We can do multiple experiments but we will never fully know what it is capable of.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory
http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/cognition/tutorials/ModelOf/Knowmore1.html
http://www.merkle.com/humanMemory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
I wanted to do more research on the topic of apparent motion. The book mentions briefly how it was involved in the start of the motion picture industry. I would like to see what I will stumble upon when I google apparent motion in regards to psychology and the motion picture industry. I am always interested in how psychology attributes to the real world and some of our biggest inventions. I think it is neat that this concept lead to innovations in the motion picture industry because I always wondered how they figured out how to make movies. A couple Gestalt psychologists went out to try and explain how this concept works. They had a couple theories but still were not positive.
When I did my research I found a couple more concepts that were involved in apparent motion. It talks about the auto-kinetic effect that states when you stare at a small light in a dark room for long enough, it will start to move. Things like these amazes me, that is when the brain perceives something different from what it really is. I always try to think of why, in terms of evolution, this occurs. Some of these concepts are hard to think of a reason why but even if it not for evolutionary purposes, there has to be a reason why things like this happen. The Phi-phenomenon reminds of reflections in the park in my hometown. The lights turn on and off so fast that the stationary lights create a moving picture because our brain cuts out the short amount of time when they switch. This concept can also apply to a lot of other things.
Apparent motion fits right in with Gestalt psychology because it has to do with perception and observation. I also like it because you can tell it was inspired by events happening around these men. Koffka was inspired by a simple stroboscope. This reminds me to keep observing my surroundings and continue to ask questions about why things are the way they are. You might just stumble onto the next big concept in psychology. Perception is a tricky thing and hard to pick up. You must be really paying attention or be thinking to pick up reasons why these things are happening. Inspiration can even come from a toy!
I think it is crazy that film is really just a bunch of static images. It makes sense when I think back to some Chaplin films. When I look at today's films though I am blown away. Computers have taken this concept to the next level. It must have taken a lot of careful work back in the days before today's computers. It makes me appreciate those early films a lot more because they took a new concept, apparent motion, and run with it. Now look what is has evolved into. We would not be watching television or any films if we did not figure out the concept of apparent motion.
http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/CogSciSoftware/AppMotion/ this link gave me more information about the making of films with these images
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html This link gave me more background on apparent motion and how it fit in with Gestalt psychology
http://www.preservearticles.com/201102013815/how-do-we-perceive-the-real-movement-of-objects-from-psychological-point-of-view.html this link gave me some other ideas to think about in regard to apparent motion
Kurt Lewin
This week I decided that the most interesting things that I pulled out of chapter nine were all ideas of Dr. Kurt Lewin. After looking back at everything of his that I found interesting, I decided that I would like to know more about his life and work and how he came to be successful in the field of psychology.
Kurt Zadek Lewin was born on September 9, 1890 to a jewish family in Prussia., where his father owned a small general store and a farm. Lewin was born as one of four children before his family moved to Berlin in 1905. In 1909 Lewin began to study medicine at the University of Freiburg, although he soon transferred to the University of Munich to study biology instead. It was at this university that Lewin became very involved with the socialist movement and was an advocate for women's rights. As soon as the war began Lewin signed up to fight in the army, although he would ultimately become wounded and return to the University of Berlin to complete his Ph. D.
Since Lewin had originally been involved with schools of behavioral psychology, once he finished his doctoral training, Lewin began working with well known psychologists such as Wolfgang Kohler and Max Wertheimer at the Gestalt School of Psychology. Lewin also joined the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin where he gave lectures and seminars on both philosophy and psychology.
In the year 1930, Lewin traveled to the United States to be a visiting professor at Stanford, eventually emigrating to the United States in August of 1933 and became a citizen in 1940. He then began working at Cornell University and eventually at the University of Iowa for the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station. He would then end up becoming the director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT, where he founded a journal partnering with the new Travistock Institute. Unfortunately Lewin would die shortly after in 1947 of a heart attack.
Lewin lived a great and meaningful life full of many contributions to the field of psychology. Some of his most famous were his proposal of alternative "nature verses nurture" perspective, which states that both nature and nurture interact to shape a person. He also presented a formula with this theory B = f(P, E). Lewin was also responsible for the theory of force field analysis. Force field analysis allows us to more fully understand the factors that influence a situation. Lewin's theory states that we focus on forces either driving toward a goal or blocking us for achieving a goal. Going along with this weeks chapter, one of Lewin's greatest theories revolved around Gestalt Psychology. His theory was Field Theory, which emphasized that importance of individual personalities, interpersonal conflict and situational variables. It also proposed that behavior is the result of the individual and the environment. Lewin was most well known for his advances and advancements in gestalt psychology and is known as the father of modern social psychology.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
This site had an incredible amount of information and easily answered any questions I had.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin
I liked this site because it had a lot of information, not only about Lewin's psychological advances but also about his life and where he came from.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_lewin.htm
This site was great because the information was exactly what I was looking for and was very condensed.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/lewin.htm
Although this site was short, I really liked the timeline and thought it was very interesting.
RB
The one topic that I wanted to look more into from this chapter was the principles of perceptual organization. In particular, I wanted to learn more about Edgar Rubin and the perceptual tendency of the figure-ground phenomenon. This topic fits in with the chapter in that gestalt psychologists used Rubin’s discovery to further support their field of study. I am interested in this topic as illustrations such as the ones provided by Rubin in the chapter have always intrigued me in a way that I can’t really describe. The concept of hiding two different images in the same portrait has always seemed amazing to me.
Edgar Rubin was born in Denmark in 1886. He became a professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen. He fled to Sweden during World War II when the Germans invaded Denmark, but returned after the war was over. He later died from an illness brought on by the difficulties he experienced in fleeing Denmark to Sweden in search of refuge.
Rubin is most known for his contribution to psychology by his work on the figure=ground phenomenon. This principle essentially states that we, as humans, have the perceptual tendency to separate figures from their backgrounds. The figure, or the shape, is the focus of the image. Everything else is the ground. Simply by changing attitudes, we can shift the figure to the background and turn the background into the figure. In taking the Rubin vase image for example, at first glance, based on one’s attitude, the image of the vase stands out. This happens because of the distinctness of the border of the image. But by changing one’s focus, the image of the vase fades to the back and the two faces appear.
http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/gestalt_principles.htm
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Figure-ground_perception
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0017_0_17126.html
For this assignment I decided to find out more about the Zeigarnik Effect. I wanted to find out what it could be used for and if the effect was actually successful. I found this interesting at first due to how its discovery came about. The Zeigarnik Effect is the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task instead of a completed task. Bluma Zeigarnik was working under Kurt Lewin performing psychological research. While at a cafe one day they noticed that a waiter remembered orders better when the customers hadn't paid yet. However, once the bill was paid the order was forgotten. This interested me because I am a waitress and what they discovered was true. I don't know why I can remember what six different tables ordered to eat and drink but I can. It is kind of frustrating that things like that my brain remembers but other things that are more important aren't as easily remembered! Since their discovery the Zeigarnik Effect has been used by those interested in learning, business, problem-solving, and social psychology.
An example I found of the Zeigarnik Effect being used was in television and books. The television shows that you have to watch every week and books that you have to read the next book that follows to find out what happens involve the Effect. I didn't even think of it this way until now. Our mind perceives the cliffhanger as an uncompleted task. So through out the week or months until the next series comes out our unconscious mind is wondering what will happen next. Which on the business end helps the producers and authors out a lot.
Other uses found for the Zeigarnik Effect is when someone is struggling with procrastination. If you start the smallest part of a project (often the easiest part) then your memory considers it incomplete and the project will constantly be in your unconscious mind, driving you to finish it. This will most definitely be helpful the next time I have to write a boring paper, do a research project and with other day to day activities. For instance while giving presentations it could be better to insert your own cliffhanger at the beginning to keep human minds interested. Another way to use the effect is to end the day with and uncompleted task that way you are more likely to actually want to get more things done.
The Zeigarnik Effect has caused many different studies. However, it has yet to be determined if this effect helps improve memory or if it has any effect at all. I would be interested in doing my own study to determine what happens to memory involving the Zeigarnik Effect.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php
This website informed me of the cliffhanger phenomenon and why it works.
http://www.managetrainlearn.com/page/the-zeigarnik-effect
This website gave me other ways to use the Zeigarnik Effect and ways that others may use it.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/zeigarnik%20effect
I noticed I was having a really hard time finding one news story that could relate to Gestalt psychology. Then an idea hit me, am I having so much trouble finding a single story to tell a larger story? This idea sounds familiar, like the description for Gestalt psychology, quite the coincidence really.
Although I had trouble, I settled with an article from the bbc talking about the recent largest DDoS attack on certain internet hosts. These attacks are the largest that have been recorded and are coming from Eastern Europe and Russia. Authorities are doing what they can to hold back the attacks but we have to use Google to take some of the blow.
I chose this article because I felt that it did a good job of showing a problem that is a small part, and needs to be a whole. There is a famous quote in Gestalt psychology that says “The sum is greater than its parts” and I think that this situation perfectly shows that. The problem at hand is that of internet attack. It happens every day and can be crippling to the infrastructure of any database. The “sum” of this can be taken in two different ways. One way is the whole could be interpreted in a way that we are being called to take protection of our internet. It is something that we all use every day and it keeps the world moving at the pace that everyone seems to be comfortable with. The second way to look at it is how we can protect ourselves from vigilantes that we know nothing about. What can be done?
The expressed issues are larger than the small story of an “attack”. Therefore, I thought that it was very fitting for this week’s reading.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21954636
After reading the chapter, I decided I wanted to do more research on Bluma Zeigarnik and the Zeigarnik effect. This fits into the chapter because it relates to memory and why we remember the things we do. I am interested in this because I was a waitress for two years and I can relates to Zeigarnik’s findings.
Zeigarnik was a Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist who was born in 1901 and lived until 1988. She was a member of Berlin School of experimental psychology and Vygotsky Circle. Discovered the Zeigarnik effect and contributed to the establishment of experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline in the Soviet Union in the after-World War II period. Zeigarnik first came across the idea of the Zeigernik Effect when he was at a restaurant in Vienna. The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory. She went and decided to test people memories. She would ask people to do activities in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads but some of the time they were interrupted half way through the task. Afterwards she surveyed which activities each participant remembered doing. People were nearly twice as likely to remember the tasks that were interrupted than the ones that were completed completed. These things were remembered because people wanted to finish. They were intrigued by the tasks and even though they were interrupted, I wanted to continue on so they remembered more. The lack of closure in a task creates a need to finish and so those who were interrupted continued to work on and remember the activities.
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
I chose this site because it gave a great discription of the Zeigarnik Effect.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/02/the-zeigarnik-effect.php
I liked this site the most because it presentent the information in a very understandable way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluma_Zeigarnik
I those this site because it was short and to the point.
I decided to read a bit more on the Zeigarnik effect. Interestingly, I found that different sources had different ways of describing the phenomenon. The book focused on the fact that waiters seem to immediately forget the order right after the bill is paid, giving the impression that it is some almost unnatural amnesia. Another source explained it a bit more realistically, focusing on the idea that the waiters pay an abnormal amount of attention to remembering due to their dedication to completing a task, and that ordinarily they would not have remembered such useless information. This illustrates the Zeigarnik effect as a motivator- people tend to want to complete what they start, and assign a lot of attention to that one task until it is complete, or else suffer the consequence of dissonance.
Once the bill is paid, the waiter no longer uses their working memory for that order. Then the waiter's memory of their order shifts gears to long term memory while his working memory is already occupied by new patrons. By the time the people actually leave the restaurant, any small memory of their order that the waiter had in his long term memory would already have begun decaying.
Although I still support the traditional method of retaining information, some researchers have used the Zeigarnik effect to suggest that multi tasking is actually beneficial when trying to remember information. However, if a person remembers things this way only for a test, they will forget it once that test is over. Unfortunately our education system relies all too much on multiple choice tests, and does not teach for retention, which is why this short-term method for remembering may be beneficial in our society.
It is also important to mention that following studies failed to replicate any distinct difference in memory before and after the bill was paid.
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
^here is where I got most of my information on the effect
http://deskarati.com/2013/01/04/the-zeigarnik-effect-does-multitasking-actually-improve-your-memory/
^this site showed practical applications of the Zeigarnik effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluma_Zeigarnik
^this gave some background info on Zeigarnik, as well as some information that refutes the legitimacy of her studies.
For this week's assignment, I was interested in reading up on the Von Restorff Effect. I first learned about this theory in this chapter and found it immediately intriguing. This effect seems pertinent to daily life because we base a lot of things on our experience-- and experience is nothing without perception. In this case, it may supply an answer to why concentrate on specific stimuli and why they are retained more readily than others. These are big questions, but reading up on perceptual research is at the very least a jumping-off point for other theories and research that may eventually lead to precise findings.
The theory was named after child psychologist Hedwig von Restorff and refers to the bias we have in favor of recalling stimuli that are unusual. This theory is also sometimes called the "isolation effect" and "novelty effect."
The Von Restorff effect may be applied in industrial organizational psychology. Marketers use the effect to make desirable elements more prominent and memorable in advertisements. An example of this is in the old iPod commercials where the backgrounds would be one solid color and there would the shadow of a person dancing with his/her iPod. The iPod was white, which popped against the colored background and black shadow of a human being. The Von Restorff effect is also effective in Dr. Suess books. Dr. Suess' characters have strange names that "pop" against basic, everyday words. This makes the books interesting for young children and helps to explain why they are so popular with parents and teachers.
At the same time, there are a number of false ideas surrounding the von Restorff effect. Although the effect is quite common and has in ways become almost a "pop psych" phenomenon, information is left out. This is often the case with popular psychology because overgeneralizing a principle makes it easier to understand. Readers pick up these books because they claim to offer quick, foolproof solutions to daily problems. It's not that these theories cannot be of applied use-- however, it is important to note the complexity of the theory and the research behind it in order to grasp the concept in its entirety. In the case of the Von Restorff effect, popular books tend to overemphasize the importance of "distinctiveness" in the effect. While distinctiveness, or the perceptual salience, of a stimulus can have a great effect, the Von Restorff effect is specifically referring to distinctiveness in conjunction with similarity. That is to say, the object that sticks out must be in a context where the other items are similar to each other. There must be an identifiable pattern among the other stimuli in a list/picture/song/etc in order for this effect to take place.
The von Restorff effect has been used as a basis to test a number of other psychological theories. In one case, the effect was utilized to test individuals who self-report synesthesia. When presented with a list of letters and words (which they reported associating with colors), the synesthetes did not seem to exhibit symptoms of the von Restorff effect. When a word was written in a color that was at odds with what the synesthete experienced, they did not have greater memory recall. A "normal" person would remember such words more readily because they are different than the words surrounding it. This theory, then, is not only an end in terms of research, but a means for testing and expanding upon other psychological constructs that interest researchers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sct7oUNthas
Video on von restorff effect in marketing
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=0fa12851-df83-4c80-922e-3bbab0626b0b%40sessionmgr12&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=2011-00726-005
Peer reviewed article on the use of the effect in other psychological research
http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03214414#page-2
Clears up common misconceptions about the reality of the effect
I chose to do my topical blog on Kurt Lewin. My interest was peaked when reading about his expainsion of the Gestalt Vision. Although, he was considered a Gestalt Psychologist, he made a large impact on the contemporary view of field theory. His involvement focused on motivation and personality. I began my search with wiki to get an overall view on him, and find some things that may spark my interest. This chapter mostly focused on his field theory, and later I found he was involved in many other theories. Overall, I learned he took things and looked at them in a new perspective. He was a critic, and would further develop theories based on his new idea. He was one of many to state that it was not nurture, nor nature alone to contribute to a person’s behavior; it was a combination of both. His equation was published based on this multidisciplinary theory. He also focused on forces, meaning he analyzed all forces acting upon a person in each particular behavior. His developments often were an achievement in many areas of psychology. I also enjoyed his metaphorical literature; he took his ideas and put them in a literal sense to visualize. The one that stands out to me most is his idea of a spiral steps. He uses this for the idea of behavior; all behaviors have planning, action, new information, and action to move towards a goal. He took organizational psychology and pushed it further to other areas of psychology. His next area that interested me was his leadership climates. He took the organizational side of psychology and applied to the industrial area. He categorized based on three areas authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. He took many areas of behavior and developed them further, I find this interesting. I also wanted to further learn about field of mind and possibly look at some of the criticisms of it. The Field Theory Rule includes behavior being predicted by one constellation of factors. This means that all relationships involved in interaction, influences of behavior are included, and they are at a point in time. This all did not make total sense to me; however, I continued reading to find out that all behaviors come from a whole. It’s taking perspective to look at a behavior and connect it with a whole contribution as one to predict. Forces being the contributions, and the behavior either going towards a goal or away from a goal. This is represented on his topological maps. This made me think further on all of my personal behaviors, does everything we do have higher meaning? I really enjoyed learning further about this topic but I don’t know if I believe every action or behavior can be predictable. However, it got me thinking about understanding the whole before we can predict a behavior. Lewin is a great scientist, he challenges people to think from a new perspective and constantly asks why? I watched a video on field theory as well called the child and field forces. It basically put it simplistically that every action has meaning for a further goal. I would assume that several people understand where his studies come from and what is at question, but can you really understand all forces. This topic is endless, but I learned more and it made me think more in-depth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK8HEQfjY-E
http://www.tavinstitute.org/lectures_and_presentations/uncategorized/field-theory-rule/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin
I decided to explore the Zeigarnik Effect. The whole concept was very interesting to me. The Zeigarnik effect got its name after a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, who observed the behaviors of waiters while dining at a restaurant in Vienna. Zeigarnik noticed that the waiters only remembered orders that were in the process of being served. When the order was complete, the waiters no longer committed them to memory.
This concept also applies to the concept of a cliffhanger in both television and books. People are more likely to remember what is going on and to tune in later if a scene or chapter cuts off abruptly. The mystery draws them back in and keeps the memory fresh.
I started to think about this concept and how it applies to schoolwork. In most classes, you focus on the material intently and study everything that you think will be on the test. After the test is over, the material is now “useless” and you forget it. I then started to think about how the Zeigarnik effect could be used in the education system. If everything was taught in relation to other concepts where it seems like you are always “in the middle” of the concept, perhaps students would be more likely to recall that information.
Upon further research, however, I read that the downfall of the Zeigarnik effect is that you have to be motivated and emotionally invested. Therefore, the effect on education would be useless unless we could modify how student approach the education system in this country.
http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect
http://bizshifts-trends.com/2012/08/16/zeigarnik-effect-clever-business-spielberg-lucas-rowling-all-use-it-unfinished-uncompleted-cliffhangers-its-need-for-closure/
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=div3facpubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dincomplete%2520tasks%2520and%2520the%2520zeigarnik%2520effect%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D6%26ved%3D0CE8QFjAF%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwesscholar.wesleyan.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1286%2526context%253Ddiv3facpubs%26ei%3DMLRVUeqSJKmMygG4v4HoCQ%26usg%3DAFQjCNGvyynzjyqbqFyGWSPNRsjERlJKmQ#search=%22incomplete%20tasks%20zeigarnik%20effect%22
My topic is Wolfgang Kohler and his work in the Canary Island s at Tenerife. He was appointed to head the research lab there, and apes that were not native to that island were brought there for him and his research team to study. Dr. Ronald Ley, a psychologist form New York, did the biography on Kohler and travelled to the Canary Islands where he met Manuel Gonzalez y Garcia and was told an intriguing story by Gonzalez y Garcia about Kohler being involved in espionage activities for Germany during World War I. The Canary Islands are strategically located and Kohler would have had a great view of Allied ships as they restocked at the Islands or as they cruised by. It is not unthinkable that Kohler, a German patriot, would do something for the German war effort. I read that many scientists of the time were involved in simple espionage as they travelled from one country to another doing research or attending scientific conferences. The practice was common, but later became discouraged so that countries would be more comfortable with scientists travelling or residing in their regions even while the political climates were not agreeable. Kohler returned to Germany after the completion of his study in Tenerife, and because his primates were not native to the Island he was forced to take them back to Germany with him. Kohler donated the primates to the local zoos, but they reportedly died due to an intolerance of the climate change.
I also read that Kohler made a stand against the Nazis during World War II, and he published an article stating that men should be judged by their intellect and their worth and not on whether or not they were Jewish. He refused to begin his class lectures with “Heil Hitler” as the faculty was ordered to do, and he wrote a letter to the Minister of Education in Germany protesting the removal of Jewish professors from university faculties as ordered by the Nazi regime. There were several times that SS guards were stationed outside of his lectures and all of his students and audiences were checked for ID and papers. Kohler asked his fellow professors to stand with him in subverting Nazi rule, but all refused. His colleagues followed Nazi rules as ordered and distanced themselves from Kohler’s subversive activities. It is amazing that Kohler was not removed from the faculty and placed in a war camp. Maybe, if he had done some espionage for the German government during Work War I, his service was taken into consideration and kept Germany from reacting to his political activities during World War II. Maybe the Nazis tolerated him because Kohler was unsuccessful in gaining any real traction for the Jewish cause within the academic community, whatever the reason Kohler did survive the war and defected to the United States.
Sources:
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/bioscopes_wolfgangkohler.html
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ronald-ley/a-whisper-of-espionage-wolfgang-kohler-and-the-/
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kohler.htm
After reading chapter 9 a person who I wanted to learn a little bit more about would have to have been Edgar Rubin. The reason I was interested in Rubin is because they talked a little about his figure-ground segregation that we do to separate whole figures from their backgrounds, this provides the foundation for all object perception. I found this interesting and wanted to learn a little bit more about Rubin and some of the other things that he made discoveries in.
The most popular of Rubin’s discoveries was one that is familiar to most people and is known as the Rubin Vase. This is a great figure-ground demonstration that the brain makes on visual perception. This is an example of the brain shaping what it sees due to the picture kind of playing with the brain. A good example I found would be if you see a piece of fruit on the ground, you see the fruit as the figure and don’t concentrate on the ground because you know it is the background. With the vase experiment it takes the brain a second to shape what is the background and what is the figure. This is an important trait for us to possess because it can show depth and relationships between objects and backgrounds.
Rubin was also a professor and director of a psychological laboratory in Copenhagen in 1922 where he did some studies on tactile sensitivity and mainly visual perception. Rubin had some considerable effect on the other Gestalt psychologists as a basis for figural organization in psychology. Rubin didn’t have many other breakthroughs in psychology but he did have his impact on visual perception which was pretty big at the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBnRauq-3uI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662242.001.0001/acref-9780198662242-e-739
My original intent was to do this week’s topical blog on Koffka and his research on the cognitive consequences of severe brain injuries in soldiers during world war one, unfortunately I could not find much information on this subject. Instead, I decided to research more about Wolfgang Kohler and his personal life aside from his ape studies.
Kohler was born in Reval, Estonia on January 21, 1887, shortly after his birth, Kohler’s family moved back to Germany. Academics were very important to Kohler and his family; his father was a school master, his sisters were teachers and nurses, and his brother was a prominent scholar. Besides science, Wolfgang enjoyed classical music, he loved piano, and he had an interest in the outdoors. HE attended several different universities including Tubingen, Bonn, and Berlin where he studied physics and psychology. He also received a Ph.D. at Berlin. In his mid-twenties Kohler married and had four children. This marriage did not last long, as the couple split in their thirties and Kohler remarried his student.
While in school Kohler studied under Wertheimer and alongside Koffka and these three were the ones who would eventually develop Gestalt psychology which went against earlier structural/behavioral ideas done by Wundt and Titchener. With this they used the whole of something to frame their ideas into smaller meanings. He would later use this in the Canary Islands to study apes. In 1935 Kohler fled to the United States because he was receiving such harassment for criticizing the Nazi movement. In America he taught at Swarthmore College and in 1956 he went to Dartmouth College as a research professor and became president of the American Psychological Association in 1959.
Besides his animal research done with Apes Kohler also did some work with chickens. He trained them to peck at a gray board when shown with a black board and then he observed them peck at a white board when shown a gray board. This proved that they were able to see the relationship between the two colors, and this he believed was doing more than just learning a single task. He called this process transposition which is seen in humans too when we transfer knowledge from one situation to another. This information was very useful in understanding animal and human learning.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/kohler.htm
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler
I chose to do my research on Kurt Lewins Field History, partially because I didn’t really care for the information the book presented and I want to fully understand what he meant by his theory. I find it to be an interesting theory and it was obviously in the book so it must have some importance to the history of psychology.
Well first off Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 to a middle-class Jewish family; later on in life he completed doctorates at the University of Berlin. His studies were originally focused on behaviorism but he soon took an interest in Gestalt psychology but decided to join the German army in 1914 which evidently had a huge impact on his development of field study. One thing I found interesting about Lewin was that although he enjoyed theories he still thought a theory should have practical applications in everyday life. Just for my own personal interests I found it interesting that Lewin was a Jew living in Berlin shortly before Hitler started his regime, and given that Lewin immigrated to the United States in around 1930, it’s interesting to think had Lewin not decided to leave when he did, he may never have gotten out and he might not be in the textbook today. Looking at Lewins field theory, it actually led to field research in human behaviors. I got the sense that Lewin took the Gestalts model and was able to translate it into everyday situations which helped him experiment with the idea that one could study social and psychological phenomena; which we all know now has shaped modern research done today.
Although I’m still not certain that I understand Lewins entire force theory, I do in some way(I hope) get it and am able to relate it to information I already know. I see his field theory as being more of individual people or personalities paired with surrounding conflicts, or the environment you’re in. Looking at myself, I’m usually laid back, calm and easy going, but if I’m in a classroom or cooped up for too long then I get really cranky and feel like I’m a 2year old about to throw a tantrum. So that’s kind of what I took from the whole field theory, I’m not sure if it’s right but it helped me better understand it in that way.
Another concept of the field theory that I understood was that it’s really like behaviorism now, and the fact that you can’t just look at one aspect of someone’s life and make a conclusion; you need to take everything that’s going on into accountability and ultimately weigh out the ones that necessarily don’t have that great of an effect; which I think is where is equation comes into play but I’m not even going to go there. All in all though I felt like after doing further research on Lewin and the Field Theory I do understand it better in my own way, it’s not something I can necessarily communicate well but I think I do get it and although it was difficult I’m glad I researched him.
http://www.wilderdom.com/theory/FieldTheory.html
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/gestalt/Lewin.html
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/lewinnotes.html
BR
From chapter nine I chose to do more research on Kurt Lewin because I thought he was very interesting and I found myself wanting to know more as I was reading the section about him. He was born on September 9, 1890 in Mogilno, which was a part of Prussia but known now as Poland. His family was Jewish and had three other siblings. His family was decently well off, money wise and at age fifteen they moved to Berlin to get better education. When Kurt was twenty he went to the University of Berlin and achieved getting his doctorate. Here he also had Karl Stumpf as a mentor of his, and he taught Lewin about Gestalt psychology. He eventually utilized the Gestalt aspect to personality theory as well as social dynamics which resulted in his “Field Theory.” This is where it all began. Hitler and his new regime drove Kurt to move his family to America where he continued to do research.
Kurt Lewin started out at Stanford University then went to Cornell University, before finally settling down at the University of Iowa at their Child Welfare Research Station. While at Iowa he published two books about personality and the dynamics of it; his and him colleagues also started to establish research on human behavior in social situations. His ideas on behavior were interesting and definitely didn’t go unnoticed. Lewin stressed the details of human behavior to be forces and tensions that move us to action. He also believed that each person’s “life-space”, (or total environment) of themselves and their significant others had to be understood and dissected to fully grasp behavior. Examples of different life spaces would include: family, church, work, or school, and according to Kurt behavior was presented as movements through life spaces. These movements could be both positive and negative influences that are encouraged by one’s insights based off their underlying psychological needs.
His theory on behavior linked to children stated that as a child develops, the personality system expands and differentiates. Basically he was saying that their environment is critical to cognitive restructuring, which means it starts to be better understood and he does a better job of determining between the real world and the world of wishes and fears. Kurt concluded that children find new social roles and learn new social norms and codes.
All of his research he did throughout his life had an impact for the profession of psychology. He did research on behavior linked to life spaces, and included social roles of people linked to how their environment affects their behavior as well. He also established his field theory, group dynamics, democracy in groups, and action research, all of these have contributed to psychology in allowing us to have knowledge of leadership and group dynamics. Kurt’s work was best summed up by one of his quotes: ‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory’.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Kurt%20Lewin.htm
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/lewinnotes.html
I chose Wolfgang Köhler and his research with apes as my topic this week. I thought it was interesting that he was more well-known than the other Gestaltists (of the three originators) because he lived longer than them. He was also the only one of the three to become APA’s president. Gestalt psychology was a kind of contrast idea to behaviorism and structuralism that included ideas like constancy, proximity, and similarity, to name a few. The movement for Gestalt lasted almost a decade, and still influences psychology today.
Another fact that struck me was that he studied his apes at the Canary Islands, where Darwin also discovered new psychological and historical information. He categorized this information into a work called The Mentality of Apes. What I learned was that there was a distinguished ape in particular, also said to be Köhler’s favorite, who was heard to be the most intelligent. He quickly figured out how to put together the two sticks in order to get out of his cage and receive the fruit that was being used as reinforcement. The term that the psychologist came up with, rather than trial and error, for the apes’ processing method was “insight.” The textbook explains that insight involves a “perceptual quality,” which means to me that the apes knew that putting the two sticks together would allow them to get food, and also thought the solution to the problem through in order to solve the problem. Trial and error, on the other hand, would involve no insightful properties. For example, the cats in Thorndike’s puzzle-box experiments were not intent on solving the actual problem, and had no idea they were actually performing the action that solved the problem of opening the door. They had to use trial and error to figure out how to get to the food, and that was all that they were worried about. Actually, this opinion came from Thorndike himself; he believed there was no insight involved.
Köhler called trial and error “accidental success.” I could never find out, however, whether Köhler thought Thordike was wrong in thinking that the cats had no insight while figuring out this problem. I assume that he did, because the text tells me that Köhler believed insight was necessary in figuring out the solution to a problem. I think it is possible that the cats knew what they were doing once they figured out what to do. The cats would have had to have thought it through in order to perform the action to solve the problem , I think.
Apparently, Köhler became very tired of being around the apes, which affected his research. He spent almost seven years on the island, and completed most of his best research during the first six months. On another interesting note, it is rumored that Köhler was a German spy, which I think would probably make for a good story. There is actually a book called A Whisper of Espionage: Wolfgang Köhler and the Apes of Tenerife, which is a collection of information that a psychologist compiled on the subject; according to the summary, it does not portray him as a very good person. One last cool fact is that Köhler was born on January 21st, which is three days after my own birthday!
Terms: Wolfgang Köhler, research, Gestaltists, APA, Gestalt psychology, behaviorism, structuralism, constancy, proximity, similarity, psychology, Darwin, The Mentality of Apes, insight, trial and error, Thorndike, puzzle-box experiments, A Whisper of Espionage: Wolfgang Köhler and the Apes of Tenerife
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ronald-ley/a-whisper-of-espionage-wolfgang-kohler-and-the-/ This is the website where I found information about the book I mentioned about Köhler being a spy, including a review.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/wolfgangkohler.html This website had a great deal of information on his biography and research; it was very useful and provided facts and details that the textbook did not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_K%C3%B6hler Wikipedia always has a lot of information on people, but Köhler does not have a lot of early life information out there. However, it provided good information on Gestalt and the ape studies.
Discovered in 1933 by Hedwig Von Restorff, the Von Restorff Effect discusses memory and unique items. The Von Restorff Effect, or also called the Isolation Effect or the Distinctiveness Principle, is all about remembering things that stand out.
Von Restorff conduced a set of memory experiments around isolation and distinctive items, concluding that an isolated item would be remembered than an item in the same relative position in a list of similar items. Meaning, this occurs when someone sees a list of items and remember this item more because it stands out more than the other items. For example, it'd be like seeing a list of animals, but the word baseball being integrated into this list. The word baseball would be remembered easier because it is not similar to the list of animals. However, if the item does not stand out and is not unique, the likelihood of remembering this item drops. Back to the previous example, if the list included the world fur, the word may not be as easy to remember because fur is involved with a majority of the words stated.
In the YouTube video, the Von Restorff Efffect is defined as a "phenomenon of memory in which noticeably different things are more likely to be recalled than common things". This is true, especially in advertising, like the examples in the video. In the video, an iPod commercial is shown. This commercial is three plain colors: a black figure dancing, a solid color background, and a white iPod. The iPod stands out because it constrastes with the other colors; the iPod being the unique item. Meaning, whatever item is standing out against all other items is the item being sold, because the viewer's attention to draw to this item the quickest and will be remembered the most.
A more recent look on this subject was done by Taylor and Friske in 1978, stating that "attention is captured by salient, novel, surprising, or distinctive stimuli". These two believed the unique item held these qualities and enhanced the Von Restorff Effect.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/memory/von_restorff.htm
I used this site to gain most of the information and gain a a basis for the other information needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sct7oUNthas
I used this video to get a more visual of the concept, and also to get examples that would make this topic more understanding.
http://destech.wordpress.com/about-2/the-von-restorff-effect-making-things-stand-out-from-the-background/
This site enhanced the information I already had and filled in some missing information. It also gave a good more previous example of the effect.
Conner Hoyt
I was very interested in the concept of geographical environment and behavioral environment. As it states, due to behavioral environment, we all perceive reality differently and thus act accordingly, which piqued my interest for how blind people perceive the world. According to psychologist, Paul Gabias, who was blinded at birth, blind people perceive things in the exact same way as sighted people, they just receive their information in different ways.
When a person sees and their brain begins the perceiving process, that information goes directly to the visual cortex. When a blind person tries to perceive however, if through touch, that information still goes through the visual cortex but first through the part of the brain that deals with spatial information, the parietal lobe. So even though their visual cortex isn’t being used in its traditional sense, information still travels there and forms a shared partnership with the part of the brain that utilizes spatial information. This goes the same way with people who can use echolocation, the information travels first through the auditory receptor of the brain, to the visual cortex, and then back again. The auditory receptor and the visual cortex work together to make a ‘picture’ for the blind person to see.
So, in the aspect of geographical/behavioral environment, blind people generally act the same way as a sighted person would. The only difference being that their brain perceives in a different way, but with very similar results.
http://www.livescience.com/23709-blind-people-picture-reality.html
This was my main source, where Paul Gabias’ research came
from, his personal experience, and his scientific discoveries
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/case-studies/how-blind-people-see-the-world
this page was basically something to back up my first source, no nothing really to add from this page.