Reading Activity Week #5 (Due Monday)

1) I found that learning more about psychophysics was interesting because it is something that we are learning about in another class. Psychophysics is the study of physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they affect. This is interesting to me because the brain is all electrical singles and this kind of study looks at the association between things like the visual system and how we know that if
something we see is being perceived accurately or not.

2) The section about experimental psychology was interesting; Wilhelm Wundt was the founder of this new type of psychology. He set out to discover a new type of psychology using his background in physiology. Experimental psychology is working with any type of human or animal participant to further the understanding of the field of psychology; one interesting out come from experimental psychology was Pavlov bell findings with the dogs.

3) Hermann Ebbinghaus and his unassociated stimuli were interesting. I enjoyed learning about his work on forgetting and learning how it happens at a rapid rate. If we work with learning and remembering as he says we can better save time and not waste energy relearning something after we forget it. This was interesting and I would love to look more into some of this other thoughts.

4) One thing I did not find interesting in regards to Psychology but would be interesting in an educational sense was the idea of Wissenschaft, this is the idea of freedom in research and original research. For psychology I feel like it is kind of a give in to work freely when doing your own research. It however does sound good with the educational setting to let students a high level of education is free to pressure their own interests like in the college setting allowing students to take any class they want.

5) I think the overall theme of the chapter seems to look at work done in Germany, where we know a lot of psychology took place. I think having a better understand of the people who were behind the works in Germany and what lead to their research will help show us where American psychology and other places though out the world go to the place they are now.

6) This chapter builds on previous chapters by introducing the new ideas such as experimental psychology, this is something that is used a lot and as the previous chapters did they build on a new idea to further our understanding of the next. I can only assume that experimental psychology will be used to build upon the next chapters.

7) I would like to learn more about psychophysics and how we use it today in psychology. I think the understanding of this is going to help me not only understand with other psychology classes but help me understand how the world around me is interrupted as well as how the my mind may view and help me daily.

8) while reading this chapter I thought about how experimental psychology has become what it has today with all the review boards and what changed in society has made it that we need to have these review boards. As well as what the basic start was to experimental psychology and how the first studies got started.

9) Psychophysics, sensations, perceptions, experimental psychology, stimuli, Wissenschaft, Hermann Ebbinghaus, Wilhelm Wundt

Courtney Wiese
Chapter 4

Please read chapter 4. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
Next you will be asked what three things from the chapter that you found interesting?
1a) What did you find interesting? Ernst Weber
1b) Why was it interesting to you? I found Ernst Weber interesting because of his work with physical psychology, or psychophysical. I remember learning about, and demonstrating Weber’s two point threshold. The two point threshold is the point where a person’s perception changes from feeling one point on the skin to feeling two different points. The more sensitive the skin, depending on where on the body, the smaller amount of threshold. The less sensitive the skin, the farther apart the needle points had to be for the person to identify that there were two different points I always found this very cool that at different point on your body you can feel two different points, but at other points you can. I also never thought about the fact that this had to deal with perception, and that all of this related to psychology. The other things I found interesting about Weber was his other contribution to psychology, with Weber’s Law, which dealt with “muscle sense”. (97) People could make more distinct differences in weight when actually using their muscles, rather than with inactive muscles. The just noticeable difference in his theory was kind of confusing to me, but I just found it interesting that so much of Weber’s theory had to do with perception, which I just never thought about before.
2a) What did you find interesting? Gustav Fechner
2b) Why was it interesting to you? Fechner was interesting because his life was crazy! The fact that he had his MD and never practiced medicine is interesting. Why go to all that work and then never practice? Then he did the experiments with afterimages, and stared at the sun too long and damaged his eyesight to badly that he had to sit in the darkness, and due to his blindness and neurosis he was basically and invalid! Also, it’s interesting that he managed to get better and conquer his neurosis, something that is treated with medicine today is pretty cool. In thinking about the sun experiment, I wonder if he knew whether the sun could damage your eyes, or if his experiments taught the rest of the world that staring at the sun can cause eye damage. He was also interesting, because he wanted to disprove materialism. So, he was against the new ideas that science could prove everything.
3a) What did you find interesting? Ebbinghaus
3b) Why was it interesting to you? The creation of nonsense syllables and his way of experimenting with memory. He chose to use serial learning in order to test his memory and association between the nonsense syllables. This was interesting because of the way he made up nonsense syllables to test, I thought this was a pretty ingenious way to test as the “words” aren’t words at all and they have no meaning, making it more difficult to remember. By not having them mean anything, you wouldn’t be able to make associations about them as easily as other words. Some words hold more meaning, and are perhaps easier to remember, for some people over others.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Absolute threshold, difference threshold, and just noticeable difference
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you? I hate math. My brain basically turns off when I see numbers in any way, shape, or form for the most part. So when the text, at the beginning discussed Fechner’s work with thresholds with numbers, my mind just wanted to shut off, push fast forward, and get through the section. However, it was not as bad as I thought, and there wasn’t as much with numbers as my brain feared in the beginning.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? I think this chapter will be useful because you can finally see the emergence of the field of psychology on its own. The convergence occurred between philosophy and physiology. These early developments will lead to greater discoveries later on, as many discoveries are based on earlier psychologists errors.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters? In the discussion of Ebbinghaus, the chapter discussed the British philosophers empiricists theory of association. Ebbinghaus built off of the empiricists ideas of association and Fechner’s “scientific approach to the mind’s sensory process” (115). He thought that if sensations could be measured, so could association. Ebbinghaus brought scientific theory to the empiricists ideas of association.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? Gustav Fechner
7b) Why? I want to learn more about him because his life was so interesting. I would like to learn more about his depression and his neurosis, so basically I would like to learn more about his life. I would also like more information about afterimages, because I think that’s an interesting thing that affects everyone.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter? One thing I noted was that Ebbinghaus in his experiments on memory was that he was the only person he tested. This made me wonder why he didn’t experiment using anyone else. I feel like this was a bias example. He knew what he was testing for, and more than that he also made up the nonsense syllables himself. I feel like it would be easier for him to do the experiment as he made up the experiment himself. I wonder what would have changed if he used other test subjects, I wonder if the results would be different.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post. Ernst Weber, two point threshold, Weber’s Law, psychophysical, Gustav Fechner, materialism, absolute threshold, difference threshold, just noticeable difference (jnd), empiricists, Ebbinghaus, nonsense syllables, serial learning

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the section on Studying Higher Mental Processes was very interesting since it was taking the study of senses to a whole new level. Wundt’s desire to study learning, thinking, language, and the effects of culture sparked my attention since they paved the roads to social psych, anthropology, and forensic psychology; all in which are subjects that are fascinating to me. It was cool to read how Wundt was able to study different cultures and gain a true sense of knowledge of different cultures and languages, both of which are subjects studied today in Psychology and Anthropology.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
The Close-Up section on James Cattell was really cool to read. I liked that it included personal letters sent from him to his parents. It was interesting to me because it gave me a better perspective on what he was going through and gave me more of a personal connection to what he was going through while publishing his work rather than just reading about the work that he published.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found the section on Oswald Kulpe very intriguing. I think that it was rather unorthodox to hear of someone putting in so much effort into their work and studies, yet he published very little work under his own name, preferring to give his students credit. I could tell that he was definitely one of those professors that his students would never forget, and was one that truly cared about creating an enriched learning environment for his students.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
One thing that did not really spark my attention as much was the section on mental chronometry. Between seeing the various equations and different methods this information was hard for me to pay attention to, it kind of reminded me of a math or physics book since it had all of the formulas. I have never been too great at studying formulas/they can be confusing, so it intimidated me a bit.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
This chapter talked a great deal about Wundt’s works and how he is generally known as the founder of experimental psychology. It is useful to note that a lot of what tends to happen in history is that a lot of things happen at once or around the same time, one person’s ideas can inspire something else in another person. Also, because many of these great minds researched alongside each other, they were able to collaborate ideas and experiment.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
The introduction reviews us back from chapter 2 and 3 about how psychology began to emerge from philosophers and European scientists understanding physiology in the nervous system. From this, the chapter builds off of the knowledge of those philosophers and physiologists, which then led to the foundation of modern and experimental psychology.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
7b) Why?
I liked learning that in a time where the University of Gottingen did not award advanced degrees to women, Muller welcomed several notable women psychologists. He was a man ahead of his time in that he recognized that women were competent lab workers. As a woman, this interested me and made me wonder about when women became formally recognized to get advanced degrees and I wondered if Muller ever got in trouble with what he was doing since it was not acceptable during his time.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I found myself asking what it would be like for me as a woman during this time since I am interested in psychology and if I would have been interested during that time since women were unable to be awarded advanced degrees, but then I also wondered when they were able to get degrees and what caused that to happen. I also really liked reading the letters from Cattell since they were so personal and wondered if there was going to be any other personal excerpts like this in the book.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Wundt, Studying higher mental processes, social psychology, anthropology, forensic psychology, James Cattell, Oswald Kulpe, mental chronometry, Muller.

1a) What did you find interesting?
Education in Germany
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found it very interesting that in a 100 year span at least 9000 American students who enrolled at a university in Germany, usually for a medical field would later change to psychology after studying there. I actually lived in Germany for a few years so I know the Germans are a very proud people and it does not surprise me some of the leading researchers in many scientific fields came from this area.
2a) What did you find interesting?
German philosophy known as wissenschaft.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because it roughly translates into “scientific”, and this philosophy encouraged scholars and researchers to take a scientific approach to examinations of nature and to take chances. The professors and researchers were given freedom to pursue and research areas of interest without the fear of the administration coming down on them.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Ernst Weber
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Weber was a brilliant man who studied and taught at one of the most prestigious universities in Germany, the University of Leipzig. One of his most well-known studies is one that can be conducted very easily, this is the two-point threshold. You can simply touch your skin in two places and slowly close the distance until you can only feel one sensation.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
James McKeen Cattell
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
The only part about his section that was interesting to me was that he was the first American to earn a PhD under Wundt, but it just seemed like that was his only claim to fame.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think just reading and learning about all the brilliant German and European researchers and scholars helps to understand where and when all of these studies came from. Many of the most influential people in psychology and physiology were all working in the same area around the same time and gave us many much of the ground work we still use today.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter elaborates more on some of the researchers and scholars from the previous chapters like Johannes Muller, but it also builds on those men and their work by speaking about many of the other influential men in Germany and psychology.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Wilhelm Wundt
7b) Why?
Although he was covered quite a bit in this chapter it was for a good reason. Wundt was the founder of experimental psychology but also studied with and taught some of the greatest names in psychology and physiology.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I spent almost 2 years in Germany while I was in the army and while reading about all these German scholars I got a little sense of nostalgia. Reading about all these men also made me wonder how different my education would have been had I spent a year or more abroad.
Terms: wissenschaft, psychophysics, two-point threshold

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
One thing that I found to be interesting was the method of limit that Fechner established in his laboratory. Basically what the method of limit means is hearing tests that use ascending and descending trials (raising and lowering stimulus) and is recorded what the listener is able to hear. This is the test that is mainly used today, however there are the Method of Constant Stimuli (varying intensities at random times) and Method of Adjustment (varied intensities until there is a threshold). I found this to be interesting because I remember having these done when I was in middle school and high school and could relate and know what the chapter was talking about. I think this was good to know because it allows doctors to know how deaf someone is, and if they are needing hearing assistance or aids. It was also interesting to read about the other two methods because I only thought there was one, it was intriguing to read and compare all three and be able to relate them to myself. I find this theory to still be useful today.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found it to be interesting to learn about the new science from Wundt and bringing the laboratory studies into studying psychology. Although with his studies there were still two different programs associated with new psychology: “immediate” conscious experience (using the Laboratory for experimenting) and higher mental processes (not using the laboratory). I found this to be interesting not that he had the idea of having experiments in the laboratory and having others build off of this idea, but I was astonished that up until Wundt’s time period laboratories were not of an interest to psychologists. I think that laboratories are essential in some cases where the variables need to be in a certain environment to have studies done correctly, but not every experiment does need a laboratory as which is mentioned with the higher mental processes. I do think that the idea of the laboratory in psychology was a huge stepping stone for psychologists and even with Wundt’s new psychology I believe his most important contribution was the experimenting psychology in physiology laboratories.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Another thing that I found to be interesting was a few ideas that Ernst Weber brought to the field. The most interesting thing was Weber’s Law which stated that first in order for the experiment to work the weight had to be lifted (kinesthesis) instead of just held in the hands. Also weights that weighed less were able to be felt a difference at a smaller difference amount rather than much larger weight (33 g – 30 g and 63 g and 60 g). This was a good contribution because I feel that we all already know Weber’s Law by just lifting anything, but to be able to put into factor with heavier weights not feeling more different than lighter weights and how we notice more of a difference by lifting the weight instead of just holding it is not what much people notice when they apply this law to the things that they do. I also liked the two-point threshold. I have noticed this when I would poke myself and feel the tension in my nerves, but I did not think that certain areas of the body were more sensitive to pick up two thresholds more than other areas of the body. I think that was amusing to think that getting poked on the arm you would be able to feel both needles opposed to getting poked in the palm. I think this also ties in with Weber’s law because of talking about the different variables and how the same controls can come up with different results (heavier and lighter weight/ hand sensitivity and arm sensitivity).

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
The thing that I found to be the least interesting was Hermann Ebbinghaus and the nonsense syllables and serial learning. I thought this was not interesting because the experiment had to do with memorizing, but it did not have to do with memorizing anything useful just a bunch of random syllables and differing in length. I think that most people would come to the conclusion that more syllables would be harder to memorize, which also is a reason why I found it to be overall not interesting. Although, even though the whole experiment was not interesting to me, I did find the magic number seven to be interesting and something that I did not know. Also, it can help with studying by picking seven items and studying them. It is an idea worth trying, but if the study were to be more aimed towards ecological memory I think that I would have been more interested to the topic because it would be something that I would want to know due to I am not going to memorize random syllables.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that the most useful thing in this chapter was learning about the laboratories and William Wundt. This is useful because it obviously showed that there were not always laboratories to do psychological research in, but also now that there are laboratories they do not need to be used for every experiment. Sometimes it is better to do experiments in the habitat of the thing that is being experimented on. This is so you get natural results and not any that are biased due to changing the habitat and environment.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter is taking the other chapters and building off of them by bringing in the Wundtian Legacy and taking what he brought to the study of psychology with laboratories and the approaches of “immediate” conscious experience, and higher mental process. An example that this would be tied to and that it build off of is the Lashley experiment with the rats and the mazes. He wanted a controlled experiment examining what would happen to the rats if certain amount of the cortex were to be missing. This ties into with what Wundt brought to psychology because it would be able to be a more controlled experiment in a lab with lab equipment, also it now has a field name which it did not before, “immediate” conscious experience, which just helps build on the field making the experiments more controlled and aimed towards what the psychologists wants to know.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
I would like to know more about the mental chronometry (reaction time). I found this to be interesting and a topic that I would like to know more about due the section about Cattell and Berger. They were the ones that did the experiment with 8 different light intensities and came to a conclusion that the higher light intensity the faster the reaction time. I thought this was interesting and something that I can do research to build off of it because there is other factors that go into reaction time, some examples are temperature, noise in the room, how awake one is, ect. I would like to know what other experiments have been done with reaction time and what the results were, especially for reaction time in warm rooms vs. reaction time in chilly rooms.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
A question that I had is when the chapter was talking about how some of these psychologists were important not because they had the conclusion to the idea that they brought to the field, but they were important because they brought the idea to the field for others to contribute and help with research. I would want to question is how is a new idea determined? What I mean is things can merge into each other and almost seem like the same idea, but where is the line and who determines it? Is there somewhere that states that there are psychologists that are founders to a certain idea, or is it up to the reader and the researcher to decided what they feel like is a new idea and what is just building off of others?

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Wundt, Fechner, new psychology, physiology laboratories, “immediate” conscious experience, higher mental process, method of limits, method of constant stimuli, method of adjustment, Ernst Weber, Two-Point Thresholds, Weber’s Law, Cattell, Berger, mental chronometry

1a) What did you find interesting? b) Why was it interesting to you?

One thing that I found interesting was Ernest Weber. He was interested in vision and hearing. I am interesting in Ernest Weber because he made two major contributions to psychology. One thing he contributed was his ideas surrounding sensitivity of the skin in different areas. The second thing he contributed was his mathematical standpoint on the relationships between the physical and psychological. This is known as the Weber law.

2a) What did you find interesting? b) Why was it interesting to you?

I thought it was interesting how most of the chapter discussed Wilhelm Wundt. I thought this was interesting because I have never heard of him before and hearing about his discoveries made me want to learn more about him. I thought he was interesting because he is the founder of experimental psychology. As well as, Wundt was the first to have controlled research laboratories for his studies.

3a) What did you find interesting?
b) Why was it interesting to you?
One thing I found interesting was Psychophysics. I found this concept interesting because the idea originated with Ernest Weber and later became better familiar with Gustav Fechner. Psychophysics is defined as the study of the connection between perception of a stimulus and the physical size of the stimulus being perceived. The idea of psychophysics sparked Weber’s idea of Weber’s Law.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?

One thing I did not find interesting was Two-point threshold. I didn’t find his interesting because I didn’t understand the concept fully. It was hard to follow what the text was trying to say when it was explaining it. It was hard to be interested in Two-point threshold because I didn’t understand what the textbook was trying to say.

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

I think reading about Ernst Weber and his ideas surrounding Psychophysics will be the most useful to my understanding of the history of psychology. I think that Ernst Weber and his ideas will help my understanding of the history of psychology because he was the first to discover Psychophysics. He also had two major contributions to vision and hearing in his time. Without Weber’s contributions where would we be today?

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

This Chapter has build on other chapters because history is consistently being built on. For example, Wundt’s ideas have been built on in the last 30 years. Without his original ideas we wouldn’t be where we are today. This chapter built off of the other chapters previously discussed because senses were talked about in reference to vision and hearing. As well as vision and hearing, this chapter discussed perception and the different experiments done with the idea of perception and how people perceive different senses.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? b) Why?

I would like to learn more about Ebbinghaus’s memory project and his ideas on memory. As well as his ideas on memory, I would like to learn more about remote associations and memory because I think memory is fascinating. I think I could learn a lot of memory and association from Ebbinghaus and his memory project.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

I thought about how much history are ideas that have been built on each other. Where will we be in 50 years? How much will have changed? Will they look back and ask themselves what we were thinking? Will technology be anymore advanced as it is now? Or will it be at a standstill? How much does the history of psychology affect our psychology now? Where would we be without Wundt and his ideas?

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Terms: Wilhelm Wundt, remote association, Ebbinghaus, memory project, vision and hearing, perception, Ernst Weber, Gustav Fechner, Psychophysics, experimental psychology, two-point threshold, and Weber’s law

1a) What did you find interesting?
I actually found Weber’s law to be fairly interesting

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
It was interesting to me, because he wanted to verify psychology as a science, so he figured out a way to do so and then he did it. He understood that science needs to have something to be measured, so he looked at threshold research. In doing so, he also showed that physical and psychological events can be related mathematically, which is pretty cool in itself.
2a) What did you find interesting? 

I was kind of interested in the way they measured reaction time.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
It was interesting because they tried to set up experiments and methods to account for everything, but this is before any other experiments of this type, so it was incredibly hard to structure an experiment that could record reaction times correctly. You can see they tried to set everything up correctly by factoring in discrimination time, and choice time. They had perfectly good reason to believe in the subtractive method where you could just subtract the time of making the decision to find the simple reaction time. It was also interesting to read the alterations they made to try to avoid over simplistic thinking and more empirically record reaction times.
3a) What did you find interesting?

The Wurzburg research was pretty interesting.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I liked reading about mental sets and how that would completely change the way people would think about reaction times. I was more interested in reading about imageless thought. This was fascinating because Titchener thought everything could be broken down into basic elements, but this concept of imageless thought kind of shattered his views. I also thought it was neat seeing how this was brought up and how it would play into behaviorism.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 

Everything is interesting if it can be related to the particular topic that I’m interested in, but I was least interested by the history and dates between all of the schools of thought and experiments.
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
It just wasn’t too interesting to read about why people came to study elsewhere or how many people chose to do so. I’m more interested in what they went there to study.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think reading about imageless thoughts and their paving the way for behaviorism might actually be the most useful to my understanding of the history of psychology. I was able to understand the initial confusion of the time and I can do my best to imagine how behaviorism managed to step in and offer a solution. I just thought it was neat seeing the foundation for an entire school of thought.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
We looked more into reaction time, which kind of builds off of the reflexes that we’ve looked at for the past two chapters. I also got to see more about people studying similar things at similar times. Wundt and Kulpe differed in perspective and that set a fork for two different schools of thought. The way people disagree and build off each other due to the way of thinking in the time is related back to the zeitgeist.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 

I guess I’d like to know a little more about Weber’s law.
7b) Why?
I just think it’s one of the more interesting things in the chapter. I would like to know a little more about the state of mind he was in when he decided to go about researching it and what influenced this thought process along the way.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
I was thinking about what issue it is that I would be so interested in in the future that I would want to research it for graduate school. I wonder if I will have a field that I make actual contributions to.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Weber’s law, subtractive method, discrimination time, choice time, simple reaction time, imageless thought, Wurzburg research, behaviorism, zeitgeist

1a) I found the topic concerning Weber’s findings of the two-point threshold to be interesting from this chapter.

1b) This topic was interesting first because of its simplicity and easiness to understand. There weren’t difficult definitions to understand before being able to relate to the topic. Second, it was interesting to read about because the human body’s ability to sense and perceive things is just amazing. I found it interesting that the sensitivity of the human are increases the closer to the fingers you go. This is for obvious reasons of course, the finger tips are used for so many intricate tasks. They need to be the most sensitive. We wouldn’t be able to use touch-screens on our phones if the sensitivity of our fingers was that of what our upper arm is.

2a) The second thing I found interesting, again had to do with a contribution of Weber to the research field. Weber’s law states that as an object becomes heavier, the difference between it and the comparison weight must be greater in order to tell the difference between them.

2b) The reason why this law dealing with kinesthesis was interesting to me had to do with how we as humans are not very accurate in determining things. We have this notion that we are fairly intelligent. I would agree to some extent. However, there are shortcomings to our abilities. I just think its crazy that we have advanced as a species to the point where we have discovered crazy findings, we can perform the most intricate surgeries, yet our senses are not accurate enough to make an accurate judgment of the weight we hold in both hands.

3a) The third thing I found of interesting in this chapter has to do with mental sets and imageless thought. These concepts were presented by Wurzburg.

3b) The reason I think these concepts are so interesting is because the researchers of the time were trying to answer some of the same questions that we are still trying to answer today. The idea that the reaction time to different thoughts is determined by mental sets. Basically if an idea or concept is presented to an individual, the reaction time to the same scenario will be quicker in the future because they are already familiar with it. The second concept behind Wurzburg’s ideas was the thought that behind every mental process is an image of some form. The chapter explained it as the idea that if someone lifted an object, the next time they lift a different object they would know roughly how heavy it was because they compared it to the mental image they had of the last object they picked up. The chapter states that this concept was very controversial, and for good reason. However, it was still interesting to see how far we’ve come in the study of the human perception and reaction to outside stimuli.

4a) Learning about Wundt’s ideas of introspection and internal perception were not overly fun to read about.

4b) I guess reading about the methods he used to try and measure these two concepts was pretty dry. There was just too many other interesting topics in the chapter that caught my eye as I read.

5) To be honest, Wundt’s ideas and methods to measuring reaction times etc. will probably be the most important concept to understanding the history of psychology from this chapter. While in the previous question I stated how dry it was to read, doesn’t mean that it is not important. We still study this subject today. Understanding how the ideas of this topic were researched early on and how the studies were conducted is definitely important to modern psychology.

6) It builds off of previous chapters because it talked about topics that built of previous ones already talked about. We learned about nerves and which parts of the brain control which functions before we started talking about concepts of reaction time to certain stimuli. Also, the chapters continue to build off of each other in a chronological ways as well.

7a) I would be interested to learn more about Ebbinghaus’ idea of serial learning.

7b) I have no in depth reason for wanting to learn more about this topic except for the fact that it seemed a little absurd. This type of ‘out-there’ ideas would be fun to learn about just to see what those who came up with such ideas were thinking at the time.

8) I really thought a lot about how are reactions to different scenarios can be effected by so many different factors. I have very limited knowledge on the subject, however I think it would have been a great time of life to be a researcher on this idea during the time period that was discussed in this chapter. It was the big subject of the day. How neat it would have been to contribute to their ideas and concepts. Also, I thought of where we are at today in studying perception and reaction times. The technology we have to measure this is so much more advanced than they had at the time of their research.

9) Terms: two-point threshold, intricate, Weber’s law, kinesthesis, mental sets, imageless thought, controversial, stimuli, internal perception, introspection, chronological, serial learning.

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
The first topic that I read about in this chapter that I found interesting was the topic on psychophysics. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. In easier terms, psychophysics is basically the study of how we think something is going to feel versus how it actually does feel. I find this topic to be interesting because it combines a lot of elements from psychology along with some from physiology. It is very easy to relate to this type of event because everyone has had those moments where something happens and we think “that’s it? I thought it was going to hurt more than that.” I know from experience that one time a trainer cut off some of my skin on the back of my knee while he was trying to take tape off. During the moment I wasn’t in a huge amount of pain, but thinking back on it, I sometimes wonder why because I think that it would hurt so much more than it did. Sometimes we think something will feel worse than what it actually does. I think that this type of idea also works with other feelings such as joy. I know there are times when I also think “I thought that was going to be more fun, or feel better, that what it did.” These types of examples make psychophysics sound very interesting to me and I would be curious to learn more about it.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
The second tope in this chapter than I found interesting was Ernst Weber. Ernst Weber was a physiologist that made important contributions to the growing fields of psychophysics, psychology, and physiology. Not only did Ernst Weber interest me, but his work and his findings did too. Weber made two very important discoveries; both of which caught my attention and are also important findings for his time period. The first of these findings is called the two-point threshold. This discovery showed where, on the human body, perception changes from feeling “one” point to being able to feel “two” distinct points. I thought this finding was so interesting to think about because it shows where the sensitive places on a human body are. I also thought this was cool because it’s something everyone can test out by themselves if they are bored, but seeing if they can feel two close points on their arm. The second interesting discovery that Weber made was his own law. In this law, Weber focused on the human muscles, using what we call kinesthesis today. (I also find it interesting learning about the ideas that were discovered back then, that we still use today, and how these geniuses came up with them.) Weber’s law deals with thresholds and the extent to which human muscles can sense a difference in weight, or other stimulus. I thought this was interesting because I have always thought that the human body was fun to learn about and now being able to compare it to psychology and how we react to different types of stimulus and the levels we react at is really relatable to what I enjoy learning about.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
The third topic that I found interesting to learn about in this chapter was James McKeen Cattell. James Cattell caught my attention in this chapter because the chapter was mainly about the influence German psychologists had on the history and science of psychology, but Cattell was American. I think that it definitely shows how much of an impact Cattell made to get a special mention in this chapter. Cattell started his career in America, before going overseas to study in Germany. He was the first American to earn a PhD from Leipzig in experimental psychology. Cattell worked mainly with reaction time, which I also find to be an interesting subject. I thought it was funny how, in the chapter, it showed sections from letters Cattell wrote to his parents. These letters contained writings that Cattell hoped would convince his parents that the work he was doing was important. I find this funny because I feel that every child wants their parents to be proud of the work they do and see the importance of what they are doing, and this is the same for even the most prestigious of psychologists. He also tried to make his parents worry less by trying to convince them that only a few hours of the day in his lab were spent working on things that would be making him tired or stressed. This is another thing most all children do, is try to make their parents less worrisome. Overall, I think James Cattell would have been an interesting person to meet and talk to.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
The information I found least interesting in this chapter was about Fechner. For some reason, Gustav Fechner did not capture my attention the way other people, like Weber, Cattell, and Wundt, did throughout this chapter. While reading about Fechner and his work, I could not keep focused. The beginning of the information about him I did not find interesting. I was not interested in his life, and I think that the section about him actually focused more on where he came from rather than what impact he had on psychology. While I did not find the information about any of the men’s schooling interesting in this chapter, I found that the information about Fechner dragged on a little longer than the rest, therefore making his story a little less interesting. I thought that the book could have done a better job of explaining the importance of the work the Fechner did, rather than focus on what school he attended.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
Throughout the whole chapter, I kept finding pieces of information that I thought would best answer this question. It was then that I realized that all of these pieces that I found most useful to understanding the history of psychology all stemmed from one common person: William Wundt. Now, it makes sense that in the chapter on William Wundt would have the most useful information about the history of psychology related to this man. One of the most important pieces of useful information would have to be that Wundt founded experimental psychology. Without this discovery, psychology would be very different today, if it even still existed. The second thing that is important to understanding the history of psychology, is how much of an influence Wundt had at the level of written work. Wundt wrote 53,735 papers in his lifetime, all of which helped psychology reach where it is at today. Without Wundt writing down these ideas and findings, we would have had a lot less information. Just as important as what Wundt did discover, was what he didn’t, or what he got wrong. Without people challenging Wundt’s ideas and findings, the science of psychology would never have made the progress that it did. If everyone just accepted other people’s ideas, we would never finally end up with the correct information and we would always be thinking the wrong thing, which in the end benefits no one. Therefore, Wundt contributed to psychology also by creating people that thought more about his work and double checked it, either to support it or prove it wrong. I think that this kind of movement is crucial in the history of a science, especially one like psychology.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter related to previous chapters that we have read in a couple different ways. The first way is how the chapter deals with physiology. In fact, William Wundt referred to his new psychology as “physiological psychology” instead of “experimental psychology.” This is because much of his work, and others work that dealt with experimental psychology, focused on how the body functions with the mind. Therefore, this chapter also dealt with aspects of philosophy as well. Many of the ideas that were being brought up in the early ages stemmed from philosophical ideas that people wished to experiment with and be able to measure. Another term discussed in this chapter that came from previous ones is the idea of materialism. Like physiology and philosophy, materialism was an idea that sparked a lot of interest in early physiologists/psychologists. Gustav Fechner, in fact, was one man that was set on disproving this theory. The last term related to previous chapters that also related to chapter 4 was Edwin Boring. Edwin Boring made huge strides in the science of psychology, so it was no shock that he is a reoccurring theme in this book.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
One random topic at the beginning of the chapter interested me enough that I would like to learn more about it. This topic was the German idea of Wissenschaft. In English, this word translates roughly to “scientific,” meaning that a more scientific approach to the approach of the examination of nature. This was encouraged by philosophy for all scholars, including professors being able to pursue their own research without having to go through administration. Along with this idea, students were able to wander from one university to another and earning a degree was the result of defending their research rather than passing specific curriculum. I find this idea to be so cool, because it really promotes learning in a new way. It persuades students to look outside the norm and really expand their way of thinking to discover new things. I agree completely with this style of teaching because I feel like in today’s schools, a lot of the lessons we learn are just to remember information just long enough to spit it back out on the next test. While I believe that a base knowledge is important for everyone to know, I think that challenging people to find out new information is definitely better for the student and also furthers the economy as well. I would be interested to see what counties still carry this Wissenschaft way of teaching, especially in America.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
There were a couple different things that popped into my head while reading this chapter. I have come to realize, from answering this question for every chapter, that I tend to try to make personal connections to the reading and relate it to myself. This was no different this week. The first topic I thought a little differently about was when it was said that William Wundt published 53,735 pages in his lifetime, which is an average of about 2.2 pages a day. I find this incredible and I starting thinking about how much I have read in a life time and wondering if it would match up to that. Along with that, I also thought about how much I have written and how it would compare. I think it would be interesting to compare different psychologists and how much they have all published. The second thing I thought about was mental chronometry, or reaction time. I have always found reaction time interesting because I am interested in drag racing and seeing how fast some people react to the green light compared to others in fun to watch for me. I remember playing a game when I was younger that would test my reaction time and it was always fun to try to get it better. I think studying people’s reaction times to different stimuli would be a very interesting thing to do. Lastly, I found interesting that made me think of this class was the talk about serial learning and Hermann Ebbinghaus. In this class we are taught not to write our topical blogs in a serial style, so I was thinking about that while reading about Ebbinghaus’s work with serial learning.

Terms: psychophysics, stimulus, perception, Ernst Weber, Weber’s law, two-point threshold, James Cattell, experimental psychology, Gustav Fechner, William Wundt, materialism, philosophy, physiology, materialism, Edwin Boring, Wissenschaft, mental chronometry, serial learning, Hermann Ebbinghaus

1a) What did you find interesting? Teachings in Germany

1b) Why was it interesting to you? A lot of teachings about psychology come from Germany. I thought it would have come from England like a lot of things do that are about the field of psychology. A lot of the men studying psychology have brought a lot of information to the world of psychology and we have focused a lot of our studies on their findings and what they have contributed.

2a) What did you find interesting? Wundt – Self-observation v. Internal perception

2b) Why was it interesting to you? A question that was brought to my mind while reading this section was how can two words be blurred together when they have only so little in common? This is interesting because self-observation is supposed to be based upon and relied on faulty memory rather than internal perception that is based on narrower processes of the immediate responding of controlled stimuli.

3a) What did you find interesting? The Memory Drum

3b) Why was it interesting to you? The memory drum was quite interesting to me because it is one of the inventions that help us understand more about memory and stimuli. It just caught my attention when reading about Muller. He was one man who did a lot for the field.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Everything and anything about numbers was quite hard to understand.

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you? I do not find anything with numbers and formulas easy to understand. I was never a great student in the math subject hence why I am a criminal justice major and not majoring in the math department. When I read about the different laws and I began to see numbers I automatically wanted to skip right over that section because it had no meaning or interest to me and my personal life.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? I think that because the chapter is so focused on the men who gave life to psychology, like Weber and Wundt, will be helpful to me because after reading this I can relate these men to the men and women who study psychology here in America today and it can help me understand where they came from and what their research had done for the advancement of the world of psychology today.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters? Chapter four relates to the previous chapters in a few ways. It gives us an insight on more people who have influenced the world of psychology and also has built on the last chapter and introducing new ideas to psychology. This chapter gives us a bigger heads up on the experimental psychology unlike the last chapter.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? The Memory Drum

7b) Why? I thought the memory drum was pretty interesting and I would like to learn more about it and how it affected the people using it. It only really talks about what it does, but not how the people reacted to it. So I think that would be an interesting topic to do further research on.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter? I really did not have that much going on in my mind while reading this chapter besides, is it over yet? Nothing really sparked my attention and caught my eye; I could not relate any of this to a personal level with myself. It all kind of went through my brain and exited as I saw the words. I do not think a lot stuck in my mind from this chapter.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Self- observation, Internal Perception, Weber, Wundt, Stimuli, Memory Drum

Next you will be asked what three things from the chapter that you found interesting?
1a) What did you find interesting?
Growing education in Germany.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought that this was an interesting section because it taught me something new that I did not know about. During the 19th century, many people flocked to Germany because of the growing education that was going on there and they wanted to be a part of that. There was around a total of 9,000 American students that wanted to be part of the German school and they were able to do that, so off they went to Germany. I think that is great part of history to see because there are so many other students who today go to other countries because they are able to expand their knowledge in that country. Another thing that I found interesting in this section is that many who started at the German universities were either studying medicine or a science, but by the end of the century there were many who were studying psychology.
2a) What did you find interesting?
Weber’s Law.

2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I liked this section because I remember learning this back in high school and it brought back what I had learned. It shows the ‘just noticeable difference (JND)’ from stimulus A to stimulus B will be constant. This was a major advancement in the growing world of perceptions. An example of this is if there are two large bottles of water on the table we make an estimate of how do those bottles of water weigh. Ernest Weber was a stepping stone with this new idea.
3a) What did you find interesting?
Hermann Ebbinghaus

3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I was interested in his ideas of memory. He used the nonsense syllabus to memorize things further. His ideas on serial learning was also interesting because the mind is always trying to build on what is already known, and how to be to remember it all once it is in the mind to keep.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Mental Chronometry

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I was least interested in this section because there was a lot of math and I am not a math person at all. It all was just to0 confusing to me and hard to grasp the full concept.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that the section on memory was very important. The mind is so complex and for someone to take on the task of understanding how memory works in so important. From there we learned about long and short term memories.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds onto the previous chapters. The previous chapters were about people mainly and in this chapter it is focusing on the ideas that these people came across. This chapter can also build onto future chapters because we will learn more about the advancements in these ideas.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Hermann Ebbinghaus

7b) Why?
I really like learning about memory and I would like to see more of his ideas then what was listed in the book.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
In the beginning of the chapter when reading about the education in Germany, there were many students that traveled from the US to Germany for an education. I wondered did they learn more than what they would have if they were living in the US and attending school?
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Weber’s Law.
just noticeable difference (JND)
Ernest Weber
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Nonsense syllabus
Serial learning
Mental Chronometry

1a) What did you find interesting?

I found Hermann Ebbinghaus interesting.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?

I thought the way Ebbinghaus studied memory was interesting. I thought the time he spent on it showed real dedication. I like how by reading about him, I could tell how dedicated he was not only by the time he spent on his research but also what he suffered while doing his research, such as headaches and exhaustion. I would personally find it annoying to memorize lists 60+ times.

2a) What did you find interesting?

I also thought Oswald Kulpe was interesting.

2b) Why was it interesting to you?

The main reason I liked reading about Oswald Kulpe was because I liked that he let the findings that happened in his lab be associated with the students. I also liked that he wanted to challenge his mentor, Wundt, on what could be studied in the laboratory.

3a) What did you find interesting?

I also found Gustav Fechner interesting to read about.

3b) Why was it interesting to you?

I found Fechner interesting because of the way he bounced back after his eye incident. It is also evident that Gustav Fechner was dedicated to his work from the way he risked his eyesight. I think it is crazy that he suffered from depression and anxiety from losing his eyesight. I also think it is even crazier that he was able to regain control over his life after his vision started coming back.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?

I found the mental chronometry section uninteresting.

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
This was not interesting to me because it was a little hard for me to understand. I did not completely understand the equations involving the DRT, SRT, and the CRT. It was also hard for me to find the importance in the reading.

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

I think all of the information on Wundt was the most useful information in this section. I think it was the most useful because it seems that a lot of other researcher’s findings came from what he started. Wundt researched numerous things and wrote numerous books throughout his lifetime. After reading this chapter, it seems to me like Wundt was one of the most influential Psychologists of his time.

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

This chapter adds more to my knowledge of the history of Psychology. It is hard to see how one chapter relates to the next though since each chapter is new information. This chapter built on the last chapter because it talked about the new science, which is the science of Psychology.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?

I would like to learn more about the labs of the Psychologist’s mentioned in this chapter.

7b) Why?

I would be interested in learning more about them because I would like to know what they looked like and the environment that the researchers worked in. This chapter touched on the laboratories a little bit but I still think it would be interesting to know a little more, especially about what the environment of the laboratories were like.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?

I thought about my life when I was reading about apperception. Most of the time, when I am doing my homework, I listen to music as well. Wundt would say that the music I am listening to is being apprehended but not apperceived. I thought the idea of apperception was interesting because I could relate that to most things in my life, even the dog example that they gave.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Herman Ebbinghaus, Memory, Oswald Kulpe, Wundt, Gustav Fechner, Mental chronometry, DRT, SRT, CRT, Apperception, Apperceived

1a) I found psychophysics interesting
1b) I found this interesting because I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. What was fascinating was that Ernst Weber came up with all of these ideas but the main one that stands out to me is kinesthesis which is muscle sense. I didn’t know that all of this had to do with psychology so I find it very interesting.
2a)Mental Chronometry was interesting
2b) I found this interesting because it is actually now called reaction time and it talks about in this section how Wundt became Helmholtz’s assistant after the nerve impulse studies and they became interested in measuring mental speed which also refers to as reaction time.
3a) I liked the section about Wilhelm Wundt
3b) It shows how he has changed. He has rediscoveries, who the real Wundt is, and there’s a Wundtian Legacy. Wundt is the known as the first experimental psychologist of the more modern era. Psychology got a lot of its motivation from Wundt’s ideas and examples.
4a) I didn’t find anything the least interesting.
4b) I found everything from this chapter interesting.
5) I think the section on Wilhelm Wundt will be the most useful for history and systems because he has a more modern approach and his ideas are easier to understanding then most older psychologists.
6) In the first chapter it was talked about how history has and is being rewritten because of new technology and all of the new information that we gather. This is relating to the idea that Wundt is becoming new and improved and in chapter four it is talking about what we knew before about Wundt and what we know now because of new information we are interpreting.
7a) I would like to learn more about The Wurzburg School.
7b) I would like to learn more because I don’t have a lot of information about this topic.
8) When reading this chapter I was thinking about what I already knew about Wundt and him being an experimental psychologist but I didn’t know that he was “rediscovered”.
9) experimental psychology, Wurzburg school, interpreting, Wundtian legacy, Wilhelm Wundt, measuring mental speed (reaction time), nerve impulse studies, Helmholtz’s, Mental Chronometry, kinesthesis, Ernst Weber, stimulus, psychophysics.

1a) I found it interesting when the author talked about the misconceptions of Wundt.
1b) It is a perfect example about the idea that history changes as new information is found or reanalyzed. It makes me wonder how many psychologists where a little shocked by the reanalysis of Wundt's life.

2a) Although talked about briefly, the allied bomber that destroyed Wundt's new laboratory during WWII.
2b) As a historian in training, I like to look at this and wonder, did the war (specifically WWI when he wasn't retired)effect his work at all. And if it did, how so? It would definitely be something for me to look into.

3a) The life of Wundt was the last thing I found interesting.
3b) Although he wasn't the main topic the whole chapter, I really enjoyed learning about his life. I remember in high school learning about the founders of psychology, and was never exposed to anything other than a sentence explaining their main contribution to the discipline.

4a) I didn't find the data on reaction time very interesting.
4b) If I felt like it would effect my interest in the man named Wundt even more, than maybe I would have enjoyed learning about the intricate details of it all. However, it was a good "case study" example to illustrate how the "official" first experiments in psychology played out.

5. I think understanding the frame work of how psychology officially broke off from philosophy would be a good thing to know. In high school (again) we never got into too much detail of what happened before Psychology was considered a separate discipline.

6. Once again, going back to the idea that you need to be weary of historians writing during their own time with their own agendas and biases. Even if unintentional, what an historian puts down on paper could have lasting impressions on the unprepared minds of newbie history readers. This definitely relates to the first chapter.

7a&b) I would love to learn more about how the separation of philosophy and psychology were affected by the first world war. Since, after all, Germany played a vital part during this time frame.

8. I would have to go with the same comment made by the student above me. I really got a lot out of reading about Wundt. It pretty much made my night. It was a story of a man that had a lot to say; and thanks to him saying it, we now have Psychology!

9. Reaction Time, Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig Laboratory, interpretation

1a) What did you find interesting? The two point threshold
1b) Why was it interesting to you? I thought it was very interesting because it is something we did in my ap psych class. We learned about how far away two points can be before they can be felt because of sensitivity. Again I think anything about sensation is interesting so learning which parts of the body are sensitive enough for recognition is interesting. This is also linked to muscle movement and being able to tell which weighs more based on lifting rather than simply holding.
2a) What did you find interesting? Wundts new psychology
2b) Why was it interesting to you? I found his two new programs: conscious experience using experiments in labs and higher mental processes interesting. The conscious experiment uses introspection and internal perception. Self observation is used for introspection and then a narrower process of responding to controlled stimuli using internal perception.
3a) What did you find interesting? The phenomena of apperception
3b) Why was it interesting to you? This is to focus all of one’s attention on something and have full clarity of the issue. This is used all the time even in reading the book in order to comprehend what is being said even with distractions. Reading for example we view it and know even the letters and know what the word means then put the words together to continue understanding.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? The Wurzburg school
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you? While many important things took place in the labs there I found it tedious to learn about and was unable to focus on it.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Most learning about the thresholds and the new way that these scientists especially wundt started learning about mental processes.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters? It continues to talk about the rise and fall of the ideas in psychology and different process that occur not only in thought process but in sensation.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? The findings of the threshold
7b) Why? I would like to know why they were even researched along with what knowing the sensitive areas of your body can do.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter? What kind of experiences did Wundt like to learn most about? And what can scientists learn from him today about how everything doesn’t need to be taught in a lab?
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post. Introspection, internal perception, thresholds, two point threshold, apperception, conscious attitudes

1a) What did you find interesting?
Work of Ernst Weber

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Ernst Weber’s work very. One of his experiments was the two point threshold, which is the point where a person’s perception changes from feeling one point on the skin to feeling two different points. The more sensitive the skin, the smaller the threshold. The less sensitive the skin, the farther apart the needle points had to be for the person to identify that there were two different points, so higher threshold. The relation to psychology is pretty clear, perception is what is studied, and psychology has a lot to with perception. Another of Webers experiments/theory was muscle sense. When weights were placed in the hands of subjects they could make more distinct differences in weight when actually using their muscles, rather than with inactive muscles.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Gustav Fechner

2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found Fechner to be an entertaining guy, and completely bonkers. He did the experiments with afterimages, and stared at the sun too long and damaged his eyesight, to the point where he went blind. Amazingly he regained his eyesight. Also, it’s interesting that he managed to overcome neurosis, without any medication, not that there was any available for that specific purpose during his time. Those are really the main reasons I found him interesting. No one ever knew or said that staring at the sun would damage your eyesight, but Fechner just went for it and now I guess we can officially say staring at the sun is bad.

3a) What did you find interesting?
Unassociated stimuli

3b) Why was it interesting to you?
This appealed to me because Hermann Ebbinghaus worked on forgetting and learning how it happens at a rapid rate. It appealed to me because I tend to forget, all the time, I always wondered if it really is normal or if the super glue is drying out around my seams. I think if we were able to completely understand “forgetting” it would cut the learning curve in half. We would not have to study, relearn subjects, and so on.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Mental Chronometry

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Mathematics make me cry.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
Memory definitely. Memory has come up a lot in the recent chapters, and every time it comes up that Is what I put for this answer. If we understand the mind we could open the door to so many different areas of study, remember, forgetting, everybody would be a genius and we would all get on each other’s nerves.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
We keep getting introduced to new characters from history and their overall contribution to the study of psychology. Memory or different aspects of it like forgetting, remembering, focus, and what not, keep coming up in just about every chapter. Since psychology is mainly the study of the mind, it kind of makes sense.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Forgetting

7b) Why?
I forget. As I stated earlier, if we can overcome or understand forgetting we could accomplish so many different things.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
Gustav Fechner. The guy is crazy, blind for a bit, an experimenter, and that makes his a psychologist. I find that pretty awesome.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Sensations, perceptions, stimuli, weber’s law, ernest weber, threshold, Fechner, mental chronometry, muscle sense, ebbinghaus.

1a) Wilhelm Wundt

1b) I found Wundt interesting because of the impact he made on the psychology we know and love today. Before Wundt left his mark psychology was not looked at like a science, it was more of a way of thinking instead. Wundt changed how we look at and our process in psychology with one of his most famous books “Contributions to a Theory of Sensory Perception”. This grabbed my attention because like the book said, this was the first time he associated himself publicly as an emerging experimental psychologist. I always knew that psychology wasn’t strictly an experimental approach, but I didn’t realize that in the grand scheme of things, that it took a while for someone to make a significant impression for going to an experimental approach. He started the “New Psychology”, which we now know as just psychology, he wanted to get the results from common psychological questions by using only the experimental approach. I found this guy so interesting because I love to find out how certain things came to be and what the people of the day were thinking about, Wundt filled that perfectly. He had a thought to answer these questions people were asking, and test them that is just so cool! We think that is such a simple thing to do because that’s all we have done, but really, it was a huge leap for the field of psychology to be thought of as a science.

2a) Nonsense Syllables

2b) This was very interesting to me because, I like to think that everyone has the ability to have a good memory, and I think people fall back on not having a good memory when they make mistakes. The way Ebbinghaus started his memorization study was interesting to me, I thought as a rough guess you would test people using a series of real words and see how much they remember. That is where this section really intrigued me, Ebbinhaus decided to not use words because they have too much of a meaning to people and will be able to associate the words with something, making it easier to remember. So what he decided was to make a series of 3 letter “words” that had 2 consonants on the outside with a vowel in the middle. He made a bunch of these words, about 2300 of them; he called them nonsense syllables, or CVCs. With doing that he made his approach to studying memory serial learning, the results of his CVC test was that the memory of each patient would steadily go down with each passing day or week. This part wasn’t surprising to me, because it happens with everything we learn, if we don’t have constant interaction with it, our knowledge will go down of that subject steadily. I just was really interested in how Ebbinghaus thought of and executed his experiment, it really was something I have never heard of before, I do wish we would have knowledge on how he came to his idea to use the CVCs, I would have loved to know what led him to this amazing discovery and process.

3a) Weber’s Law

3b) I was interested in Weber’s Law because knowing how our nerves and muscles get different sensations and our brain can interpret those sensations. I really was interested in the just noticeable difference (jnd), I never really thought about it extensively how we can’t tell the difference in weights until they pass a certain weight relative to the lower weight. I also thought this element was common knowledge, but I understand why they tested it, when the book was saying Weber would just lay his hands on the table and put weights on them and he couldn’t tell a difference in weight, until they lifted it then they felt it. I am falling victim to presentist thinking, but I do understand why they tried testing it that way, they wanted to see if the muscles or tendons in your hand could feel the weight. I was just interested in it because of how he thought about doing this experiment, I would never have thought this could be a psychological question, and that you can figure it out mathematically.

4a) Studying Higher Mental Processes

4b) I wasn’t that interested in this section, I was having a hard time getting into it, I felt as if it was kind of dragging on and I couldn’t concentrate on it as well as other sections.

5) I think the section about creating a new Psychology, going towards an experimental approach is the most useful for the history of psychology. I think it is because that is how we look at psych now. We don’t take any answer as fact until it is tested and retested.

6) This chapter builds on previous chapters in the sense that what Weber was doing was an extension of figuring out the nervous system and how it is connected to the brain. This chapter builds on the previous ones also by finding that we have a physical brain, instead of it being thought of as an empty space that is controlled by animal spirits.

7a) I would like to know more about Wilhelm Wundt

7b) I think he has many more cool contributions to the field of psychology besides the ones that were mentioned in the chapter, and I would like to know what those are.

8) I had two questions keep popping up in my head while reading the chapter, one of them was: How did they think of testing this topic? Then also, Were they the only ones that have thought about this, or were there other people thinking the same things, just didn’t get their study out first?

9) Wilhelm Wundt, Weber, Just noticeable difference, nonsense syllables, Weber’s Law, Ebbinghaus

1a) & 1b)
I found it interesting that students back then did not have to meet requirements of a specific curriculum but rather could wander from university to university taking exams and defending research in order to earn a degree. Another thing I found interesting was how many of the experiments in the past were done on the researcher themselves, versus having participants.
It was also interesting to read about Fechner damaging his eyesight as a result of all of the experimentation he was doing. Everyone took risks back then and were all so dedicated to their studies. Lastly, it was interesting to me how Fechner and Helmholtz shared so many similarities such as connections allowing them to begin their medical studies and their work with Johannes Muller.

2a) & 2b)
It seems like the field owes a lot to Wundt. He dug deeper than what most people were doing at the time and started thinking about mental processes in terms of areas such as learning, thinking, language and cultural effects. I’ve always been interested in the nature vs. nurture debate so reading about his theory of understanding the evolution of mental processes was neat. The chapter discussed how a lot of basic knowledge concerning sensory systems we learn about today regards research which was done in Wundt’s lab which is crazy to me that such great ideas were developed there and are continued today. Another issue the book brought up which I found interesting, especially knowing what we do about Wundt now is the fact that without this new increasing interest in experimental study and rising cognitive psychology, we wouldn’t have decided to reexamine Wundt and all he did.

3a) & 3b)
I’m very interested in memory so I really enjoyed when the book discussed things like retroactive inhibition, the theory of forgetting and Muller’s association with memory study. The memory drum was a cool invention as we didn’t have computers back then. It was cool how even though the University of Gottingen didn’t award women advanced degrees that Muller allowed many of them into his laboratory.Crazy that a lot of peoples work never got well known or popular because it couldn’t be translated into english.

4a) & 4b)
I had a really difficult time trying to decide what was the least interesting so here are a few examples of some sections that I had difficulty understanding. I couldn’t wrap my mind around Wundt’s idea of the mind organizing experiences through acts of will. His apperception and voluntarism concepts were confusing to me. Also the section discussing Karl concept of imageless thought was confusing to me.

5)
Before this chapter I didn’t realize that psychology stemmed off and borrowed so much from physiology. Wundt set the example for what is American psychology today. I think its all about learning how concepts and ideas began. This chapter brought up just noticeable difference which I’ve heard about several times but never know how it all came about. It was cool learning about Fecnher and his role in being called the first experimental psychologist as well as all of his insight contributing to what was considered the first book of experimental psychology. I love seeing how the field began and roles people had in it playing out. His efforts in creating a research program along with a set of methods eye opening to others led the way for Wundt in proclaiming a new psychology not long after, making it become a science.

6)
This chapter discussed the success of physiology which we saw in chapter three and reinforcing the emphasis on a research based atmosphere. This chapter also brought up materialism once again and how Fechner wanted to defeat it. This chapter as well mentioned Boring who we were introduced to in Chapter one. In chapter one we learned about how history is constantly rewritten when new information comes around. This idea surfaced again within this chapter. Finally, this chapter brought up empiricist associations, along with their analysis of association processes which brought us back to chapter two and how they considered association to be analogous to gravity.

7a) & 7b)
I’m interested in memory so looking more in Ebbinghaus and his work would be interesting. It was cool how his memory book had inaugurated a research tradition that still exists today and even includes data which continue to exist in the textbooks of basic psychology. Its interesting how he dedicated so much of his life on his work and memorized over 1,300 lists. He seemed to be extremely passionate and pioneered mental testing. This book even got its opening quote for chapter two from Ebbinghaus. “psychology has a long past, yet its real history is short.”

8)
In this chapter as well as the past few we’ve read it seemed like many people and ideas during this time seemed to be all coming from Germany. Also everyone just seemed so intelligent and began learning several languages at very young ages as well as attending universities way before the ages we do now. I was shocked when reading the harsh words of Cattell regarding Wundt. In a letter to his parents he wrote things like, “Wundt’s lab has a reputation great than it deserves. Mind I do not consider my work of any special importance, I only consider Wundt’s of still less.”
One section discussed Kulpe becoming interested in psychology while he was taking a class from Wundt and after doing work in Muller’s lab he became positive that psychology was his destined career. It seems like a lot of people from this time were interconnected.

9) Terminology: Two-point threshold, JND, Weber’s Law, Absolute Threshold, Voluntarism, Apperception, Memory Drum, Imageless Thought.

I find Gustav Fechner interesting. He was something of a prodigy and well educated in many ways. Anyone studying psychology, whether or not they realized it, was a physiologist of some kind or another. Fechner was a medical doctor, physicist, as well as a philosopher, the culmination of which formed psychology. For everything he had going for him, he still had to overcome quite a lot. He overcame nearly blinding himself as well as other issues and the emotional implications of such a massive life change. His development of psychophysics made an undeniable contribution to the mind-body argument. It is just a shame that he chose the wrong side.
I find Wilhelm Wundt interesting. He had an uncanny talent of not only articulating his findings but convincing people that psychology was an area that demanded science’s attention. He is credited with founding modern psychology and with opening the first psychological laboratory, but he also made meaningful advances in psychophysics. He cleverly addressed the difficulty of accurately studying perception. He distinguished between self-observation and internal perception. He defined this instantaneous perceptions immediate conscious experience. While Wundt did not get an opportunity to study higher mental processes in his laboratory, his “new psychology” paved the way for a systematic observation of higher mental processes.
I find the early mental chronometry, or reaction time, to be interesting. Thanks to Helmholtz determining that nerve impulses could be measured, and in fact are much slower than previous scientists had guessed, psychologists were able to measure many mental processes. This led to the development of the subtractive method and complication experiments, both of which are still used in contemporary research.
The delving into the history of the history of Wundt was rather boring. Wilhelm Wundt was a brilliant man and made a large contribution to psychology. Yet, it seemed they put a little too much emphasis on defending his place in psychology’s history. A biography seemed more a proper place, not our text book.
The text did an excellent job of explaining why Germany was so relevant to psychology in the late 19th century. All the ministates, each featuring a university, explain the shear mass of academic activity. All the notable scientists and the people they influenced draws a brilliant web of how the intellectual ideas of the time spread.
The chapters in this text book are very chronological. This chapter was a definite segue into the 20th century. Also, establishing Wundt as the founder of modern psychology sets the stage for a trend of thinking for the next century in history. It is much like the empiricists did for the 19th century.
I would be interested in learning more about G. E. Müller. He doesn’t get much attention in American history of psychology, partly because not a lot of his work was translated. He made a meticulous effort to replicate and solidify valid theories. He solidified the thoroughness that is demanded by modern scientific method. I would like to understand where it all came from.
Key terms: Gustav Fechner, psychophysics, self-observation, internal perception, immediate conscious experience, higher mental processes, mental chronometry, subtractive method, complication experiment, Müller,

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Introspection and Internal Perception: I thought it was interesting how Wundt claimed that self-observation was traditional philosophical attempt to analyze life’s experience and it was usually faulty or unsystematic because it usually involved with one’s memory, which can be faulty. I think ones introspection can be faulty more than just their memory about an event that happened, one thing can be either they have too high of a self-esteem or too low of a self-esteem, which can skew their interpretation in the first place. Internal perception I can see where it would be less likely to faulty reality because there is less time for your memory to change, but again one can skew it by their personality.

2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
Voluntarism and apperception:
Voluntarism is how the mind actively organizes experiences through an act of will. A concept of voluntarism is apperception which is the way a person can perceive an event fully and have no mistakes with their interpretation of the event. An example is studying for a test or fully paying attention while reading a book, I am interested in this because I would like to learn more about how people slip short of apperception and view a different perception that is out of reality.

3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Retroactive inhibition: I thought this phenomenon was interesting because it makes sense when students try to cram study hours for a test at the last minute won’t work as well as just studying 2 or more hours a day. There is too much information you are trying to focus on and eventually you will forget some of the first or in the middle of what you were trying to study.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I didn’t really find a topic that was not interesting to me, but if I would have to choose I would say remote associations would be my least interested topic. To me I would not be able to learn or remember very well with a bunch of lists, I would end up getting them confused. I remember images not numbers.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think psychophysics was most useful because it was one of the first times psychologists tried studying how our thought processes changes within the physics of our environment. How sensations can alter our perception. To find how fast our reaction time is with our nerve impulses. Also how our perception changes over time with our memory, it makes me wonder how well we really know the past.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
The previous chapter was talking about one of the first psychologist studying some problems of perception and reflex actions and how there are different nerves. This chapter got more into depth with how our sensations or perception can be skewed or work in general through different types of thresholds of sensations.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
7b) Why?
Absolute threshold and difference thresholds: I find these pretty interesting because I would like to know more about how these thresholds are influencing our perception of the real world, like a flickering light in a dark alley would make most people probably perceive anyone they can’t tell right away as a threat. I would also like to see the biological processes for these thresholds, what makes us hit an absolute threshold and get use to the light outside, when we first step outside.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
What I was thinking about the most is how this relates to studying at school and how people can get the wrong perception of a problem and not know if they just remember it wrong or had it wrong going through it in class in the first place. Also I was wondering if there are any newer methods for recalling memory or making memory more readily available.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Introspection
Internal Perception
Voluntarism
Apperception
Retroactive inhibition
Absolute threshold
Difference threshold
Psychophysics
Remote associations

1a) What did you find interesting? "Founders are Promoters"

1b) Why was it interesting to you? I found this interesting because it makes sense. Weather or not someone did something amazing, if they promote something new and actively engage in it's creation while simultaneously using propaganda to show it off, they may be labeled as the founder even if they weren't the original person to work with it.

2a) What did you find interesting? "Just noticeable difference"

2b) Why was it interesting to you? I found the jnd interesting because it was the first time we see mathematical properties corresponding with mental processes (aka: that of weight perception).

3a) What did you find interesting? The Fechner Crusade

3b) Why was it interesting to you? I just found it interesting that Fechner was doing great things to help out Psychology unintentionally. It kind of shows how ones work may seem meaningless at the time, but is revolutionary later on in life. So what if he didn't conquer the evil "night viewers," he was a big help to those in the future.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Internal Perception

4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you? It wasn't that I found it uninteresting, but I don't think the author of this text book said enough about it. I had a little trouble figuring why it was different.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Once again, the founders are promoters quote. I think that will help me better understand psychological history because there seem to be a lot of people labeled as founders even though what they founded was practiced before them.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters? It definitely builds on the last chapter when talking about Fechner's crusade against materialist thought.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? Internal Perception
7b) Why? I had trouble figuring out how it was different than the other introspections.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter? My biggest thought was once again within the early chapter on Wundt. I wonder how the first World War affected his research (if at all).

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post. Immediate Conscious, Internal Perception, Wundt, JND, New Psychology

1a) What did you find interesting?
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
This chapter was very interesting to me. It brought out a lot of information that I have never learned before, and made it interesting. One thing in particular that interested me was a unit of psychological measurement discovered by Fechner Gustav. He found absolute threshold as the point where sensation was first noticed. He also found another unit of measurement, the just notable distance above the absolute threshold, which is the difference threshold. The booked explained an example that when you turn on a light, the first glimpse of the flickering of light is the absolute threshold. There is a point where there is a notable difference where the light was just a little bit brighter that it was before; this is the difference threshold.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
The second thing I found interesting was Ernst Weber’s accomplishments. Weber had two major contributions: he mapped the sensitivity of different locations of the skin, and demonstrating the relationship between physical and psychological mathematically. This mathematical demonstration was known as Weber’s law. Weber also had a very interesting study where he found thetwo-point threshold exists. His study consisted of touching the skin with a device that resembled a two-point drawing compass. He would touch the skin with the points at various distances and discovered that there is a point where a person feels one poke instead of two. He called that two-point threshold. Another thing that interested me about Weber was his concept of jnd (just noticeable difference). He discovered that the jnd depended not on the absolute size of the difference of the weights, but the relationship between the just the noticeable difference and the smaller weight.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
The last thing I found interesting was a small section at the end of Muller’s contributions. This section mentioned how women had a hard time obtained advanced degrees. The university of Gottingen did not award women with advanced degrees. Even though women were looked down upon when reaching graduate degrees, Muller was ahead of his time and welcomed prestigious women into his laboratory. This section ended with a point demonstrating how women in the United States and Europe especially had trouble obtaining graduate degrees, but Muller recognized that women were highly capable of working in his laboratory.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
The part that I found least interesting was the opening section regarding An education in Germany. There were a few German names that anyone who does not speak the language would butcher completely. It was also hard to get into. While reading the section, I found myself not being able to comprehend the text.
5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think the most useful information in this chapter was about Wilhelm Wundt. He is an established psychologist and has opened many doors in the field of psychology. He created a new psychology, experimental psychology. His biggest accomplishment of all was founding the first psychological laboratory in the world.
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds on the previous idea of physiological concepts and goes more in depth on how physiological concepts of psychology are turned into experimental psychology and psychophysics.
7a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
7b) Why?
I would like to learn more about Muller’s memory drum. I think it was interesting what resources scientists used without all of the known technology we have today. I would like to know the studies and more of the findings of his research regarding the memory drum. It seems like an interesting concept, and was highly creative.
8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter, and thinking back to previous chapters, I thought about how the book so far has been swarmed with famous men researchers and scientists that formed psychology, but we have not heard much about women. I know women’s rights were an issue back in the time, but it is hard to believe that women were treated so unfairly that many universities did not give them graduate degrees. Muller’s section touched base on women, but I can not wait to see if more women make it in the textbook, once equal rights amongst the sexes starts to take place.
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Absolute threshold, difference threshold, Weber’s law, two-point threshold, psychophysics, & memory drum

1a) What did you find interesting?
Psychophysics
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the stimulus event and physical dimensions and how it is all being perceived. Weber came up with the concept of the two-point threshold. This is the point where feeling one change to feeling two. He came up with this idea through a test where he placed a device on the skin and then would have the observer say if it was one or two points they felt. I think this is interesting because it is a simple study like this that Weber came up with this theory of the two point threshold.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Weber’s Law
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
This study was driven by Weber’s interest in muscle sense. He became curious on the humans sense and judgment of weight. Through his experiment Weber came up with more thresholds. Weber also came up with the term JND. This was used in his experience when observers could tell the difference between 31-33 grams instead of 31-32. He found a JND between 31 and 33 grams. I found this section to interesting because I think it would be neat to recreate the same study and see if the same results were found. Would the threshold be the same if repeated?

3a) What did you find interesting?
Wundt’s conception of new psychology
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
This new psychology called for the analysis on the human conscious. To do his research, Wundt used two methods, laboratory methods for immediate conscious experience and non-laboratory methods for higher mental process. Wundt also believed that studying different cultures, religions, customs, and languages could help give an understanding to the evolution process of the mental process in humans. I found this part to be very interesting because I never thought of doing that. I think that we can tell a lot by our surroundings and by our environments and how that affects us mentally.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
Scientific study aspect
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
Looking at the actual scientific study aspect of studying something I find to be very dry and not interesting. Looking at the numbers and how each step was taken does nothing for me and I don’t think it really teaches me that much. It doesn’t get me brain going at all. It feels like I’m readying the text for the sake of reading the text.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
Wundt and new psychology
6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
I think Wundt’s discoveries have led to other things and I think that his findings have helped lead to other discoveries in psychology. Wundt’s laboratory work has helped shaped experimental psychology.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Wundt
7b) Why?
I think that it would be interesting to look at more of his studies and findings and how others have maybe built off of what he has done.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
When going through this chapter this made me think of my some of my basic psychology classes and how we never focused on the history of psychology and how things have changed over time. The things read in the chapters so far are just the basis and beginning of what psychology is.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Psychophysics, two-point threshold, Weber’s law, JND

1)I have always been interested in Wilhelm Wundt. One reason could be that he makes success look possible for even the worst student due to his terrible grades in his early school years, but I think the main reason that Wundt is so interesting to me personally is due to his studies in perception. His contributions to the physiological side of psychology have greatly influenced the study of sensation and perception (103).

2)Because I thought Wundt was so interesting, I found many of the topics that he studied intriguing as well. One topic that I really enjoyed reading was the topic of the difference between self-observation and internal perception. Self-observation is the reflection on one’s life in a philosophical manner. Wundt rejected self-observation, and stated that it was nothing more than philosophical speculation. Internal perception is similar to self-observation, but was a “narrower process” that required precise stimuli. The difference has become less clear between the two topics as of late, and is now referred to as introspection (104).

3)The third and final concept that I found interesting from chapter four was the concept of apperception. Because I have Attention Deficit Disorder, this phenomenon really interests me. According to Wundt, when you read a page, for example, you are taking in that information primarily. The information that you are read was apperceived. But as I type this blog, I am listening to the football game in the background. That information is in the periphery of my attention and Wundt would say that the information coming from the game is being apprehended (112). Our minds also do something else that is cool with the information that is apperceived. The apperception process allows us to gather information into “meaningful wholes.” The author uses the word dog. When you read that word, you don’t just see the letters D-O-G, you see a whole word that has meaning (113).

4)The topic that I found the least interesting was the discussion of Weber’s Law. I don’t do well with math, and I just lost focus at this point. I see its relevance, and I understand why it was important to Weber; however, I could not sit and do a study as tedious as that one (97).

5)I think the most important part that I read in this chapter was Wundt’s attempt at creating a “new psychology” which used methods that were borrowed from physiology and applied them to the analysis of the human conscious experience (103). I believe that this is important because it marks a significant change in the way that psychology is studied. I think that this will help me understand later psychologists that study the human conscious experience.

6)Chapter three was all about physiology and its impact on psychology with physiologists like Johannes Muller, Hermann Von Helmholtz, and Sir Charles Bell. This chapter builds off of what they discovered about nerves and the brain and expanded those ideas to actual human conscious experiences.

7)The topic that I would like to learn more about would be introspection. I think it would be interesting to see how the definition has changed over the years and understand what self-observation and internal perception means to us as psychologists now.

8)While reading the part about apperception, I really found the concepts of apperception and apprehension very interesting. I began to think of different ways that this could help people with attention problems overcome their difficulties. If focus is apperception, than how can we increase the ability to apperceive and decrease the focus on those things which are in our periphery of our attention?

9)Wilhelm Wundt, sensation and perception, self-observation, internal perception, introspection, apperception, apprehension, Weber’s Law, human conscious experience, Johannes Muller, Hermann Von Helmholtz, Sir Charles Bell

1a) What did you find interesting?
I thought it was interesting how many universities are in Germany. I guess I just kind of figured that since the country was so small, they’d only have a handful of universities, just like Iowa only has 3 major universities.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting, because there is so much I don’t know about European countries, and I have ancestors in Germany, so this whole chapter was pretty interesting, and made me kind of proud of my German heritage, though I doubt I’m actually related to any of the people that the book discusses. I also thought it was pretty cool that Germany was really the foundation for a lot of scientific research and study, called Wissenschaft, and it just surprises me that most of what we know about scientific research and theory comes from Germany. I also thought it was really interesting that many American students went to study in Leipzig and under Wundt.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Psychophysics was interesting to me. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the perception of a stimulating event and the physical dimensions of the stimulus. Ernst Weber was a huge part of psychophysics and his two major contributions were mapping the sensitivity of various spots on the skin, and giving us a mathematical formula to demonstrate the relationship between the psychological and the physical known as Weber’s Law. The sensitivity was measured by using the two-point threshold, which is the point where the perception changes from one point to another point, and that there is a gap between these two points, although on some areas of the body, this gap is much smaller or bigger, depending on the area’s sensitivity.
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
This was interesting to me because I did not know that there was a gap between points of sensitivity, I just thought that there was nerve endings all throughout your body, and that they were touching each other as well. I also have heard about Weber’s Law briefly before, but did not really know to what extent it was important. The book talks about how Weber’s Law was important in three ways: to measure mental events mathematically, that there was not a one-to-one relationship between physical changes and psychological experience, and that mental and physical events can be related mathematically.

3a) What did you find interesting?
I thought that the little insert titled an American in Leipzig was interesting. This was about James McKeen Cattell, the first American to earn a PhD in experimental psychology under Wundt. While there, he kept a journal and was in correspondence with his parents regularly. He did research on reaction time, and he writes to his parents about being a subject in his own studies, as well as the struggles faced when working in a new science. Cattell, in one of his last letters, tells his parents about how he thought that Wundt’s lab was not nearly as spectacular as its reputation, and that he did nearly half of the work that the lab had produced, and that he started this work at John Hopkins.
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
At first, I was interested in what an American take on German Psychology was going to be like, but I quickly realized this was not the case, and then I became more interested in it because of the passage at the bottom, where Cattell just completely bashes the lab and Wundt’s life work. I find this fascinating, because we saw this in Chapter 3 with Mueller as well, and I just find it very hard to believe that these scientists could become so disillusioned and downright loathing of their mentors. I guess I’ve been disillusioned by mentors before, but I tend to keep that to myself, so I find it really interesting that these people (especially in the case of Mueller) were so willing to publically bash their mentors. I wonder if that can be attributed to a high stress work environment, or if it is something else entirely.

4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
The history and how wrong it is of Wundt and why it needed to be re-written.
4b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I mean, it was interesting, but I feel like I didn’t need to know that; the information wasn’t nearly as relevant as it was maybe in the 80s or 90s, when the things had started changing. I would have preferred if they left that part of the chapter out. But I did think it was interesting, just not relevant or necessary. When I read, I like things to be brief so that I can get through it faster (I don’t get a lot of free time, so I try to rush through readings as much as possible).

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I thought learning about psychophysics was really important, because it was sort of the last stepping stone that was put in place for psychology to be born into its own real science.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter definitely builds upon chapter one with the way that it talks about Wundt and how it is good to sometimes go back and re-examine things, because history is something that can be rewritten as more and more information is discovered or inquired about. Wundt is great example of what we learned about in Chapter 1, because he wrote a lot of stuff of his own, and since it’s very dense and hadn’t been translated, it was very hard for people to read and interpret, so many people read second or third accounts of what he did.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I’d like to learn more about ecological memory, or memory that is more realistic every day events rather than abstract lists, when it comes to researching memory.
7b) Why?
I thought this was interesting, because I have seen videos of some of the earlier studies (like the remote associations) and I feel that ecological memory would be a lot more accurate than remote associations and strange syllables. The chapter doesn’t really talk about it very much, and so I think I’d like to dig a bit deeper into it.

8) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
Well, at first, I was thinking about how awesome it was that Germany used to be this really successful scientific place, and how come we didn’t know that? And then I was thinking that most people in this day and age really probably only associate Germany with Oktoberfest and WWII. And maybe their chocolate, but that’s it. And I find it incredibly sad that we don’t know more about the kinds of places that really helped push us in a greater direction given that they don’t teach us a bit of this at the high school level, and that maybe this is one of the subjects that should be taught. Next, I was thinking about how horrible it is that some of these young bright students working under these great men could be so harsh and rude when it comes to their mentors and critique them so negatively, and why do they do that? Is it because of a high stress environment, or because of something else? Maybe the mentors were just totally full of themselves and jerks, or maybe it was the students, I’m not sure. That would also be something interesting to look into, but I doubt there is much that you could find on that subject.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Wissenschaft, Wundt, Psychophysics, Ernst Weber, Two-Point Thresholds, Weber’s Law, James McKeen Cattell, ecological memory

1a)Immediate Conscious Experience
1b)This was interesting because it was a different way to think of something, especially for people of Wundt's time. How it was explained basically was the that there is a difference between seeing something and expecting a result, such as seeing people playing in water and being wet, than there is of actually experiencing something, such as jumping in the water and becoming wet yourself. The fact that so many people of that time didn't realize that there is a whole other way of thinking and interpreting what is going on around you is interesting to me. It sparked a whole new idea of almost perception isn't always reality, there is a difference between what you see and what is actually occurring.
2a)Hermann Ebbinghaus and Memory
2b)It was interesting what he did when it came to memory, Ebbinghaus observed that people could not memorize poems and syllables and that sparked his interest. In the spark he created a system using nonsense syllables or CVCs (p115) in order to help people remember things. This is interesting because it is almost how I think at times, when I know that I am reading something that I need to remember I usually relate it to something that really has nothing to do with the subject but I know that once I see the word it will instantly spark an idea that will lead to me remembering what that subject is related to. Using a form of association in order to connect things for people to remember is amazing because it really does help a lot of people and the fact that he started the process of association and memorization through other learning tools is interesting and helps so many people today.
3a)Oswald Kulpe and his experiment with memory recall
3b)It was interesting to me because he took regular people and presented them with something small, such as pictures and then later asked them to recall certain events or even the later study of measuring their reactions to different things related to an experience. The fact that the study was rejected was bad because there was much to learn from the experiment about how memory can change, such as the imageless memory. Looking at something is not always a visual thing but rather there are times when it is a mental observation while watching someone instead of a vision in one's own head or memory. Memory is a very complicated thing to learn and more and more studies of it show that there are different reactions and different perceptions from people. In the different layers people all observe and absorb what is going on around them differently and that is what Kulpe was attempting to show, the problem was that Wauldt denied the experiment because it was something different and something he deemed to be unmeasurable so therefore it was not true.
4a)Ernst Weber
4b) It was more the part with the experiments of noticing if the subjects noticed differences between different things. I was a little interesting that it was such small differences that were actually noticed but it was just really hard to get because it was drawn out a little and dry, I didn't really get why he was so interested in this and what the outcomes of the experiment were actually for or to prove. I get that people are observant and all but at the same time I was really not interesting what he did for psychology.
5)I think just learning about how the basics of perception and reality are something that should be noted when it comes to understanding different aspects of psychology. The fact that something may appear different doesn't actually make it different and at times the brain will tell the rest of the organs/senses that something is one thing when in reality it isn't even close to what your mind is telling you. The mind is a very strong component of every individual and understanding what it does, how it absorbs and what it allows you to do and see is something worth learning.
6)This chapter builds on the previous chapter in the means that the earlier chapters were more about getting to the brain, how outside things such as bumps on the skull were created from the brain and the difference between peoples brain makeup. Now we are to where we are discovering what the brain actually does, how it perceives things and creates ideas as well as memories for a person to recall and use for the future.
7a)Immediate Conscious
7b)I would like to learn more about this topic because it is interesting to think about the different things that are absorbed while a person is conscious. Where do those observations go and become part of the unconscious, perception is reality but what will influence perception to become reality. The conscious is something that is very complex but at the same time what creates the consciousness to influence the unconsciousness.
8)While reading I was thinking about some of the things that I learned in my intro to psychology class, such as when children are younger and their perceptions change as they grow. Things like when they see a bowl of water and a tall glass of water containing equal amounts of water, to a certain age the child will always tell you that the taller glass contains more water because it is taller so therefore there is more. Perception is a thing that just continues to grow, because then you look at the different experiments throughout the chapter such as the finger prick sensations as well as the observations of how memories are created. Perception is something that continues to grow over time, but how it is so clear as a child and ignored as an adult came to mind.

Terms: Ernst Weber, Immediate Conscious, Herman Ebbinghaus, nonsense syllables, Oswald Kulpe,

1. The First Topic I found interesting was the section on Ernst Weber. Ernst weber was German professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Leipzig. His major impact on psychology came when he started to study and measure tactile sensations. His first major contribution was known as the idea of the Two-Point Threshold. This phenomena is when you reach the threshold from feeling just one unified sense of touch to feeling two distinct points of touch. In a realm of the body such as the upper arm you can be touched in two distinct places and if they are close enough together you feel just one sense of touch. If the two touches are spaced out enough you will feel two distinct points of contact. Weber started to measure the distance between these points to find the thresholds. His other major contribution was named Weber’s Law. Weber discovered that there was a mathematical limit between distinguishing between two different weights. For example if someone were to life something that was 30 grams and then something that was 32 grams that person would not be able to tell the difference between the weights. But, if someone picked up something that was 30 grams and something that was 33 grams they would because this is the threshold of what he called a just noticeable difference or JND. The smaller of the weights he deemed S or for the “standard stimulus”. His full equation is JND/S=K. His discoveries came before the science of psychophysics was jumpstarted but his methods were psychophysical.
1b. I found this to be interesting because I have never heard of Ernst weber and I have never heard of either of his contributions to psychophysics. It is always interesting to come across something new even after studying psychology for the last three years. In general, I know very little about psychophysics and had no idea what it really meant before reading this chapter.
2. The Next section I found to be interesting was the section on Gustav Fechner. The overview of Gustav Fechner’s life was very interesting. He was a very smart and ambitious man who started attending the University of Leipzig when he was 16. He got his medical degree but never did wind up practicing medicine. He is known for pioneering the study of psychophysics and his first realm of study was in the perception of afterimages, which are the images that persist after being exposed to a bright light source. He found that the longer you are exposed to a light source the longer the afterimages lasted. He did his experiments on himself by staring at the sun for varying amounts of time. This eventually led to him becoming essentially blind for a long period of time. He became prone to severe headaches and anxiety which eventually led him slipping into psychosis for a period of time which caused him to lose his job. He eventually started to slowly recover and got his job back. He started to pursue and immersed himself in the subject matter of the mind vs. body problem, which was talked about in the last chapter. He officially sparked the field of psychophysics when one day he woke up and came up with the idea that he could unify the mind-body problem by not only measuring sensations but by also measuring the physical stimuli that caused the sensations in conjunction.
2b. I found this section interesting primarily because Fechner did a lot of his experiments on himself. Through his work he caused himself to become blind. If that was not crazy enough he slipped into psychosis, became better, and started the field of psychophysics. Pretty impressive stuff.
3. The next thing I found to be interesting was the section on Hermann Ebbinghaus. Fechner’s study of psycholinguistics fueled Ebbinghaus to study memory using the experimental method. He recognized the extreme difficulty of studying memory, as at this time period not much was known about it, but he was determined to find a way to convincingly measure a human’s capacity to remember things. He realized that he could not use things such poems or songs to look at to remember in his studies because these things have meaning behind them which could make it easier for someone to remember. So, Ebbinghaus created what is known as nonsense syllables, or a three letter block that consisted of two consonants with a vowel in the middle. This nonsense syllable held no meaning and therefore a participant could not attribute much meaning to it, which made these nonsense syllables a sort of equalizer. He dedicated two years of his life studying these 2300 nonsense syllables he created. His finding were that after only 1 repetitions a person could recall a series of seven. To recall a series of 12 nonsense syllable one needed about 17 repetitions. The more syllables the more time someone needed to review the syllables. This is pretty astounding considering that up until this time no one had figured out a way to affectively measure memory capacity.
3b. I found this interesting because I took a memory and language course last semester and we briefly talked about Ebbinghaus’ findings. But, up until now I really did not know how he came to these findings.
4. The one person I did not find to be really interesting in the text was the part on Wilhelm Wundt. Wilhelm Wundt was not a really exceptional person until later in his life. He did not accomplish much in his early years and he really was not a good student. The book says that only reason he got accepted in to medical school was because of his family ties. He did however start to blossom in college and went on to become a huge figure in experimental psychology. Just as his career was about to blossom he came down with an illness that took him a year to recover from. He made his career from writing books and experimenting in the labs at Heidelberg. He also spent a great deal of the latter half of his life doing experiments at Leipzig where he created experimental psychology’s first laboratory.
4b. Wundt made some astounding discoveries and is a huge name in the field of experimental psychology but I did not find his background, or what he studied to be as intriguing as some of the other people I talked about.
5. The one thing that I read in this chapter that I think will be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology is how the senses and perceptions came to be studied and measured. It seems as if one after another in this time period these people discovered a way to do something no one else had before, measure and experiment with sensations and perceptions. Understanding how they did this I think is very useful and informative.
6. This chapter seems to build on a whole new subject matter in psychology by giving us the same informative and unbiased style of presentation used in the previous chapters.
7a. I would like to learn more about Fechner and his studies.
7b. Fechner went to extremes to find out the things he was curious about and I think that that is fascinating and I’m sure there is a lot of interesting material out there that elaborates on his studies.
8 I thought about how interesting it is that all these amazing findings came from one place, Germany. What was it about the time period and the minds of people in Germany that led to these discoveries and experiments one after the other? Why wasn’t there this kind of growth in this particular realm of psychology in other nations?
9. Psychophysics, Two-point threshold, Weber’s Law, jnd, threshold, nonsense syllables.

1a) What did you find interesting?
Two-Point Thresholds
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I already knew that different parts of your body had different levels of sensitivity, but to understand that someone tested this was interesting. I tried to replicate the test just a bit after reading about it. There was defiantly a difference in being able to differentiate two points being touched on my shoulder than on my thumbs.

2a) What did you find interesting?
Webster's Law
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought this study was because Webster found the JND to be 30 to 33, 60 to 66, and 90 to 99 and so on. After thinking about it, the study actual makes a lot of sense and i think it would be fun to try to replicate.

3a) What did you find interesting?
Wilhelm Wundt
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
I believe I have heard of Wundt before, but I have not actually read about him before, which I thought was interesting since he is thought to be the founder of experimental psychology. I think it would be interesting to learn more about him.
4a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting?
I just feel as though learning some of the early life facts about psychologists are unneeded. Maybe for some psychologist it is important to understand what happened in early life, but I just do not find it very interesting.

5) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think the important part of this chapter is the different studies of perceptions.

6) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
The previous chapters discussed memory and personality and how the brain is effected by certain concepts, and this chapters builds form that.

7a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Wilhelm Wundt. I think he had a lot of good ideas and it would be interesting to learn more about his life.

9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
two-thumb threshold, JND, Websters law, Wundt, psychologists,perceptions

1a) State what your topic is.
James McKeen Cattell
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Cattell relates to this chapter because he was a graduate student under Wilhelm Wundt and he was well known later as one of the first professors of psychology in America. He wrote many letters about Wundt to his parents which appeared in an excerpt from the chapter, and he worked a lot in his graduate level work in Leipzig in one of the first major laboratories of the time and did work on intelligence.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in what Cattell was saying about Wundt more than Cattell himself, but I thought that it would be easier to find out more information about Cattell, especially since in this chapter he is only mentioned briefly in an excerpt. So I wanted to dig a little deeper and find out who Cattell was as a person, and not in just this small view of him during his doctoral degree.

James McKeen Cattell was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania and was born into a prominent and wealthy family. He entered Lafayette College at the age of 16, and graduated with the highest honors. He then went on to a fellowship at John Hopkins University, and when that was not renewed, he went to Leipzig for the second time as Wundt’s assistant. He completed his PhD at the age of 26 and was the first American to publish a dissertation. He then lectured for a while at the University of Cambridge in England before eventually going to Columbia University where he was eventually fired, but gained a settlement to start the Psychological Corporation. This was a failure until other psychologists took it over who had experience in applied psychology. He also created the Science Press Printing Company.
Cattell was interesting in that he believed in eugenics, and was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin and thought that men of science were more likely to be born from fathers who were either clergymen or professors. He believed in eugenics so much that he offered his own offspring 1000$ if they married the offspring of another university or academic professional. After graduate school, it does not seem that he did much in the lines of research, but he did do a lot for early scientific publishing and was very successful in that, and helped further psychology as a science by making sure articles pertaining to these fields were prominently displayed within his journals, of which he owned several, and he also helped originate two professional directories to better connect researchers together.
Within Cattell’s areas of research, he helped apply psychology to the fields of education, advertising, business and industry. While at Columbia University, he conducted a lot of research on mental health testing as well, and is considered to be one of the founders of the field of psychology in America, as he was the administrative head of psychology at Columbia. He used a lot of psychophysical measurement in his research as well, but it seemed that he had a greater goal in mind. This goal was to have psychology viewed as a science on the same level as physics and life sciences.
James McKeen Cattell died on January 20, 1944 at the age of 83.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McKeen_Cattell
Background information and eugenics
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/100070/James-McKeen-Cattell
About testing and journals
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/jcattell.shtml
More about testing and life

new psychology. experimental psychology.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I found the topic of two-point thresholds done by Ernst Weber to be the most interesting.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I found this interesting because I would just think that I would always be able tell if one or if two thing we poking me. It is interesting to know that different section of skin have varying levels of sensitivity. I suppose this is do to the amount of nerve endings that are in one specific area.

2a) What person did you find interesting?
I think the most interesting person in the chapter was Gustav Fechner.

2b) Why were they interesting to you?
He was interesting to me because of all the hardships that he overcame and was still able to contribute to psychophysics. His studies on visual afterimages was also very interesting to me. Unfortunately, his work ended up blinding him and he eventually had to resign from the university he was working for. However, I find it somewhat of a miracle that his sight came back and he was able to be a professor again and work on his theory of a “day view”, which dealt with the mind-body relationship.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I think the overall message of this chapter was that there is more to psychology than just the mind. This chapter had a lot to say about how the mind and body work together to perceive the world. It talked about sensitivity, kinesthesis, and how physics plays a role on psychology.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
Even though I don’t really like physics, I did find this chapter to be pretty interesting. I think this is because I have always liked the topic of perception and consciousness. I find it really interesting how the find and body work together to create the reality that we experience on a day to day basis.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
The thing that will be the most useful to understanding the history of psychology is the studies done by Fechner about mind and body. I think this will be the most useful because it shows everyone’s mind-body experiences are different which cause different sensations and perceptions in reality.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
This topic built on what we learn from chapter 3 about brain function and the nervous system. It built on these topics by talking about how a person perceives and senses the signals the brain is sending throughout the body.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

6b) Why?
I have always found cognitive psychology to be interesting. I have always known that as time passes a person begins to lose what they have learned. I think it would be cool to better understand why this happens.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
Like I previously stated, why does a person lose what they have learned over time? Is there a way to keep this from happening?

8) Terms: cognitive psychology, nervous system, brain function, perception, sensation, Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, Gustav Fechner, mind-body, reality, sensitivity, kinesthesis, day-view, Ernst Weber

1a) What topic did you find interesting?

I found the Reaction time studies interesting

1b) Why was it interesting to you?

It was interesting to me for several reasons, but one of the main reasons being James Mckeen Cattell who was an American worked with Wundt on this method. He studied the method both in Germany and in the United States which was interesting to me as well. Reaction Time is also a topic I have always been so interested in. I enjoyed reading about how they went about forming their studies since there were many elements that went into it.

2a) What person did you find interesting?

Muller
2b) Why were they interesting to you?

I found Muller very interesting because he wasn’t afraid to build on other’s work and according to the text he did in fact add to Wundt’s work, along with Ebbinghaus work. I found it interesting also that he devoted much of his life to expanding on research.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?

I think that the overall message of the Chapter is that in the past Psychology steamed from students of Physiology. The men who studied physiology dared to claim that there was something more and that psychology in fact was different than just the biology that went into their studies. Important men like Wundt had great ideas of New Psychology. In the end I also think a central message is that Psychology has changed over the course of history. Goodwin the author of our text also points out that Wundt’s theories were “re-examined”. This is an important concept in the message I believe because it gives us another reason for us so see why we learn about history (so that we can test or re test theories to see if they stand the test of time).

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?

It was interesting to me because I learned a lot about studies I had a base knowledge on, and the text really elaborated more on how the studies were specifically done and what happened after the studies.

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

This chapter like the last helped me to understand further that without other branches of study such as science, medicine, philosophy, there would be no psychology today. It also helped me to understand where a lot of the studying and first experiments happened (Germany) (Wundt's first experiments at Leipzig)

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?

It built on my knowledge of memory tasks and also taught me more about them. Ebbimghaus study on serial learning was not totally new information to me but I did find it interesting how Goodwin goes more in depth about him being the main participant in his own study which I found fascinating.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?

I would love to learn more about the reaction time experiments at Clark University.
6b) Why?

Goodwin explains that many times that there were not many participants in the reaction time studies and that often it was only two or three people. I would love to read more about those studies and how they collected data with so few participants.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?

I did have some questions in regard to Fechner and his life work, from what I understood from the text there was a brief time where he was considered an invalid. I understood this due to the studies that he did lost some of his vision but I had a hard time understanding the other problems that followed the depression and so on. This was not a large point in the reading but I was curious if the damage to his eyes caused a psychological response that changed hormone levels in his body.

8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Serial Learning, Reaction Time, New Psychology,

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
The topic that I found most interesting was the concept of apperceptive mass. Apperceptive mass is an interrelated group of ideas at the forefront of consciousness. The book gives a wonderful example on who as you are reading this chapter, how well you are focusing on the information. Yet the fact that the book talks about the weekend, how does that affect you’re processing of the information you are reading. If you are really paying attention, and having good idea strength. Then the talking about the weekend is under your threshold of awareness.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
Its interesting because it is something different than what I have personally come across. When it comes to consciousness, in psychology the first thing that comes to mind is Freud. I feel that Freud is over talked about and over used. I get that he came up with a lot interesting information, but it’s nice to know that there are other people who made contributions, that necessarily did not have an odd view on sexual relationship with family members.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
The main person I found interesting was Johann Herbart, he helped come up with the idea of apperceptive mass.

2b) Why were they interesting to you?
This man, came up with a concept about consciousness that I have never heard of, it was interesting to know someone else besides Freud. Also, he is what really pushed psychology to be its own field. He started to pull away from philosophy and physiology. From his concept of apperceptive mass and being able to separate events above and below a given point. Really gave other individuals the tools they needed to further expand this field.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
The overall message of this chapter is focusing on the push of psychology becoming its own field. It is the beginning steps to more research being done, and stepping away from philosophy and physiology. Psychology today is still heavily influences by research, and it continues to grow.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
It was interesting to read, because when you take introduction to psychology they go over the basic people, which now I would refer to as ‘poster childs’. Such as Freud, Pavlov, Harlow and others. I never really came across Johann Herbart. He was not deemed worthy enough for a lecture. Which I honestly feel that he is, if made the first steps that allowed other people to make greatness. Why it is at my senior year, is he finally mentioned?
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
This chapter, talks about the different kind of new experiments are happening and research is playing a bigger role. Its nice to know where that stems from.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
On the first day of class, one of my main questions was how did everything get started, and did other people come up with the same ideas. Reading this chapter, showed me about how one little idea or study can spark a whole new field. It has also showed me that there is a difference between two people making the same discovery and providing the information to the public.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
How did universities just become? How did people just decide that one theory is wrong and have to absolutely prove their theory right? What really derived people in that time period, what motivated them so strongly?
6b) Why?
The reason being that it is so interesting, the time periods are so different than ours, and new research is constantly being done and published and its amazing that even ‘back then’ when there was not a lot of technology they still were able to produce amazing things.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
I would not mind, going to Europe and exploring these areas that they talk about, and learn more history there.
8) Apperceptive Mass, Johann Herbart, Threshold, Weber, research

1) I thought that Hermann Ebbinghaus’s studies on memory were interesting. I’ve always been curious about how memory works and how to improve it, so that’s why I thought it was interesting. Ebbinghaus looked at many different areas of memory. The experiment that this chapter talked about was when he made up some nonsense syllables, put them in a list, and saw how long it took to completely memorize the list. He actually memorized over 1300 lists himself, which I thought was impressive.
2) I thought that the most interesting person in this chapter was Ernst Weber. His research on sensitivity and the senses was fun to read about. He figured out that some areas of the body are far more sensitive than others. He did this by using a tool similar to a drawing compass (with two points) and touched the skin in various places with the two points at different lengths apart. He found out that more sensitive areas of the skin can detect the two points when they are closer together. He also did research in kinesthetics (the muscle sense). He even came up with a law, called Weber’s law, that determined how different two things needed to be before a person could detect the difference between the two, called the just noticeable difference.
3) I thought that the overall message of the chapter was that there is more to psychology than just the brain. This chapter talked about the body and the senses along with other things that show that the whole body works together. This chapter also points out the importance of experiments and science and how they helped with modern psychology. Yes, I thought it was interesting. I always like to read about the experiments people have done and the discoveries they made.
4) I think it was good to read about how all of the other fields of science have played a role in psychology. I liked to see how they all worked together to form the sciences as we know them today.
5) It helped me to build my knowledge on things I already knew. I had already heard of many of the people in this chapter, but I didn’t know much about them. It was good to refresh my memory and get more details about these people and their accomplishments.
6) I would like to learn more about sensation and perception. I have always been interested in how we perceive things and the brain’s role in perception.
7) The thing that I was most curious about was if people perceive things in different ways or if everyone perceives things the same.
8) Hermann Ebbinghaus, memory, nonsense syllables, Ernst Weber, sensitivity, senses, kinesthetics, Weber’s law, just noticeable difference, experiments, sensation, perception

1a) The topic that I found most interesting was the term introspection.
1b) I found introspection so interesting because I had heard of the term before but when I actually thought about it, I couldn't come up with what the definition of it was. So the term stuck out to me, and I had to look it up and get a better understanding of what it actually means, and connect it back to the different contexts to which I remember hearing the word in. And I figured out that I use introspection a lot in my life. I feel like we all evaluate our thinking and thought processes without even really knowing that we do.

2a) The person that I found the most interesting was Hermann Ebbinghaus.
2b) The reason why I found Hermann Ebbinghaus so interesting was because he did a lot of research and studying of a persons memory. I have always thought that memories and how certain things stick with us, how we can repress them, how we can pull them out of thin air, how we can remember things from a long time ago, or how they can show a mental image in our head. Memory is just a really cool thing that our brains can hold onto. Looking into how our brains can recall things, is why Ebbinghaus was so interesting to me. The most interesting to me was the savings method, remote associations, and ecological memory that Ebbinghaus explored. Savings method is about looking into measuring how long after learning the information a person is still able to recall it. Or basically the rate of forgetting information. Remote associations was interesting because it was about learning lists and how there's a direct relationship between the ease of relearning and the degree of remoteness of the associations. And finally I thought ecological memory was interesting because it gave a name to the memories that we have that come about every day and are just there in our minds. We don't have to necessarily think real hard about them or think abstractly.

3a) The overall message of the chapter I think was about how Germany and many of the psychologists there created this whole new sense of psychology and thinking. The creation or exploration more of experimental psychology. They started thinking more experimentally and about reactions to stimuli instead of just investigating how things work. I think this chapter was about going more in depth from what was talked about in the last section.
3b) This section was pretty interesting to me, however reading is pretty boring to me when its just about facts and people, and nothing real exciting is happening. I think I learn better hands on, or hearing it out loud. Sitting and reading just doesn't do it for me. But I am trying to get into the text. The most interesting though for me I think was the part about memory.

4) I think that in this chapter, the part that will help me understand the history of psychology the best is the different psychologist and how their new ways of thinking and findings changed and almost rewrote how we think of history. It's really interesting to me to see how the views and ways of thinking have started out, and how they change based on a person's new findings or experiments. The history of psychology is kind of all trial and error. The more you investigate and study it, the better you understand it. But it could change on you at any moment.

5) Like I've said before, when you are reading about the history of psychology, it just tends to build upon itself. There's a few things that I got an overview of while taking other psych classes, but a lot of what I read in this chapter was pretty new to me. Either that or I was relearning it and didn't know it. There's so much to study about psychology that it all just builds off of each other. The study of sensation and perception can help you understand the study of learning and memories. It's all connected and the more you know and learn, the more it helps you understand psychology.

6a) The topic that I think I would like to learn more about is Wilhelm Wundt and all of his contributions.
6b) There was just so much information on him in this chapter that it was a little overwhelming. I wouldn't mind just taking a section of what he studied and going more in depth of what his findings and methods were. He is obviously a very bright guy, if he had so much to contribute that most of a chapter in a book is dedicated to him. I think what I would like to know more about was his study into sensation and perception, because for some reason, those were the two that got my attention the most.

7) One question that I have after reading this chapter is that there's so many psychologists and scientists that have found out these amazing things, but is there more? Is there possibly some other people out there who have found out incredible things, but because someone turned them down, or maybe they don't have the money to get their findings out to the scientific community. There could be so much more that we don't know or understand yet. The field of psychology is so incredible and huge.

8) Terms: introspection, Hermann Ebbinghaus, savings method, remote associations, ecological memory, experimental psychology, sensation, perception, Wilhelm Wundt,

1a) I found Wilhelm Wundt’s topic of sensation and perception pretty interesting.
1b) The reason I found sensation and perception interesting was because I am interested in those two points in general. There wasn’t really a lot on the topic in the chapter but I like how Wundt studied in his lab and helped discover positive and negative after images, visual contrast, illusions, and the perception of size, depth, and motion.

2a) I found Ernst Weber interesting
2b) I found Ernst Weber interesting because his two major contributions of Weber’s law and the two-point threshold are things we still use today and I like how his discovery of Weber’s law would later help out Wilhelm Wundt.

3a) I think the overall message of this chapter is that the study of science is crucial in psychology and that the mind is the major component in psychology. Without the knowledge of the brain and why we do things we wouldn’t be where we are with psychology today.
3b) I enjoyed reading and learning about this chapter because it helped me understand more about how the mind with some cognitive functions and about how we perceive things.

4) I think what will be the most useful with learning the history of psychology is that things we still research and want to find out more about today are things that were developed way back then. That our knowledge grows from our ancestors that came before us and without their contributions we wouldn’t be where we are today.

5) This chapter relates to what I have learned in previous classes about Wilhelm Wundt because his name usually comes up a decent amount in psychology class. I knew Wundt was a major contributor to psychology but this chapter helped me build my knowledge about him and more of his discoveries that relate to psychology.

6a) I would like to learn more about Wundt’s view of sensation and perception.
6b) I would like to learn more about Wundt’s view of sensation and perception because it is a topic that really interests me. There wasn’t a lot of material in the chapter that covered this topic and I just want to know more about how he came up with the results that he did.

7) An idea that I had when I was reading this chapter was that it had a lot of people in it. It is weird how we know almost all of these ideas and concepts but we have no idea who did them. I know that it is because the concept is more important than the name but I know if I made a big discovery or contribution like that I would want to have my name remembered.

8) Terms: Wilhelm Wundt, Sensation and Perception, Ernst Weber, Weber’s law, two-point threshold.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I found the idea of new psychology interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
It is interesting to me because that is where modern day psychology originated. New psychology was experimental psychology. Psychologists were performing scientific tests in labs at universities. They also started to make journals and publish psychological journals for the public to see their results. Without new psychology being introduced the psychology that we know today could be different.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
I found Wilhelm Wundt interesting.
2b) Why were they interesting to you?
He was interesting to me because he was one of the most influential people in psychology. He practically invented psychology as a science. He was one of the first experimental psychologists. He came up with many different ideas throughout his career. He came up with the idea of internal perception. This helped to get a better idea of people’s self-observation because he narrowed the results to happen soon after the stimulus. In his lab Wundt studied mental chronology. He and other scientists tried to come up with different ways to calculate the different reaction times of people. They tried both a personal equation and the subtractive method. Both were later discredited because they were too simplistic.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I thought the overall message was interesting. I enjoyed learning about where experimental psychology originated from.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
I thought it was pretty interesting. I thought the first half of the chapter was boring, but once I got to the section on Wundt it became more interesting. I enjoy learning where things originated. To learn where experimental psychology originated was interesting.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think learning about where experimental psychology originated will help to understand the history of psychology. You have to understand where and how and why something was started before you really know anything about it.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about Hermann Ebbinghas and his work on memory.
6b) Why?
I find it interesting that he had the idea to study memory. I also thought it was interesting how he decided to test it. His results were also intriguing. I would like to know more about why he wanted to study memory and where he came up with his idea for nonsense syllables to study. I want to know why he chose serial learning to study. I also want to know how he came up with his savings method. I thought it was interesting how he thought we saved or memories.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post. Wilhem Wundt, internal perception, mental chronology, personal equation, subtractive method, Hermann Ebbinghas, nonsense syllables, serial learning, and savings method.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
I thought that the topic of thresholds was interesting.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I noticed that this topic came up in the research of many different psychologists and I find it interesting that there is a point in many of our senses between perceiving the stimuli and not perceiving it at all. It is awesome that one little change in distance or intensity can make the difference in our perception. Seeing how Ernst Weber developed this idea and coined the term “just noticeable distance” or jnd was interesting. I was interested in learning about Weber’s Law and that the jnd is not a set number but rather a percentage. Adding a quarter of a pound to one weight can cause someone to recognize them as different weights which is amazing to me, it shows how differences can exist and we may not even know about them. The same thing applies to the two-point threshold, two things can be touching us and we think it is one because the two are not far enough apart. What was even more interesting was how Weber’s initial research was then elaborated on by such individuals as Gustav Fechner. I remember as a child having hearing tests done at my elementary school. We had to indicate when we heard a beep in our ear and the intensity of that beep changed. Now I know that this is just a modern application of Fechner’s Method of Constant Stimuli which is used to detect the threshold of your hearing abilities. It was interesting to learn that this was not the only method for testing the hearing threshold but that the Method of Limits and the Method of Adjustment also serve unique purposes.

2a) What person did you find interesting?
The person that I found most interesting was Wilhelm Wundt.

2b) Why were they interesting to you?
I found the history of Wilhelm Wundt and his contributions especially interesting considering the fact that he is known as the “founder” of New Psychology or experimental psychology. It was interesting to learn that in his early career, Wundt was not an extraordinary student but rather a middle of the line kind of guy. It just goes to show that even the great people in history do not always appear to be geniuses at first glance. Yet, Wundt was full of talent and I thought it very fascinating the variety of people Wundt had as mentors. He worked with Robert Bunsen who influenced his teaching style and research. Wundt was also heavily influenced by Helmholtz whom had great contributions to the idea of nerve impulses, vision, and audition as Wundt was present in his lab for quite some time. It was also amazing to me the sheer volume of work published by Wundt which shows me how passionate he was for his subject and the great amount of information he wished to offer the world. It was also intriguing to see the care Wundt took in obtaining his research. He knew that introspection of some sort was needed to complete his analysis but also knew that if he waited too long after the experiment to collect participants’ thoughts, they would likely be inaccurate. So instead, he introduced internal perception which was given right after the experiment was completed. I was surprised by his consideration of this potential error in data. Finally, I was surprised to see that Wundt was also responsible for many ideas surround reaction time. We know today that there are differences in reaction time between individuals which Wundt appropriately accounted for using personal equations. I had never thought of all of the different aspects that go into an action such as pushing one button for one color or another button for a different color. Yet, by reading about Wundt I learned that indeed there is an amount of time required to react to a color being given, discriminating between colors (discrimination time), and choosing which button to push. Psychology is certainly a very complex field!

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I thought that this chapter focused on how research was done leading up to and following the introduction of experimental psychology. Again, it is part of the story which leads us to where we are today in the field of psychology. I thought that the chapter did a good job of presenting the information. It focused not only on the “founder” of experimental psychology but also those that contributed to it before Wundt and how Wundt’s research contributed to future research in the field.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
This chapter was interesting to me because it explained where experimental psychology originated. When I think of psychology, this is often the branch that comes to mind, so I was interested in learning more about the founding research in that area. Also, many of the ideas presented related to experiences I had had such as the hearing tests I mentioned earlier or reaction time such as when I played softball. So to learn more about these ideas and other applications for them was very much of interest to me.

4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think reading about those ideas which have been carried into the present day such as information about thresholds and reaction times will be most important to my understanding of psychology. It is important to see where these ideas came from and how they were tested and compare them to research I may read later in which the same questions are examined. Again, as we learned in the first chapter, many of the same questions are examined across time so seeing how they developed and were tested in the past can help us see how we got to the present and possibly even inform future research.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
This chapter builds on other chapters as it is an expansion of the research done first by physiologists. So, researchers like Wundt and Fechner built on questions they had seen explored in physiological terms by their contemporaries. This chapter expanded on those fundamental question by exploring how those questions were looked at in a lab and the development of scientific research on the brain.

6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
I would like to learn more about Hermann Ebbinghaus and his research.

6b) Why?
I was extremely interested in looking more into the life and research of Ebbinghaus as I am intrigued by the topic of memory. I find it fascinating how our brain can remember some things for a very long time or at least store it even if we cannot recall it on command. Yet, other information is forgotten in a matter of hours. The concept of a forgetting curve which shows the time saved when learning information for a second time also is interesting to me. I would like to know more about this topic and how it relates to such fields as education where memorization is the basis for many tests. I would also like more information on ecological memory because although I see the application of serial memorization such as Ebbinghaus’ use of nonsense syllables, I think that memorization of everyday information is more useful. After all, we don’t often encounter or try to remember useless information. Instead, we are able to make useful associations with everything we come across, thus impacting our memorization of that event or information.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
While reading this chapter, I began to wonder when the other areas of psychology arose and how they differ from one another. Is it simply the topic they study that differentiates them or also their methods for research? Which areas of psychology are most useful today and how has that changed over time? How do the different areas of psychology relate and combine to form an overall view of humans?

8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Ernst Weber, threshold, just noticeable difference (jnd), Weber’s law, Gustav Fechner, Method of Constant Stimuli, Method of Limits, Method of Adjustment, Wilhelm Wundt, New Psychology, introspection, internal perception, reaction time, personal equations, discrimination time, Hermann Ebbinghaus, forgetting curve, ecological memory, serial memorization, nonsense syllables

1a) I found the topic of Education in Germany to be interesting in this chapter.
1b) I found this topic interesting because of the migration of so many students traveling to Germany to get an education in Germany. The University of Berlin was responsible for developing a more scientific approach to psychology that was not previously known, which appealed to more students. Professors and students were given more freedom to study and research their own interests, rather than follow a strict curriculum. This emphasis on research-based psychology in Germany during this time was the start of the psychology that we know today.
2a) I found to be Wilhelm Wundt to be the most interesting person in this chapter.
2b) Reading about him was interesting to me because he is the founder of experimental psychology. Wundt showed an interest in science with help from the famous chemist, Robert Bunsen. He graduated with a degree in medicine, but quickly realized that he wanted to pursue a career in research instead. He proposed a new psychology that used methods borrowed from experimental physiology and new strategies not previously used in psychology. Wundt was the first psychologist to perform psychological experiments in a physiology laboratory.
3a) I feel that the overall message of this chapter was to introduce the influential members of the psychological community that helped to shape it into the field that it is today.
3b) Like the previous chapters that we've read, there is good information that provides background information on how major concepts in psychology came to be. I found this chapter to be interesting because I feel like it really put an emphasis on the specific people that really invented experimental psychology.
4) The most useful thing I read in this chapter that will help me better understand the history of psychology is the flow of students and professors to Germany to pursue experimental psychology. If it were not for the educational opportunities in Germany during this time, then we might not have the psychology we know today.
5) The material in this chapter has built upon material I have learned in previous courses. Some of the topics in this chapter that were covered that I already had known about were: two-point threshold; “just noticeable difference”, Weber’s law; mental chronometry or reaction time; sensory and perception; serial learning; conscious attitudes. A lot of these things I have already known about but learning the history of them, I've learned even more. For example, I had no clue that reaction time had another name, and that serial learning was called that, I just thought it was called try and remember as much as you possibly can and be able to recall it to someone.
6a) I would like to learn more about nonsense syllables.
6b) I would like to learn more about nonsense syllables because there were not any examples given of them, just an explanation of what they were. While the explanation may be sufficient for some people, I would have liked to see an example of what a nonsense syllable is. I also found it fascinating that Ebbinghaus created 2,300 of them!
7) Why was Germany the main focus for the migration of students pursuing higher education? What is a nonsense syllable? How did they study psychology before it being research based?
8) Terminology: Education in Germany. Wilhelm Wundt, Robert Bunsen, experimental psychology, two-point threshold, jnd, reaction time, weber’s law, serial learning, conscious attitudes, nonsense syllables.

1a) What topic did you find interesting? 1b) Why was it interesting to you?
I thought the German educational philosophy was very interesting. This philosophy emphasized original research and the academic freedom to pursue that research. I thought it was interesting because it encouraged learning even if it wasn’t necessarily a subject taught in classes.
2a) What person did you find interesting? 2b) Why were they interesting to you?
Wilhelm Wundt was very interesting because he purposefully set out to create a new psychology that emphasized the experimental methods borrowed from physiology, and he created the first laboratory of experimental psychology and the first journal devoted to describing the results of scientific research in psychology.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
I thought it was good to learn about how certain individuals paved the way for areas of psychology that we are used to learning about and are very prevalent today.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
It was somewhat interesting because I had no previous knowledge of these subjects.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
The creation of experimental psychology because that is something that is in a lot of aspects of studying psychology.
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 6b) Why?
I would like to learn a little more about research on color vision because I think it it is something we take for granted and we don’t give much thought to but is actually very interesting.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter? I didn’t really have many questions at all.
8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
psychology
experimental

1a) What topic did you find interesting?

I found Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve interesting.

1b) Why was it interesting to you?

I find this interesting because it was the first breakthrough in memory research, one step closer to learning what long term and short term memory was with his “Savings method,” and I find everything that relates to memory interesting.

2a) What person did you find interesting?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

2b) Why were they interesting to you?

Not only did he launch the studies on memory, he created psychological journalism. He seemed like a really hard worker and without the psychology journals, the public wouldn’t know as much as they do about psychology.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?

I think the overall message of this chapter was that Germany created an educational system that respected history and wissenschaft which created an environment that new ideas could cultivate. Because their education system was like this, they used history to create new experiments and build off of the old ideas. This created “New psychology,” and changed the course of psychological history.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?

I found this chapter very interesting because it talked a lot about memory and introspection and where thoughts go and if they stay with us. I find memory fascinating and seeing where our knowledge of memory came from is cool.

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

I think knowing the Wundtian Legacy and how he changed the way experimental psychology was going will be the most useful to know because this was a pivotal moment in history and after him was the spread of “New Psychology.”

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?

This builds onto my previous knowledge because it changed my perspective on the history of psychology. So far we have only been talking about things that have been going on in America. It is nice to see that leaps and bounds were made in other countries too and that education has a lot to do with the course of history.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?

I would like to learn more about imageless thought.

6b) Why?

I think if I learned more about it, I would understand it better. I want to know how it was disproved and just understand more about the concept.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?

Why was imageless thought and conscious attitudes thrown into the end of the chapter? Was it just to point out the fact that E.B. Titchener was wrong?
8) Terms: Hermann Ebbinghaus, Forgetting Curve, savings method, wissenschaft, new psychology, experimental psychology, Wundtian Legacy, imageless thought, conscious attitudes, E.B. Titchener.

1a) The topic that I found interesting was "Studying immediate Conscious Experience."
1b) The reason that I found this interesting, was because I felt like Wundt made a very good point in explaining this principle. Wundt looked at immediate consciousness, and said that it was not the best way to look at things, because it relies on self-observation. This in turn relies on faulty memory, and it is unsystematic, and allows for the risk of not being accurate. However, he came up with internal perception, which was like self-observation, but was a much narrower process of responding immediately to precisely controlled stimuli. There was some consequences with this too, but the data was much more accurate, which was the goal.

2a) The person that I found interesting was Ernst Weber.
2b) He was interesting to me, because he had made a great discovery in creating Weber's Law. He was able to connect the psychological side of an experiment with a physical test. This was a big deal in history, because Weber showed that there was not a one to one relationship between changes in the physical world, and the psychological experience of those changes.

3a) The overall message of this chapter is another necessary one for the meaning of this class. The subject matter of this chapter helps give an understanding of why it is important to know the history of psychology. This specific chapter talked about ways to experiment and create tests that show and support the science behind psychology.
3b) To me, this chapter was pretty dry. The reason I say this is because I know when I find myself daydreaming while reading that the text isn't catching my attention, which is what happened to me during this chapter. Like I stated before, I understand that the information in this chapter was important for the history of psychology, I just didn't find this exact information too intriguing.

4) The thing that I read in this chapter that I thought will be the most helpful in studying the history of psychology was about Wundt, and how he was the founder of experimental Psychology. From what I got out of it, at this time, people were kind of skeptical of psychology, because it sounded like just a bunch of thoughts from random people. But, Wundt was able to start doing experiments and having evidence to support some of his psychophysic theories. People began to believe in his work, and psychology as a whole, and that was very important for the future of psychology.

5) This builds off of what I have already learned in this class and in other classes for that matter, because a lot of the things that we learn about, and base our knowledge in psychology off of is experiments that have been done by prior psychologists. However, I have never stopped to think of who started these experiments. I'm sure experiments to support psychology would've been created at some point regardless, but it is definitely beneficial that Wundt founded them at the time he did, because he was able to pave the way for many more experiments after his.

6a) The topic that I would like to learn more about is imageless thought.
6b) I sort of understood it from the text, but I would like to do a little more research on it to really get an understanding of it, because it sounds like something that could be really fascinating if i got a better understanding of it.

7) An idea that I had while reading this section, and previous sections for that matter, is that you really have to give all these founders, philosophers, important people, whatever you want to call them, credit. It has to take a lot of time, effort, and persistence to get your name in a text book for millions of students to learn about. Like we have stated it's the things these people do that get remembered, not the people themselves, but they have helped get us to where we are today which is really important.

8) Terms: Wundt, Immediate Conscious, internal perception, Weber, Weber's Law, Experimental psychology

1a) What topic did you find interesting? I found Weber’s law to be very interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you? I found it interesting just because it’s something that has crossed my mind when I’m at the gym be I’ve never thought about it in-depth. I have never thought that there was a law about it. I have often wandered if there was any scientific or mathematical reason for the weights at the gym moving up by five pounds and ten pounds. I guess Weber’s law would be a reasonable explanation. In Weber’s experiment observers judged weights and were supposed to indicate when the weight changed. He found that for example if they started off with a 30g weight they didn’t judge at a change in weight had occurred until it was up to 33g. He also noticed that as the weight went up that weight before a change was distinguished also increased for example if the first weight was 60g than the weight that the change would be noticeable would be at 66g. Weber’s law is jnd/S=K. Jnd standing for “just noticeable difference” and S standing for “standard stimulus.”
2a) What person did you find interesting? Wihelm Wundt
2b) Why were they interesting to you? Because he is pretty but the father of experimental psychology. He wrote many books and articles that contribute to the psychology. He was only in he’s mid forty’s when he arrived at the University of Leipzig, leading university in Germany at the time, and had contributed a lot already to the study if psychology. At Leipzig he started a lab were he and his student began to do original studies which is now called Psycologisches Institute.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter? I think that the overall message of this chapter was to show how psychology became an experiment field. It also shows the relationship between physical stimulus and the perception of the stimulus. The chapter also inform us on who paved the way in the field.
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not? This chapter helped me understand more about the cognitive functions. I also found Weber’s law to be very interesting. And I learned of all the many contributions that people like Wundt, Weber, Eddinghaus, Muller and others made to the field of psychology.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? I guess this chapter helped me appreciate my research methods class a little more because I now see how psych started to become an experimental field. And it also showed me how psych started to become credible as a form of study.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes? To me it’s like the past chapters are telling a story and this chapter is giving us more details to help the story make more sense to us. We all know that psychology was once in the philosophy category and that it is now a science and so what this chapter does is to explain how that came to be.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about? I would like to learn more about perception and sensation.
6b) Why? Because I found Weber’s law to be interesting and would like to know what or how else we misinterpret sensations.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter? Does the numbering system at the gym stem from Weber’s Law or was it just a practical way to do things because they don’t want to have too many equipment in the gym?
8) Terms: Weber’s Law, perception, sensation, Wundt, Weber, Eddinghaus, Muller, physical stimulus, “just noticeable difference” or jnd, “standard stimulus” or S

1a) (Interesting) Appreciative Mass (why?) perception through focused attention has always been a topic of interest through personal ties.
2. (Interesting Person) Naturally I’d have to say Johann Herbart (why?) because of his concept of apperceptive
3a) (Message) The connection of Psychology as a science in the empirical sense (Interesting?) yes (why?) I enjoy hearing about the rise of psychology and the many different experiments, or philosophies that came about thought this chapter
4) (Contribution to History) I think Wundt’s concept of new Psychology gave me a new perspective and it showed a clear connection to the physiological side of psychology
5) (Chapter build) This chapter most specifically builds on the experimental side of psychology. As I increase the knowledge of what psychology is as a whole, you find out the struggles and advances that were made from reading through this section. I have a better understanding of what experimental psychology is as well as a more integrated idea of the history that psychology derives from. Of course this being with the German influence.
6a) (topic to learn about) Psychophysics (why?) it combines my love of physics and the perception that it entails. This has a lot to do with my sports psychology background and also should clearly explain my interest. As most of what I deal with on a day to day basis has a strong connection to psychophysics.
7) (Questions) well the questions that I found myself asking dealt with the Psychophysics. But I always have questions that relate to what I do and how it is perceived. I guess more specifically I would want to know what things we can do to bring out the proficiency of others. Or in this case Behavior Modification. But another big question is how others view us and how that knowledge of how others may view us changes our perception of the culture of that person.
8) Terminology: Appreciative Mass, Johann Herbart, Psychophysics, Wundt, New Psychology, Empirical, Experimental.

1) What topic did you find interesting? Why?

I found The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve to be interesting. As a student and as an education major, I have learned a little about retention of new knowledge in relationship to school and tests. After learning new information, students remember less and less each day and even each hour, which is what The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve describes. According to this forgetting curve, 40% of memory is lost after just twenty minutes. This is important to consider as a future educator. Repetition of information is vital, as well as understanding rather than rote memorization.

2) What person did you find interesting? Why?

I found Wilhelm Wundt to be interesting because he was a major part of the chapter. He created the first school of psychology, he heavily influential books, and his work lives on today. I believe that if one person is known for such a great amount of work, they must be highly important. As a result, those people are interesting because there is something that makes them outstanding, even if we can not pinpoint what that quality is.

3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?

The chapter focused on the development of new psychology and influential people to this development.

3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?

I found parts of the chapter to interesting, but overall, the focus on people was rather boring.

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

I think understanding Wundt's contribution to psychology is very important because he had such a large influence on the development of psychology as field of study.

5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?

As mentioned earlier in post, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve is relatable to information I have learned in my education courses. We have discussed the importance of reviewing new information several times before assessing students because loss of memory begins instantly. According the foretting curve, after a day, the majority of information has been lost. This also emphasizes the importance of not simply memorizing information, but understanding it. Not only does that relate to my education courses, it also relates to this course. We have discussed in class the reasons why people do not enjoy history and one of the reasons is memorization of people and dates, which is exactly what the forgetting curve suggests against doing.

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

I would like to learn more about women in the field of psychology. This was very briefly mentioned in this chapter, but feminism and equality is a special area of interest of mine. I am a female percussionist, which has led to some unequal treatment in my field of study. My personal experience with sexism and discrimination is what triggers my interest in this problem in other fields of study.

7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?

I was hoping to understand more about imageless thought. What makes it a controversial topic?

8) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Imgaeless thought, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, Wilhelm Wundt

1a) I found the topic of physiological psychology to be really interesting.
1b) It’s really interesting due to the fact that Wundt had a huge contribution to this aspect of psychology. His research was really enthralling to read about.
2a) The person I found to be more interesting is Ernst Weber.
2b) It’s interesting because he was really smart. He was able to contribute mathematics into psychology, with his later named law; Weber’s Law.
3a) I didn’t exactly like this chapter as much as I did the earlier chapters. 
3b) It was harder to get into the chapter compared to others because it was hard to read at first. I don’t really like learning the mathematical aspects that is extremely important to psychophysics. I also didn’t know things like Weber’s law and the whole topic of psychophysics existed.
4) I think the most useful information was Wundt’s contribution to psychology.
5) It builds on to what we've already learned in that we know how psychology has gotten to that point in time. Science itself was developing fast and making experimental psychology easier. In that sense new techniques were being developed and still continuously building during that time frame. It was leading into modern psychology.
6a) I think I would like to learn more about imageless thoughts.
6b) It is kind of weird that they never resolved the argument about imageless thoughts and happened with that. The chapter didn’t really elaborate on the whole topic.
7) I thought a lot about the concept that we’ve always learned that Wundt was considered the father of psychology. Why is that so? Why aren’t multiple people considered the fathers of psychology? So many people helped push it forward to develop into what it is now.
8) TERMS:
Psychophysics
Wundt
Weber’s Law
Ernst Weber
Imageless thoughts
Modern psychology

1a) Weber’s Law

1b) The idea of thresholds has always been interesting to me. One way I look at is the common idiom, “The straw that broke the camel’s back.” I’ve always looked at this literally. At some point there has to be one more straw that will be too much.

2a) G.E. Muller.

2b) I admire how much of his time he dedicated to being in a psychology laboratory, he truly was an experimental psychologist. I also am very fond of the idea that he liked to give his students credit for work done. One of the reasons he is not very well known along with that a lot of his work was never translated to English. I’m curious as to why this is. Did they not deem his work important enough to be translated?

3a) I think this chapter sort of fell into the, “names and dates,” category of history but it was important to read about different psychologist’s contributions and how experimental psychology came to be.

3b) Not all of it was interesting but something I did find very interesting was how intertwined all of these psychologist’s lives were. For example Oswald Kulpe studied under and worked with Wilhelm Wundt, worked in G.E. Muller’s lab and was friends with Edward Titchner.

4) Although it is reiterating chapter 1, I think it is important to remember that histories are continually being rewritten and are sometimes subject to change or people’s perceived ideas of what happened.

5) It shows how Psychology is a sort of never-ending mystery. One person discovers an idea that is just a clue to a bigger picture or idea. Ideas continuously build off each other and change due to people’s perceptions, beliefs and discoveries.

6a) Hermann Ebbinghaus’ sentence completion test.

6b) The chapter only touched briefly on it. It said it was comparable to the intelligence test developed by Alfred Binet in France and I would like to know how these two tests are related.

7) Something that has always intrigued me about people involved with psychology is how open-minded they usually are. Something that sometimes bothers me with some psychologists is how stubborn they are in their ways. How can they be so sure that their way is the right way when they know everyone’s brain perceives situations, ideas, beliefs and the world around us in their own way?

8) Weber’s Law, Thresholds, G.E. Muller, experimental psychology, Oswald Kulpe, Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchner, Hermann Ebbinghaus, sentence completion test, Alfred Binet.

1a) What topic did you find interesting?
In this chapter i found the studies on memory very interesting.
1b) Why was it interesting to you?
They were interesting to me because i have a horrible memory in general. Sometimes i forget the names of friends i’ve had for twelve years, i can’t remember someone elses phone number for the life of me (so i am royally screwed if i ever get arrested), right now writing this i have to keep referring back to the book because i have already forgotten the information i just read. I find it interesting how they even studied memory with the nonsense syllables words and number sequences. I also thought the memory drum was an interesting device for testing one's memory.
2a) What person did you find interesting?
Fechner
2b) Why were they interesting to you?
i found his story morbidly funny, because he kept looking into the sun and went blind (sort of). All i kept thinking was where was this guys mother to tell him not to do that or he’d go blind? i mean did he really think it was a good idea to do that much damage to your optic nerve? i know this is probably a presentist point of view, but even back then they should have known better. I wonder if this guy is the reason moms warn their children not to look into the sun, because it had to come from somewhere.
3a) What do you think of the overall message of the chapter?
The overall message of the chapter i thought was to explain why in this time period it was popular to travel abroad to Europe
3b) Was it interesting to you? Why or why not?
Not really, aside from the memory stuff i found it dry.
4) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
Just the realization as to why in certain times in history that people focused in certain arias of the world… IE France, Germany, Italy, and America
5) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to what you have already learned about the History of Psychology or to material you have learned in other classes?
It did in the way that it showed which psychologist studied/ mentored under who, you can see the baton being passed down the line in the way that this person discovered this and then his research students went on to this, and with their guidance this was discovered in their labs with their students.
6a) What topic would you like to learn more about?
Muller or Wurzburg
6b) Why? they were the only two from the chapter that peaked my interest.
7) What ideas or questions related to what you were reading did you have while reading the chapter?
Imageless thought was an interesting concept, and i wondered how it could be aplied to people who were born blind?
nonsense syllables, memory drum, Imageless thought