What we
would like you to do is to find a topic from what we have covered in this week's
readings that you are interested in and search the internet for material on
that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the
topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube
clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and
use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources (only
one video please and make sure it adds to the topic).
1) Once
you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what
your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week,
and why you are interested in it.
2) What
are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
3) Next,
I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and
integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write
about the topic.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please
include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you
chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Let us
know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
Blake Wedeking
What did the founder of experimental psychology do in his lifetime? This is what I set out to figure out in this week’s blog. Wilhelm Wundt is one of the best regarded psychologists today and is known for starting the first experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig and for publishing the first journal on psychological research. I found this man to be very interesting as he set out to separate psychology from the rest of the sciences out there. I thought he would be a great choice to research as he was not a negotiator by any means but had beliefs that psychology should be separate and studied in its own field. This week’s chapter discusses a great detail about Wundt so I decided to look more in depth about who this man was and why we study him in the field of psychology.
During Wundt’s lifetime he was regarded to have been an advocate for many ideas in psychology. In fact, Wundt was the first person to call himself a psychologist. He was the first person to develop his own experimental psychology lab, and also the first person to separate psychology from biology and philosophy. In 1874, Wundt published the first book on the topic of psychology named The Principles of physiological Psychology which Wundt describes as an attempt to mark out the new science. This book utilized a system of psychology that sought to investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including feelings and emotions derived from oneself. Wundt was the first to offer a class in scientific psychology, while strongly stressing the use of experimental methods drawn from the natural sciences, stressing the relationship between the human brain and the mind. Wundt also believed in introspection in which we focus on the subjective observation of one’s own experiences. Although, Wundt is now regarded for his teaching and bringing about some of the best psychologists of the time through his teachings. After getting a chance to examine some of Wundt’s books, I have pondered what we can learn from this man and his contributions on the field of psychology.
Why was Wundt so interested in the conscious mind and the interpretations that our mind and brain make? Wundt was highly interested in the results people may have to different stimuli. Wundt asked observers to be aware of their own thoughts and present what they concluded from the varying stimuli. Although, this method seems a little unethical because you are relying on someone’s interpretation to the stimuli being presented. He believed that by varying the conditions in the experiment it would change the generality of the entire experiment. Wundt founded the first of only two experimental psychology labs in existence at that time. The other one was developed by Harvard professor William James which focused on teaching demonstrations rather than the experimentation part that Wundt was interested in. Later on G. Stanley Hall, Wilhelm Wundt’s student, founded the first American experimental psychology lab at John Hopkins University. Some argue that Wilhelm Wundt is best regarded for his contributions to structuralism and introspection but most people will regard him as the founding father for our present day psychology.
Wundt was known to his students as a quiet, hard-working, and very good researcher, as well as a very good lecturer in the classroom. He was also to be very visual and often did not use lecturing notes so he did know what he was talking about in classroom discussions. Students say that he would go on for hours in a low pitched voice but we are not regarding him as the most entertaining of the psychologists out there. He is by far one of the most interesting people to learn about with regards to the developments of the field of psychology. I still find it fascinating that other people around the world were looking at developing this type of science, but he is given credit for it. Although, he is known for his experimentation, one may wonder if his published findings and ideas contributed to him being considered the “father” of this field today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
I choose this site because it provided me general background knowledge into the life of Wilhelm Wundt. This site also allowed me to look at similar principles Wundt developed and used throughout his lifetime. Great starting point to research so that you can have the building blocks to learn more about his lifework.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
I liked this website because it showed me the general influences Wundt had to the field of psychology. It also listed his students that went on to do big things in the field of psychology. I enjoyed looking at this site for a further explanation of Wundt’s work and the types of experimentation that he would do in his line of work.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
This website describes William James and Wilhelm Wundt because they are known as competing for the throne in a sense. This website provides greater background information into the life of Wilhelm Wundt such as his childhood years and his life up until he became famous for his works. This website also is a bit more entertaining because you can tell that the writer is interested and engaged in his life.
Topical Blog
I decided to research Ernst Weber for my topical blog. Like many of the people who made discoveries in psychology, Weber was a physiologist. He was from Germany and fun fact; he was the third out of thirteen children. He studied medicine at the University of Wittenberg and later became a lecturer at the University of Leipzig.
Weber made important discoveries about the sense of touch and invented the idea of Weber’s law, the just-noticeable difference between two similar weights. He founded psychophysics, the branch of psychology that studies the relations between physical stimuli and mental states. Weber made his name studying touch, pain, sight, hearing taste, and smell.
He experimentally determined the accuracy of tactile sensations, or the distance between two points on the skin, in which a person can perceive two separate touches. He discovered the “two-point threshold.” Also, in 1834, he conducted research on the lifting of weights. From his researches he discovered that the experience of differences in the intensity of sensations depends on the percentage differences in the stimuli rather than absolute differences.
Back to the “two-point threshold,” in Weber’s experiments he would test to see if subjects would recognize when they were being touched by one or two points of an object. He did this moving the legs of a compass further and further apart. Using this method, he discovered that the human body had different sensitivities to touch. Subjects could tell two touches in less than twentieth of an inch on their tongues, two touches in half an inch on their cheeks, and two touches in two inches on their backs. He discovered that there were more nerve endings in, for example, fingertips than in the human back.
And for Weber’s Law, or the concept of the “just-noticeable difference,” subjects noticed differences of one-sixtieth in light intensity, one-thirtieth in pain difference, one-tenth in pitch perception, one-quarter in smell, and one-third in taste. However, these ratios did not hold up at extremes. For example, if a candle was added to a well-lit room, the subject would not recognize the difference from a candle lit in a dim room.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
I chose this site because it gave a bibliography of Ernst Weber. I wanted to know more about his life and this helped provide many of the facts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEdTRw8B7PI
I chose this video because it was one of the only videos I could find on Ernst Weber. I liked it because it showed me that “Weber” is pronounced like “Veber” because it is German.
http://geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses.html?pid=74&sid=253:Ernst-Weber-One-of-the-Founders-of-Psychophysics
This link first caught my attention because it was titled “One of the Founders of Psychophysics,” so I became curious and looked at the site. I chose to keep this site because I liked how the information was uniquely displayed into columns.
1a) State what your topic is.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Hermann Ebbinghaus made many contributions to memory and to experimental psychology, which was the main focus of this chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I do find this topic interesting to explore because the things he found out can help us better remember things, possibly for tests. It does pertain to a student’s everyday life so it is a relatable topic.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Hermann Ebbinghaus made a variety of interesting finding in the world of memory and experimental psychology. He made many contributions to science and memory such as the forgetting curve, spacing effect, learning curve, and serial learning among many others. He was the first to use actual science to study memory. He discovered the forgetting curve and he conducted this research on his own. He did a self-study that was well controlled and was the first to use nonsense syllables to study memory. He created a list of about 2,300 nonsense syllables to study and made sure that a vowel separated the two consents on either side. He made sure that they were not actual words, they were all nonsense. He recorded how many trials it took for him to perfectly recall the list, and the recorded how many he remembered after certain amounts of time went by. Then he recorded how long it took him to relearn them as well. He conducted this study for one year and then replicated it. This study helped us realize that meaningless stimuli are more difficult to memorize than meaningful stimuli. His studies also found that it increasing the material we learn takes more time to learn it, which would be the learning curve. He also found it is easier to relearn material rather than “starting from scratch”. We also are more likely to forget right after we learn, which is why cramming for a test usually doesn’t work, we forget that information right away, but if we take our time and study a little bit each day we will retain that information instead of forgetting it.
I did learn too that Hermann Ebbinghaus had a great personality. He connected well with his students and with fellow staff. He had a charismatic personality and was excited about what he was finding. He also didn’t just lecture students, he made sure to have discussions with them. It seems like he valued the students who did end up doing research with him. He made sure to credit his students and pay them for the hard work that they had put in. He seemed like a pretty “stand-up’ guy.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
I liked this website because I got to learn more about the personality of Ebbinghaus as a lecturer and as a person. This website made him seem very relatable to his students.
http://www.intelltheory.com/ebbinghaus.shtml
This website listed his important contributions to science and also gave more detail as to his findings of the forgetting curve
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
This site went even more in depth into his research and how he controlled for different variables.
My topical blog is on Ernst Weber who was a German psychologist. I found Weber to be interesting because he dealt with touch sensation and a concept known as “just-noticeable difference.” He is known for being one of the founders of experimental psychology because he did many experiments with humans and their responses to certain psychical stimuli. Which then resulted in a study that dealt with weights or “just-noticeable difference.” He used weights in this study. He would place two weights on a table and the participants would then lift each one and determine what the difference is. This is another reason I found him interesting because in my human anatomy class, we were learning about similar studies. Not only were his experiments with “just-noticeable difference based on touch, but it would also be based on pain, sight, smell etc.
Another experiment he conducted was one called the “two-point threshold.” This experiment was to see if people could tell if they were being touch with one point on an object or with two points of an object. He used a compass for this study and noticed that the further apart the compass was that there was a difference in touch sensitivities.
Weber’s experiments were very interesting to me mainly because I find the human body to be interesting and would like to learn more about it. I also think his experiments are relatable because touch and other sensations are something we deal with on a daily basis. The “two-point threshold” is very common in daily lives because I cannot tell you how many times I have experienced this. In dealing with, bumping into others or if you are getting poked etc. The weight experiment was relatable because I have talked about this in another class. When you look at an object, you cannot determine how much it weighs, but instead you can make an assumption. So for example, if you are looking at two cans, both of which you cannot see the contents. They are both small cans, so you make an assumption that it is not heavy, but when you go to lift one based off your assumption, you try to lift if vigorously, but it turns out to be filled with weights and is very heavy. That is the way I understood the experiment from both this experiment and from a previous class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
I chose this sight because it was detailed. It also contained specific information I was looking for relating to Weber’s findings.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
This sight gave me general information about the different experiments he conducted. It was very useful because it went into his experiments with depth.
http://geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses.html?pid=74&sid=253:Ernst-Weber-One-of-the-Founders-of-Psychophysics
This one gave me a better understanding of Weber. It had information about his past and his experiments. Overall, I was mainly looking for information on his experiments and studies.
J.P.
For this week’s topic blog I decided to look into Hermann Ebbinghaus. I found that his research on memory and how fast we forget was interesting. Ebbinghaus worked with experimental psychology to study the effects of memory and forgetting. What Ebbinghaus discovered was that the rate at which we forget information is most lost within the first twenty minutes and continuous to degrade over the next hour then slightly tappers off. He also discovered that when a person learns something you learn the most on the first time and each time after going over whatever it is one is studying we add a little more each time.
Ebbinghaus work was ground breaking for psychology. He was born in 1850 in Germany. His father was wealthy and encouraged his to peruse an academic career. He was interested in history and philosophy before his studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War. He eventually returned to his studies and received a doctorate in philosophy. When Ebbinghaus discovered Fechner’s book “Elements of Psychophysics” his interest in experimental psychology took off. Soon after he started to conduct research on memory and was determined to show that research on memory could be done. With his first study he started to break new ground in psychology, he published “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”. Along with his works Ebbinghaus discovered his forgetting and learning curves.
I looked more into modern forgetting and found that researchers at MIT have discovered something related to memory and in forgetting bad memories. What they have been able to do is link a gene called the Tet1 gene and in mice they can give a drug to them and after being conditioned to fear a cage they are less fearful post drug treatment. The gene may be linked to bad memories and they benefit for humans could be that they may be able to erase things like PTSD out in them. This would be great in helping people after a bad car accident or returning from a war tour in which they may have seen things that could hurt their well-being. However this can be a bad thing I think if we start to use this drug and not learn from poor mistakes like a bad memory of a night in jail being erased and then maybe making the same mistake again.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/gene-forget-bad-memories-found-by-scientists_n_3957354.html
This was an interesting article on the Tet1 gene and what the MIT reserachers have been able to lean/do in regards to it.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
In this article I was able to learn about the history of Ebbinghaus. I read about his youth and his previous work leading to what he did in his ground breaking discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus#Research_on_memory
This was a great site to learn about the learning and forgetting curves. This also gave me a lot of good jumping off points to go different places with my research.
Hermann Ebbinghaus made great contributions to psychology through his work on human memory. The chapter has a section on this contribution, mentioning his time spent memorizing nonsense, three-syllable serials. This interested me in a couple different ways. First, I was amazed at how much time must have been spent doing such research, especially when he himself was the subject. Secondly, I learned a little about this last year in a different psychology course.
Ebbinghaus was born in 1850 in what is now Wuppertal, Germany. He entered into the University of Bonn at age 17 to study history and philosophy, but soon left to take up arms in the Franco-Prussian War. After reading Fechner's "Elements of Pyschophysics," Ebbinghaus became interested in studying memory. Ebbinghaus decided to perform an experiment with himself as a subject, memorizing around 2,300 syllables, divided into different lengths of series. He did this for around a year, between 1879-1880, and then again duplicating the process in 1883-1884.
Ebbinghaus tried a few different methods of retention. One of such was recall: both trying to recall the items not necessarily in order in free recall, and also in order in what is known as serial recall. Another test was recollection, where Ebbinghaus tried to identify a syllable from a previously studied list in a new one. This is more about recognizing a syllable than memorizing it. Lastly, he coined the term, savings, to mean the amount of time it took to relearn the list the second time, divided by the time it took to learn it the first time. Thus, 10 minutes to relearn the second time divided by 20 minutes from the first attempt results in 50% savings.
From his research, Ebbinghaus found the forgetting curve as well as serial positioning curve. The forgetting curve is a graph of how quickly we forget information after learning it: At first, very quickly, and then gradually slowing down. The serial positioning curve on the other hand, is U-shaped, based on what information we tend to remember. Thus, the primacy effect is that we remember material towards the beginning better, and also material in the end, called the recency effect. This forms a U-shape curve in how we remember information. Ebbinghaus also discovered that he did much better when he spaced out learning over time, rather than cramming, or massing, information into one longer session. This is important for college students especially, even though most of us still don't learn from it. Still, these results have provided great insight into how we learn and what we retain, and the ways to do so. To me, this is a monumental discovery for education and psychology alike.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This site highlighted the methods of Ebbinghaus's research and defined the terms he gave to them.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
This provided biographical information on Ebbinghaus and why he decided to study memory.
http://psychcentral.com/classics/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
This site provided details into his experimentation, making it as scientific as possible by neutralizing as many variables as he could.
1.) I am choosing to research what effects mental chronometry and reaction time. This relates to the chapter because of the experiments that were included in the chapter such as light intensity and what effects it has on reaction time. I found interest to expand on the topic of reaction time because of there being many other factors that will effect reaction time, I was curious when reading this section about what other factors contribute to reaction time and how do they effect it.
2.) The first article that I read was a book that I found online. It had to do with aging and what it does to reaction time. Even though I assumed that as we all age our reaction time slows down, I wanted to know do we peak (gradually get a faster reaction time and peaking at an example age of 25) and after a peak does reaction time gradually get slower or is there a point in someone’s life where reaction time will decline rapidly. One of the first key points I ran across is that individuals that pursue a higher education end up having a faster reaction time and decline at a slower rate while aging compared to those that only finish high school. I have known about keeping the brain active is healthy, but I did not know keeping the brain active would have any effect on reaction time while aging. In the study the individuals that had a college degree were able to react just as fast as those that were ten years younger than they were without a college degree. Aging with all of the individuals did not affect the reaction time of simple tasks substantially, but as the tasks became more difficult the gap between the age groups became bigger. Another thing that I found to be interesting was that there was a gradual slowdown in reaction time with aging, but then in later adulthood there is a significant decline (age is not stated). I found all of this information to be interesting, age does have an effect on reaction time, but also other factors such as education help determine if age is going to have a drastic effect on reaction time. Of course along with age there are gender, class and health status that also play into effect of reaction time. Also, when participants had more education they did not gradually slow their reaction time as much as those with less education, I am guessing because their brain is still active, but when they got older their decline was more drastic.
The second article that I read was about different tests done that have shown a difference in an individual’s reaction time. The part of the article that I was interested in was the differences in reaction time between genders. In the article it stated that in every age group men were dominant in reaction time when compared to women. The article also stated that when both men and women are dehydrated, women tend to have even slower reaction times but men tend to have faster reaction times. When aiming at a target men are have a faster reaction time to aim and shoot, but women tend to be more accurate. This statement got me to think that the difference of reaction time is not that women are actually slower than men at reacting to events. I think that women are more cautious and want to make sure they are right before they react. Men on the other hand just want to react as soon as possible, this could be because men find everything to be a competition and they want to make sure they are first even though they are not sure if they for sure need to be reacting or not. The evidence I had to back this statement up was the statement about women being more accurate even though they were slower. They wanted to make sure they were accurate rather than be the fastest one to aim and shoot, so that can also carry over to hearing tests and vision tests, they just want to be sure before they react to certain stimuli.
The third article that I read was about the difference between sight reaction times and hearing reaction times and which one was a quicker reaction. The results were that individuals responded faster to sound than they did for sight. Even though the light traveled faster than the sound, the nerves from sound triggered reaction faster than sight. I think that this is interesting because of the speed of light and the speed of sound, so I would have assumed that sight would have been faster because of the light being faster. A theory behind this study was also stated, a reason that hearing might trigger a faster reaction is due to evolution. For the fight or flight for survival, if a species was able to react faster when they heard noises nothing would sneak up on them causing them to be dominant especially while they were sleeping or a predator were behind them. This would give them an advantage because a faster reaction time could result in them escaping or getting ready to fight faster to protect themselves. I also like the idea that evolution was brought into the picture in this experiment because of the science behind it. The experiment is also a psychology experiment, which is a science, and evolution is also a science, this combination just allows the theory to make more sense as opposed to sight being faster due to the speed of light being faster. Even though that my hypothesis was not right, I found this study to be intriguing, but also showed me that there are other factors rather than obvious ones that play into results of any experiment, such as reaction time with aging, gender and sight vs. hearing. There is no definite answer to what truly effects reaction time because so many factors can effect results such as education and temperature of a room. The most important thing that I learned from my research was not that as we age we have a slower reaction time, or we react faster when we hear things rather than when we see them, but that there are factors that will effect results no matter the experiment. Sometimes the factors that affect the experiment can turn into their own experiment and is how new psychologists find different areas to study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586814/
I chose this topic because the first question that I thought when I was starting to research was how does reaction time and aging correspond with each other? I knew that reaction time was slower with age, but I wanted to know if it was gradual or rapid and if there are other factors that effected it. This article answered all of the questions that I had along with providing me with additional useful information.
http://biology.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm#Gender
I chose this article because it had to do with a ton of different things that effect reaction time. I found that to be interesting because it is the main reason why I chose this topic to do more research on, even though I ended up picking just one of the topics and focusing in on that topic.
http://www.colorado.edu/eeb/courses/1230jbasey/abstracts%202005/5.htm
I liked this article because it reminded me of the experiment in the chapter that resulted in a conclusion that more light intensity improves reaction time. I read this article and thought it would be interesting to compare sound and light and to see how much of a difference there is between the two.
1a) State what your topic is.
I chose to research Gustav Fechner. I am interested in Fechner’s loss of eyesight and then his downfall and his recovery.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Fechner was interested in afterimages. He is just one example of how far Researchers will go for their work.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Fechner went to great lengths for his work, which is one reason why I am so interested in him. He suffered through losing his eyesight, which brought on anxiety and depression. I am also interested in him because even though he did suffer through that, his eyesight came back and his recovery was complete by the mid 1840’s after resigning from his professorship in just 1839.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner.
Gustav Fechner’s main interest was vision. He conducted research on afterimages. His research involved him staring at the sun to see how staring at the sun to see how that affected afterimages. Even though he stared at the sun through colored glasses, his eyes still became unusually sensitive to light. It wasn’t just his eyes that suffered though.
He worked so hard that he had a physical breakdown. He resigned from Leipzig, the University he was teaching at and dropped out for three years. At first he got to keep his title as Professor, but eventually he lost his Physics chair to Wilhelm Weber and the university gave him a pension. He couldn’t stand any light at all and spent most of his time in a dark, closed off room where the walls were painted black. He also had a hard time sleeping, became exhausted and could not eat. A friend of Fechner’s told him that she had a dream and that he would get better if she prepared a dinner of raw spiced ham in Rhine wine and lemon juice. He said that he felt better but eventually his symptoms came back and he was worse. It has been suggested that his illness was neurotic because of that and because he had a dream that included the number 77 and surprisingly enough, he got better in 77 days.
During the time that he suffered his nervous breakdown, his interests turned to Philosophy. His main goal was to demonstrate the unity of mind and body. On October 22, 1850, he was lying in bed and that a connection between mind and body could be made through mental sensation and material stimulus. Lastly, Fechner had an impact on Freud’s work. Fechner’s suggestion on the unconsciousness influenced Freud and the development of Psychoanalysis. That is just one example, but Fechner’s work did not end when he stopped researching. He continued to impact other Psychologists in the future.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/fechner.html
I chose to use this website because I liked the information it had on Fechner leaving Leipzig.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/fechner.html
I chose this website because I found the information that it gave on Fechner’s breakdown interesting.
http://statprob.com/encyclopedia/gustavtheodorfechner.html
I used this website because I liked the information it gave about what happened to his professional career as a professor when he had his nervous breakdown.
Once you have completed your search and explorations we would like you to: 1a) State what your topic is. 1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. 1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
The topic that I will discuss is Gustav Fechner. Gustav Fechner relates to Chapter 4 because he is known for his ideas in psychophysics and this chapter revolves around psychophysics. Gustav Fechner is also well known for his sensation and perception theories and his chapter covers sensation and perception as well. I am interested in Gustav Fechner because reading about his study of visual afterimages caught my attention and I wanted to know more. I thought his study of visual afterimages
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Gustav Fechner studied medicine at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Although he didn’t practice medicine he became interested in physics. He also was one of the first people to found the idea of psychophysics. Even though he was educated with biology, he became more interested in the mathematic and physical aspects of science. Therefore, Fechner ended up involving into a profound physicist and philosopher. He then became a professor at the University of Leipzig teaching physics.
A couple years later he performed a study involving visual afterimages. This study caused Fechner to have great pain do to this light sensitivity. It also caused him to become partially blind. Fechner’s study consisted of him glaring into the sun for long periods of time to be able to study the idea of afterimages. After he became ill with blindness he basically wasn’t seen for about 3 years. After Fechner’s catastrophe with his sight he eventually recovered and stirred more towards philosophy.
Fechner is also known for being the main founder of experimental psychology. He used experimental research to study sensations in relating to physical stimuli. He had three theories of measurement: just-noticeable differences, the method of constant stimuli, and the method of average error. The most important has been known to be the method of constant stimuli. Throughout his years as a philosopher and physicist Fechner wanted to have psychophysics involve both philosophy and the science of physics.
Overall, Gustav Fechner is known for his experimental procedures and his ideas involving psychophysics. He made many important contributions to the physics and philosophy world. Without Fechner’s theories and ideas surrounding psychophysics where would we be today?
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/203301/Gustav-Theodor-Fechner
I chose this site because it discussed broadly what I wanted to talk about in the blog.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Consciousness.html
This site had the most information surrounding Fechner and his work. I enjoyed reading this website.
http://geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses.html?pid=55&sid=254:Gustav-Fechner-Founder-of-psychophysics
I chose to use this website as one of my sources for information because it discussed Fechner’s work in great detail. It was also organized in a great way.
The topic that I decided to further investigate from this chapter’s readings is mental chronometry. When I was younger, I watched a TV show that tested the reaction time of racer’s. I thought this was so interesting because I believe that sometimes the speed of a driver’s reaction time can win the race for them. I am a very competitive person, so reaction time in sports is something that interests me. There can be a game changing play made by someone just being a millisecond quicker on their feet than their opponent. In the book, chapter 4 discussed the significance of reaction time related to how quickly people can come up with an answer to something. I thought it would be interesting to find out some more information about mental chronometry and reaction time.
Mental chronometry is defined online as “the use of response time in perceptual-motor tasks to infer the content, duration, and temporal sequencing of cognitive operations” while reaction time is defined as “the elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent behavioral response”. Therefore, despite what the book makes it seem like, these two topics are actually not the same thing, but rather they relate and use each other for a common cause. I also found that there are four different ways of measuring reaction time. These methods are simple, recognition, choice and discrimination. Simple reaction time is the one most people probably think of. This type of reaction can be tested by pressing a button when a certain stimulus shows up. Recognition is similar but it involves distinguishing between two different types of stimuli. Therefore, someone may still have to press a button for a certain stimuli but refrain from pressing it when a different one appears. Choice is also similar but instead of not pressing a button for a certain different type of stimuli, the person would have to press a different button. Therefore, they are always clicking something, rather than holding back when a different stimulus occurs. The last type, discrimination, involves seeing two stimuli at once and being able to pick the one more suited to what the question asks for, i.e. brighter, longer, etc. I thought all of this was interesting because it reminded me of a couple concussions tests I had to take at the beginning of the school year. These tests would flash different colored boxes and we would have to click a certain key depending on if the color was red versus if it was blue. I find it fun being able to compare psychology to the things I do in everyday life, especially sports.
While thinking about how reaction time and mental chronometry relates to sports, I found some interesting statistics about athlete’s reaction times. In my readings, they discussed the reaction times of sprinters that competed in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The average reaction times for these sprinters were 166 milliseconds for males and 189 milliseconds for females. The fastest reaction time for a male was 109 milliseconds and the fastest reaction time for a female was 121 milliseconds. I then found a website that anyone can go on to test their reaction time. This website recorded that the average for the 6500865 people when I checked was 215 milliseconds. I think seeing this comparison for our society versus an elite athlete was very interesting. The website also had a bunch of graphs showing the differences in reaction times based on some things like days of the week. I tried out my reaction time and got around 300 milliseconds, which was a little disappointing for me. The test is very fun to do and addicting as well, trying to get a better time with every click.
There are many studies into how mental chronometry affects a person’s cognitive development and cognitive ability. At this point in time, there is only some evidence showing that the higher a person’s IQ, the faster their reaction time. The cause of this correlation is unclear at the moment, but it definitely leads to interesting questions and lots of research in the area. Some ways to improve your reaction time would be to up your energy but getting enough sleep or taking some caffeine, practicing, being active, not watching a lot of TV, using your imagination, and tensing up your muscles before the test. I find all of this information very interesting and I think studying reaction times would be a very fun field to go into.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_chronometry
I used this website to find out basic information and history of mental chronometry and reaction time. This website came in very handy with learning information about these two subjects and explaining it well. I used these ideas for the basis of my blog post.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Top-Tips-for-Faster-Reaction-Times-73277.shtml
This article talked a lot about reaction time and gave a lot of tips for how to improve it. I found this article very interesting and it helped me to dig a little deeper to learn more about why people’s reaction times may differ depending on their lifestyle.
http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php
This last website provided information for me that should real life data. It provided me with a fun test to try out my reaction time, and also gave me information about everyone else’s reaction times that had taken this test. I really enjoyed reading this website, and used a lot of the information from it in my blog post.
1a) My topic is Hermann Ebbinghaus.
1b) Ebbinghaus was a psychologist who experimented with memory and the forgetting curve. This chapter talked about memory so it included Ebbinghaus and a description of his work.
1c) I am interested in Ebbinghaus because I think his work was very unique. According to the brief description in the textbook, he was a very creative man who came up with an interesting way to study the forgetting curve.
2) Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who studied philosophy. He obtained a PhD at the age of 23 and and began studying memory in 1879. He supposedly stumbled across Gustav Fechner's book of psychophysics which possibly sparked his interest in memory and began his experimentation. He also was a professor and an excellent lecturer and teacher. His students, by all reports, enjoyed him and he was easy to relate to as a professor.
Ebbinghaus' work with memory specifically focused on the forgetting curve. In order to produce accurate results, Ebbinghaus needed to come up with a stimulus that was simple, neutral, and homogeneous. He invented something called the “nonsense syllable.” He described this as “Out of the simple consonants of the alphabet and our eleven vowles and diphthongs all possible syllables of a certain sort were constructed, a vowel sound being placed between two consonants. These syllables, about 2,3-- in number, were mixed together and then drawn out by chance and used to construct series of different lengths, several of which each time formed the material for a test.” He also had to come up with a way to measure the amount of retention and invented something called the savings method. Essentially his experimentation process went like this: he created a list of nonsense words (nonsense syllables) and tested to see how long the test subject could remember the whole list, and then half the list. He graphed the results and this is what we now call Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve.
Ebbinghaus discovered several things. How well we retain information is based on the strength of memory as well as the amount of time that has passed since learning. In order to retain information better, we should repeat the information. The more times the information is repeated, the greater retention. In addition, if we focus on making the information relevant, we will be more likely to retain the information.
Sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/the-ebbinghaus-curve-of-forgetting
I chose this website because it focused not on Ebbinghaus' life, but specifically on the curve of forgetting. This website focused on what the Forgetting Curve and Ebbinghaus' discoveries.
Psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozzniak.htm
I chose this website because it spoke about Ebbinghaus' professional life. It focused on his career as well as his work with memory.
Www.princeton/edu/achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Hermann_Ebbinghaus/html
I chose this article because it spoke about Hermann Ebbinghaus' whole life, both professionally and personally.
Courtney Wiese
Topical Blog
Gustav Fechner
Gustav Fechner is said to be the father of psychophysics as well as the founder of experimental psychology.
Fechner was born on April 1, 1801 in Germany. He came from a family of clergyman. His childhood was very strict and structured under his father who was the pastor of the village. And as he had such a religious background, and he would eventually try to disprove the new ideas of materialism. After his father died he and his mother and brother moved to live with his uncle. Originally, at the age of 16 Fechner went to study medicine at the University of Dresden and then eventually at the University of Leipzig, and he graduated in 1822. However, he decided he didn’t actually want to be a doctor, and never actually practiced. Instead he became worked for the university. While he worked for the university he began experimenting in physical and chemical problems. During this time he produced an immense amount of literature on his studies.
Fechner was married in 1833. In 1834 he was appointed a professorship of physics at Leipzig, however he resigned the position only after a few years due to severe exhaustion. In fact, for a few years he was debilitated due an unknown illness. His illness included hallucinations, eye problems and obsessions. His issue with light could also be due to his experiments with afterimages, in which he would stare at the sun for very long amounts of time. He would literally have to stay in dark rooms without any trace of light. In fact, he painted the rooms black! It was said that he couldn’t eat or sleep. Doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him. Fechner tried to cure himself using electric shock and laxatives. One night, one of Fechner’s friends said she had a dream in which she knew how to cure Fechner. He had to eat a specific dinner made of a special ham and wine, with lemon juice. Fechner made this, ate it, and felt better! However, the symptoms shortly returned. Then Fechner had a dream that had the number 77 in it, and he concluded that he would be better in 77 days. And he did feel better in 77 days. It is now thought to have been a bout of schizophrenia and neurosis.
The work Fechner focused on within psychophysics was the connection between body and mind. He wanted to find a mathematical way to formulate new laws within psychology. Fechner believed that Weber’s two point threshold theory would be a great way to use mathematics within psychology. So, Fechner figured that the “difference between two sensations may be defined by the number of ‘just noticeable differences’”. (International Encyclopedia) The ‘jnd’ could be used in mathematical terms.
Fechner was different from a lot of scientists at this time because he believed in a humanistic approach, while most of the people of this time believed in a mechanical approach; meaning humans were machines. This meant that people had no free will, and reacted to the environment. Fechner believed that people did have free will, they were not just passive vessels.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gustav_Theodor_Fechner.aspx - Gave a lot of basic background info and gave basic background on his accomplishments.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/fechner.html - This article was written by a professor, which made me believe it was pretty reliable information. This also gave more descriptive and detailed information about Fechner.
http://nethelper.com/article/Gustav_Theodor_Fechner - This gave me more background on Fechner’s life.
1a) State what your topic is.
Gustav Fechner
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This chapter discusses the influence Gustav Fechner had in the field of psychology. Gustav Fechner was the founder of experimental psychology. Fechner is now known for developing some important psychophysics methods that are used today.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I found it interesting that Gustav Fechner was the founder of experimental psychology. I also thought it was interesting that Fechner nearly went blind during his afterimage experiment. Fechner was willing to work hard and go out of his way to find answers in his work.
Gustav Fechner is known as the founder of experimental psychology. Experimental psychology is defined as the branch of psychology that applied the scientific method to research in the mind and behavior. Fechner made a big influence of the field of psychology. He was also a very religious man and known as an animist.
Gustav Fechner was born in southeastern Germany, on April 1, 1801. Fechner came from a very religious background. His father was a pastor who demanded to have a strict household. However, Fechner’s father passed away earlier in his childhood. Fechner’s family moved in with their uncle, where he retained until 1817. At the age of 5 Fechner was fluent in Latin. He was a very intelligent child. When Fechner was 16 he went to the University of Leipzig. This was the same year that Ernst Weber began teaching there.
Fechner studied medicine but quickly lost interest after receiving his degree. His interested than moved to math and physics. This influenced him to translated two French science textbooks into German. He joined the faculty at Leipzig in the department of physics. Fechner was then allowed to publish research in the area of vision. He was very interested in vision. He was interested in sensation and wanted to do research on numerous afterimages. During his research, Fechner injured his eye sight. He stared at the sun through colored glasses. His eyes became sensitive to light and he nearly went blind. This became a crisis for Fechner; he became very depressed for a few years. His depression then turned into heightened euphoria and delusions. During this crisis Fechner developed the “pleasure principle”. This was known as having the tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Fechner later recovers from his depression. On October 22, 1850, he was lying in bed and came to realize there was a connection between the mind and body. This results from the relationship between mental sensation and material stimulus. Fechner related the mind and body to each other empirically, which made to possible to have experiments. Fechner then had to figure out how to measure the stimulus and sensation. This was then determined through absolute threshold. However, absolute threshold could only identity the lowest points of sensation. Fechner wanted to measure higher levels on sensitivity. He then developed the differential threshold. Fechner then developed a mathematical equation that measured the two. Later on Fechner realizes that his equation can from what Ernst Weber’s work had already showed. The Weber-Fechner law then became known which concerns the relationship between the intensity and also quantity of a stimulus.
Later Fechner moved on to research on psychophysics. Psychophysics is defined as the relationship between the perception of a stimulus event and also the physical dimensions of the stimulus being perceived. The outer psychophysics was measure by his previous equation (mind and stimulus). However he realized the inner psychophysics was more difficult. Fechner was able to develop 3 meothds; limits, constant stimulus, and adjustment. These methods are known to still be used to psychology today.
Gustav Fechner is known as the founder of experimental psychology. Experimental psychology is defined as the branch of psychology that applied the scientific method to research in the mind and behavior. Fechner made a big influence of the field of psychology
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/fechner.html
I choose this website because it provided information on Fechner’s childhood and have more in depth details on his eyesight lose.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/fechner.html
I choose this website because it provided information about psychophysics (3 methods: limits, constant stimulus, and adjustment).
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/gustav-fechner-psychology-theory-lesson-quiz.html
I choose this website because it provided information on Weber-Fechner law and gave a great overall summary towards the end.
B.H.
Hermann Ebbinghaus, was a German philosopher who pioneered the study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. This topic relates to the chapter because it explains the study of memory and his findings. This topic interests me because I found an unusual person who defeats the theories of Ebbinghaus in regards to memory. It always is entertaining when a person defies the findings of a significant philosopher of the past.
Meet Brad Williams, for as long as he can remember, he has been able to recall the most small dates and details about his life. For example, he can picture and provide detail of Aug. 18, 1965, when his family stopped at Red Barn Hamburger during a highway trip through Michigan. He was 8 years old at the time, and he remembered he had a burger. “It was a Wednesday,” recalled Williams, now 51. “We stayed at a motel that night in Clare, Michigan. It seemed more like a cabin.” To himself and his family his ability to recall dates and times is a consistent source of enjoyment. But according to one expert, Williams’s skill ranks up to be one of the best in the world. Doctors are constantly studying him to get a full understanding of memory.
He is a radio anchor in La Crosse, and loves people testing his memory. Name a date from the previous 40 years and, after a few minutes, he can naturally tell you what he did that day and what was in the newscast.
How about Nov. 7, 1991? “Let’s see,” he mused, gazing into the distance for about five seconds. “That would be around when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. Yes, a Thursday. There was a big snowstorm here the week before.”
He went on to correctly identify numerous events including the birth of the first test-tube baby in 1978, the toxic-gas leakage in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs in tennis’ “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973.
Ebbinghaus stated that something can be learned by heart but not again repeated. At best we can only recall certain events and only isolated fragments return. So the question is, this gift that Williams has, did he have to repeat events and dates in his head or does he just remember them? Because if you want to learn a longer list of events and happenings you have to go over it frequently. Williams has a gift, a gift a lot of people will never understand.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23296808/ns/health-mental_health/t/scientists-study-mans-amazing-memory/#.UkOBiYashsI
This website helped educate me on the life of Brad Williams and told me the story of his gift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus
This website provided me with information regarding Ebbinghaus’s study of memory.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
This website provided me with information on what kind of memory studies Ebbinghaus went thru to obtain the knowledge he had.
The topic that I found interesting is Hermann Ebbinghaus and his ideas on memory. This was an advancement in the world of psychology because this helped us learn more about how the brain works with memory and what we forget. The idea of memory works towards the ideas of short and long term memory.
Ebbinghaus used himself as an experiment to gather data and higher mental processes. He did the experiment more than once so that he could collect all the data in the best way possible. While he did testing with a puzzle, he was finding the best ways to recall the puzzle. One way that he tried to recall was with the use of the savings method and that consisted of the amount of information stored in the subconscious even after the information can’t be seen in the conscious. After this method was noticed by Ebbinghaus, he was the first to make the learning curve. This was the rate that we are able to progress learning information that is new to us.
Another major advancement that Ebbinghaus founded was the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve is the capability for the mind to keep the information but it decreases as time goes on. Ebbinghaus came to the realization that is a matter of nature that we will forget. From the graph that he created, after several days of learning the information it goes from 100% memory to 40%. You will forget sooner rather than later as the curve slows down as time goes by.
There are different ways to improve your memory. One of the best ways to connect the information that is new to you to information that you already know. Take the new information and space it out instead of all at one time. One of the worst ways to recall information is by cramming all of the information into the brain. At most only 10-20% will stay in the mind by cramming. All of this was learned by Ebbinghaus. To me, all of this information will help me in my hopes of becoming a teacher.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
This was a great site to understand all of the important ideas that Ebbinghaus created. It shows a lot of graphs of what he came up with.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
This was a great site to see when he first came up with the idea of the savings effect and also the learning curve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRRBNOMkN-I
This video showed everything and a great understanding of how Ebbinghaus’ ideas were and still are.
1a) State what your topic is.
I chose Wilhelm Wundt.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic relates to the chapter because much of it was dedicated to the man, his research and some of the other great men he studied with.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Wundt interested me because he founded one of the best psychological research labs at the University of Leipzig and was considered the father of experimental psychology. Not only did he provide many new theories in psychology but also physics, physiology and philosophy.
2)
As discussed in the text Wilhelm Wundt was a brilliant German scholar who studied fields like psychology, physiology, philosophy and was also a professor. Wundt, who believed psychology, was a science apart from biology and philosophy was one of the first people to ever call himself a Psychologist. As I said above Wundt conducted many of his experiments at the University of Leipzig where he was also a professor. After a few years at the university, Wundt began doing experiments that were not part of his course work. Wundt claimed that these independent experiments solidified his lab’s validity as a formal laboratory of psychology. Wundt faced much opposition in regards to his claim that psychology was a legit science but in 1879 he finally had his official psychology lab called the Institute for Experimental Psychology. Wundt's roots were in physiology, and it was reflected in many of the research topics the Institute studied. Their aim was to record thoughts and sensations, and to analyze them into their basic elements, similar to the way as chemist analyses chemical compounds. Wundt would add a stimulus to a subject like light or sound and record their feelings and reactions. Wilhem Wundt and his followers made many great discoveries within the fields of physiology and psychology and will forever be immortalized in history for it.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
-This site was helpful and explained some of the schools of thought Wundt started like voluntarism and discussed some of his experiments on stimulus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
-I used this site to gain a better general background of the man Wilhelm Wundt and where he came from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWv3tQUY-9k
-This video is short and sweet but it explains what Wilhelm was trying to do in some of his experiments and it also sheds light on some of his theories.
Oswald Kulpe
I found him very interesting because he challenged what Wundt had claimed about having to study higher mental processes in a non-lab setting, yet Muller who Oswald studied in lab with, was able to find a way to control conditions in their studies of memory. Also I thought that it was cool that he rarely published his findings under his own name because he preferred to give them the credit. He relates to the chapter because he thought it was necessary to expand on what Wundt had set limits to on introspection. He pushed boundaries and brought out some controversial findings such as the imageless thought.
Oswald Kulpe was originally not from Germany but was raised from a family with German traditions. He went to Leipzig and completed his PhD under G.E. Muller at Gottingen. He remained there for 8 years and became Wundt’s second assistant. However, Kulpe started to form his own ideas about psychology. He wondered if thinking could be accessed to introspective research.
From here, he was called to Wurzburg shortly after where he began to investigate the psychology of thought. He would give his subjects simple tasks to make them think and then go on to describe the process of how they arrived at their answer as precisely as possible. An analysis of these experimentally induced self-observations led the experimenters to conclude that the thought process could not be explained as the result of associate connections solely on images and from here they came up with the term imageless thought.
This idea of imageless thought became controversial and caused other psychologists to doubt each other’s data. Wundt and Titchener, who both at one point worked with Kulpe, opposed this idea. This controversy began to die down after Kulpe left and went to University of Munich. Although the problems it brought up did not fade away so quickly.
Despite the intellectual disputes that Wundt and Kulpe had, they maintained good personal terms with one another. He actually published three tributes to Wundt even after their disagreements. Those who knew Kulpe personally thought of him as a man with impressive and lovable character. He had personal interests in beauty and art. He was a musician and played the piano expertly. He would be intimately engaged with all that went on in his lab. Also, he never put too strong of an influence on his students. Some would say that he was not merely a psychologist but a philosopher.
Some people say that Oswald Kulpe’s greatest contribution was the extension of experimental psychology. He pushed what Wundt claimed to be limited and drew important conclusions that continued to influence others. From his studies on thought processes, he helped pave the foundation of cognitive psychology.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/kulpe.html
I liked this site because it gave me a good basis of information about Oswald Kulpe including his family, where he was born, studying history originally before he got into psychology, and included some of his works as well.
http://www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/w_schule/WSCHOOL2a.html
I choose this site because it gave me more detail as to what Kulpe did with his subjects and the results from them. It also included other people from Kulpe’s time and how Kulpe influenced them.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1418592?seq=16
I enjoyed this site because it explains in great detail all about Kulpe’s life and more intimate details about him as a person and things he enjoyed besides psychology.
For my topical blog post I decided to look research Wissenschaft. At the beginning of the chapter the author mentioned how much American students gained by going to study in Germany. German universities developed a distinct philosophy of education called Wissenschaft. I decided to look more into this, because I felt researching anything else from this chapter would be a little boring. I also wanted to know why certain areas have different ways of thinking, like a location-based zeitgeist.
For this post I re-read the beginning of the chapter to see what it said about the Wissenschaft. The book said that it was “an approach that emphasized scholarly research combined with teaching and academic freedom for professors to pursue their research interests without fear of administrative or political censure.” The book talked about how good of an experience it was for American students to study in Germany or other parts of Europe. It said that students were free to wander from university to university as they wished and study whatever they desired, provided they could still meet the qualifications of special exams. I began my research by looking up Wissenschaft in general, but I found nothing more than lacking definitions and German websites. Oxford defined it as “the systematic pursuit of learning, knowledge, and scholarship.” It also states that Wissenschaft is actually German for ‘knowledge’. Sadly, this didn’t help me get a feel for any cultural specific way of thinking. I wanted to look into why different cultural areas have different ways of thinking. If it would help American students to study in Germany, why wouldn’t we structure our education system like Germany’s? What I found was different than what I anticipated looking into, but it was incredibly interesting nonetheless. I found a list of the ranking of countries performance in math and science and it kind of baffled me. Singapore is at the top of the list for both, and United States comes in just below average. I decided to look at the top performing countries and the lesser performing countries and try to find some key differences. Through another source I found the different ways that children from individualistic societies and children from collectivist societies learn. After looking at this I came back to the list to find the higher performing countries are all collectivist. I looked a little into what makes education systems better in some countries than others. I found that a school system would be better to prosper if it had high autonomy and well qualified teachers. The teachers know what they should be teaching and what resources they need to do so. Hiring good teachers would allow the school to give them more freedom with their choices. Then leniency has the potential of becoming a problem, but standardized testing takes away some of the issue. If you make students preform according to centralized exams, the teachers then have a loose agenda to follow and gives them more accountability for the students’ performance. This is more incentive for the students to do well. I also found that there is no strong correlation between resources spent on education and overall performance. I guess all in all my research was unfruitful as to figuring out why there are different cultural ways of thinking, and I didn’t figure out how to structure a flawless education system, but I learned a little bit more about some stuff that I didn’t know before.
http://educationnext.org/whystudentsinsomecountriesdobetter/
I used this link to find rankings of education systems and figure out why some do better.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Wissenschaft
this link was just a definition. Its where my research started and didn’t actually get me too far.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/impact-culture-education/
this is the link I used to try to find out more about individualistic and collectivist learning and if one is in fact better than the other.
1a) My topic is on Ernst Weber and the contributions he made to both psychology and physiology.
1b) This look at Weber relates well to the topic from the chapter because without his in depth research on the sense of touch and recognition of two-point thresholds, we might not be at the place we are today in modern psychology and the study of related topics.
1c) I am interested in his approach to studying tactile sensations because of the intricate nature of the body and its sensations. His studies were groundbreaking on how accurate the body is at recognizing several sensations at the same time. I would have no idea on how to conduct the research he did on this subject. Even without modern technology he was able to make fairly accurate observations on how the body senses touch; and even further, he discovered how accurate these perceptions are at different points on the body.
When looking at the life of Weber, one interesting and valuable thing came up. He did not just contemplate human behavior and try to reason out why they reacted to certain stimuli in the manner that they do. He took a hands on approach to studying the human body’s reaction to vision, pain, sight, hearing, taste, and smell. In fact, he was one of the first researchers to actually conduct studies in the field of psychology.
One of the other contributions to Weber made was the so important that they named it after him. The theory that there is a linear relationship between the incremental threshold of one variable and the background intensity of another variable is called Weber’s Law. The major contribution that he made by way of this law involves the discovery that if you pick up a weight, you will not be able to notice any difference in a similar weight if the difference is less than the sum of (triangle sign)I/I.
Some modern research I found on the two-point threshold seems to contradict the studies done by Weber. It has been shown to be inaccurate in its measure of spatial resolution. For this type of measure to work, it relies on the criteria that a subject being measured in this fashion decides to adopt. Also, there is a lot of variability in the accuracy of this system of measurement. Research has found up to a fourfold difference even within the same subject. While Weber did make several great contributions to the field of psychology, there is a reason that people continue to do research in the same area. I am not downing his discoveries in any fashion. In fact, if it wasn’t for his discoveries we may not be at the place we are today in studying the body’s perceptions of outside stimuli.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
This website provided a general overview of Weber. I used it as a reference point for a background in knowing what he studied, where he conducted research at, and a little bit of personal history.
http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/pages/chap_3/ch3p1.html
This website contributed to the section I wrote about Weber’s Law. This site gave a lot of useful information on the law itself as well as how to use the formula to figure out other weights.
http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/9/1/29.full.pdf+html
This research article had a lot of information concerning the shortcomings of Weber’s research. It basically presented newer research that calls into question some of the ideas and methods for testing the two-point threshold of humans.
1a) State what your topic is: Oswald Kulpe and Imageless Thought
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter:
Oswald Kulpe is mentioned in the chapter as a student of Wilhelm Wundt and an assistant to him. I feel he is important because he is part of the many students of Wundt who went on to do their own studies and research.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it:
I found Oswald Kulpe interesting because he was a lab assistant under Wilhelm Wundt and earned a doctorate under his supervision. He went on to challenge Wundt with his findings on imageless thought. He created the Wurzburg School.
2) One of Oswald Kulpe’s findings at Wurzburg Lab was imageless thought. This is a process of thought that is not tied to an image. The example they used in the book was the weight lifting study done by Karl Marbe at the Wurzburg School. Subjects reported images when lifting the weights but not when making a judgment when deciding which weight was heavier. On the surface, most people would say “who cares” if imageless thought exists or not. This finding became a source of controversy in the psychology field.
Wundt refused to accept imageless thought and did not accept the methods that were used to obtain this finding: introspection. Introspection is the method of experiencing some phenomenon and then describing the conscious experience of it. E.B. Titchener also objected to imageless thought but had a problem with the experiments and believed that the subjects
were not trained correctly in the art of introspection.
What I found the most interesting of all is that the controversy was never really resolved. In 1993, psychologist Russell Hurlburt offered a new perspective on the concept. He felt that both sides had reported phenomenon that is consistent with imageless thought but just reported it in different ways. To think that this controversy has essentially been going on for over one hundred years proves that Kulpe has some mind-provoking theories.
3) I chose this website because it discussed the book of Russell Hurlburt and his ideas on imageless thoughts 100 years after its finding:
http://philosophyofbrains.com/2006/12/03/imageless-thought.aspx
This website had a good section on the controversy of imageless thought:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/
This website has some good information on the life and work of Oswald Kulpe:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/324650/Oswald-Kulpe
1a) My topic is Wilhelm Wudnt
1b)This topic relates to the chapter because it’s all about him and German Psychology
1c) I am interested in Wilhelm Wundt and how he contributed to psychology.
Wilhelm Wundt’s did a lot of work in experimental psychology. He established the first psychology lab and made psychology separate from philosophy. With some of the work he did he looked at internal perception. He believed that it involved a trained observer who was aware when the stimulus of interest was introduced. His process allowed the observer to be aware of their thoughts and reactions to the stimulus. His aim was to record thoughts and sensations and be able to analyze them in order to get to the underlying structure. He also wanted to study the structure of the mind using introspection. When having his students observe a stimulus he would have them use personal interpretation which basically they would say what the stimulus made them think and feel. However this idea of introspection didn’t last long because it wasn’t necessarily the most reliable tool to use when observing a stimulus. The school of psychology was founded by Wundt and it’s known as voluntarism which is the processing of organizing the mind. In a section of our chapter it talks about the new and improved Wilhelm Wundt and it discusses structuralism which is pretty interesting. He defined psychology as the study of the structure of conscious experience. With structuralism when it came to this idea and studying it the idea of introspection was used as well. His three main focuses were on thoughts, images, and feelings. These three ideas are what cognitive psychologists study. Some other things that he was interested in studying when it came to the mental process was thinking, language, and the effects of culture but he didn’t think you could study these things in a lab setting.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
I liked this site because it gave me more information about his main and most popular focuses/contributions to psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
I liked this website because it gave me things like what he was most popular for and how his career panned out.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
This website helped a lot with thoroughly explaining pretty much everything about Wilhelm Wundt and his contribution to psychology.
1a) State what your topic is. Hermann Ebbinghaus
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. Hermann obviously relates to the chapter because he is a part of the chapter itself and even though he has a small portion of the chapter dedicated to him, we still find out a lot of information about what he did and what contribution he made to the world of psychology. He brought a new meaning to the word memory I believe. He came up with new ideas about memory and how fast we as humans forget such memories and ideas.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it. I am interested in Hermann Ebbinghaus because of his investigation of the idea of remote associations. This kind of sparked an interest in my mind that made me want to read further on about him. How can someone learn a set of numbers or letters that skipped out of place if someone had already knew the first set of letters or numbers by heart? For example in the book they used the numbers 1-16 and then scrambled them up in the second and third trial; Ebbinghaus found out that someone could learn that second and third set faster than anyone could before learning a new set of numbers or letters.
2) There are some things we do not know about Mr. Ebbinghaus; not everyone knows that he served in the Prussian Army during 1870 and returned to get his doctorate shortly after. How could someone with such a background have time to even think about psychology and the ideas that come with that? During his time he conducted many independent studies after he received his doctorate. Ebbinghaus was also someone who used their own experiences to make data, and used those experiences as a major source of his data collection. Something that we today still do but not as much as he did; today we rely on a lot of statistical data that comes from some other outside system such as in criminology we use either the Uniform Crime Reports or the National Victimization Survey for a lot of our studies and reseaches.
Ebbinghaus’s idea of a nonsense syllable is starting to make me think about nonsense. When he used these syllables to test on his subjects one major issue came arose. He had to worry about the degree to which the material is learned was up to the subject and not up to him. The subject could have been tired or too hyped up to remember anything and be a very useful test subject; this would then harm his experiment.
Can we believe that out of all that Ebbinghaus had done he was the first one to contribute the most out of memory? He was the first person to develop a scientific approach to memory.
3) http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
http://www.intelltheory.com/ebbinghaus.shtml
Wilhelm Wundt is considered the founder of Psychology; but, if it hadn’t been he, it would surely have been G.E. Muller. Georg Elias Muller spent a lot of time in the lab, which was a rarity for psychologists. He devoted forty years of his life to the psychology laboratory, and made great strides in the fields of color vision, sensations, memory, and learning.
Muller was born in Grimma, Saxony on July 20th, 1850. Muller’s father was a theologian and professor of religion, and traveled around the country, claiming different titles and being associated with different schools. When he died, Muller had to fill his place at Gottingen, the university in lower Saxony. He studied a few different subjects (first mysticism, then history, and then moving on to philosophy) during his time in school at various schools around Leipzig. He was a soldier in the Franco-Prussian war, which led to his discovery that he enjoyed philosophy best out of his studies. He returned back to school, this time at Gottingen, and received his doctorate after studying with R. H. Lotze.
In the field of vision (specifically color vision), Muller spent his time revising Hering’s theories of color eyesight. Towards the end of his life, he published two huge works about color vision, but they were not as popular as his earlier works. For memory and learning, Muller picked up where Ebbinghaus left off and, working with his colleagues, developed the use of reaction times for memory. His earliest work, however, was with psychophysics. Muller did a lot of work criticizing Weber’s Law, and did a study with Schumann about the discrimination of weight.
Muller made a lot of contributions to the field of psychology by all of the thorough experiments he conducted with his students. One of the great things about him is that he liked to give his students credit for their work instead of taking all the glory. He devoted most of his life to psychology (or, rather, psychophysiology), but he is not well-known because not many people have put forth the effort to translate his work into other languages.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Georg_Elias_Muller.aspx
I relied on this site the most because it had the most detailed information.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1415847?seq=1
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/396844/Georg-Elias-Muller
1a.) The two point threshold
1b.) It was mentioned a lot in the book about the points of sensitivity on a person’s body and how close they need to be in order to feel them as two separate touches.
1c.) I find sensation and perception very interesting in general even though I don’t know very much about it. However I did know a little about it because of previous classes and our experiments with it.
2.) Weber is responsible for such a conclusion as the two point threshold. He invented what is called the compass test in order to find the different localized regions. The two compass points often make a single impression if the points are along the length of the arm or foot. However other sensitive regions can be tested on like the upper arm, calf, and middle finger. This seems to be as a part of the vertical arrangement of nerves. This two point threshold has a lot to do with nerves. In the experiment that anyone can do with touching the tips of the fingers to the arm the brain has more density of nerves and is able to locate such things. Recently there have been some findings involving clarification of the mechanisms responsible. They view this as right only because it was one of the only findings.
3.) http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/nerves-twopoint-threshold/
This talked about the nerve aspect of it and why it is that the threshold occurs.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/nerves-twopoint-threshold/
This website talked about Weber’s involvement and the less sensitive regions of the arm and foot.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20182614?uid=3739256&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102665230131
This website talked about what is coming in the advancement of the belief of the two point threshold. Several new methods may overcome and provide valid measure of resolution and mechanisms.
1a) The imageless thought controversy and the differences between Wundt and Kulpe’s labs
1b) The book goes into this topic extensively, but I found it confusing. After researching it a bit I found the subject more understandable.
1c) Honestly, I was interested in some other subjects, but researching history I find a lot of the sources saying almost exactly what the book was saying. This topic had the most new information I could find in my preliminary source searches.
With the extensive research and exponential growth Wilhelm Wundt was responsible for he was bound to meet some sort of controversy. Strangely enough it came from one of his former students Oswald Kulpe. Kulpe earned his PhD under Wundt’s instruction and became his lab assistant for over half a decade. Eventually a school in Wurzburg offered him a professor job and like any sensible human he took it. Wundt’s style of experimentation revolved around the measurement of observable traits like reaction time or other physiological discoveries connected to mental processes. Sensory, perception, attention, and other cognitive processes were heavily studied by Wundt and his highly trained observers. Wundt, however, believed that higher order processes were impossible to study in a laboratory because they were too closely linked to factors outside of lab controls (culture, education, socioeconomic status). Higher order processes often yielded varying results and Wundt only accepted what could be replicated. When conducting a study Wundt would have a panel (or at least two) of observers (as he preferred to call researchers) to ensure the reliability and validity of his experiments. This was his preferred method to what will later be discussed as introspection or self-observation. Wundt believed that introspection depended on undependable human memory, and rightfully so because it produced unstable results in his method. However, Wundt would be challenged by his protégé Oswald Kulpe using techniques which he disdained.
The Wurzburg School’s style of early experimental psychology was established by one of Wundt’s greatest students Kulpe. Kulpe earned his PhD under Wundt became his lab assistant for over half a decade. Eventually Kulpe was offered a professor job in Wurzburg, and like any sensible human he took it. One would think that someone who studied under Wundt for a decade would clone his lab and experimental practices, but Kulpe rejected some of Wundt’s basic practices. The most notable is Kulpe’s use of introspection. An example of how he used introspection would be in simple math problems. He would make the participant do simple two number math problems: addition, subtraction, or multiplication. After doing a list of one of the previously mentioned mathematical operations the participant was presented with two ambiguous numbers. The participant would be asked to give a number and they often gave the responded as if the two ambiguous numbers were a previous mathematical equation. Because there were no sensory properties it led Kulpe and the Wurzburg school to come up with imageless thought.
Wundt of course did not accept imageless thought. Partly because his idea of the brain involved everything becoming an image even to an unnoticeable level, but mainly because of the methodology implemented by the Wurzburg School. In the Wurzburg School lab participants were given the hypotheses before or during the experiment, which may have confounded their studies. This would yield biased results along with Wundt’s opposition to the use of introspection. Eventually another one of Wundt’s former students would step in to become a crucial player in this controversy. Edward Titchener, unlike Wundt, accepted introspection as a suitable means of experimentation. However, he believed the problem lied within the subjects. He deemed most people unqualified to introspect themselves, so in his lab he used himself, lab assistants, and graduate assistants, all who were highly trained in introspection. Using methods Wundt would question, Titchener would support Wundt’s view that there is not such thing as imageless thought.
This controversy is not nearly as heated as is used to be, but it still remains with us today. Both sides obviously know the brain produces images, but the modern version of this debate is how low of a cognitive process does it take place at. Tichener and Wundt would say that even the smallest, seemingly thoughtless muscle movement still involved some mental imagery. However, others would argue that at some point images stop, but there is still no definitive answer.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/#ImaThoCon
I obviously did no read or use this entire source, but section 3.2 depicts the history, methodology, and ideas of all schools of thought. It explains in a very clear and logical way how the debate was sparked, where each side lied, and how they defended their thoughts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection
This is a fantastic insight in what introspection is. Mostly philosophical it does hold a lot of scientific ideals. It does shows how Wundt and Titchener agreed with that there is no such thing as imageless thought, but how they reached that conclusion differently.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/kulpe.html
This source was chosen because it explains how Kulpe and his students set up their experiments. It is incredibly easy to understand unlike my explanation of their experiments and concludes with a few details about the controversy this initiated.
1a) State what your topic is.
- My topic is Wilhelm Wundt
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
- Because this chapters takes a turn to cover psychology as a science and how it moved away from philosophy. Wundt had an influential role in this process, and is often referred to as the father of modern psychology. He opened the first psychology lab, and the first psychology journal, all of these got it marginal acceptance within the scientific community.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
- Wundt is so important to the field of psychology, and with out him our field would be set back quite a bit. Psychology really owes Wundt a debt of gratitude for all the accomplishments he made to the psychology field.
2) - Wundt was originally studied as a physiologist, and eventually got a degree as a doctor. However, he believed he was more suited to the field of academia; and this chance was offered to him when he got asked to give a seminar on physiology. A few years later he started teaching classes over physiology, and was given a one room lab; to store his equipment. He then turned this one room into a psychology lab, and eventually it grew to multiple rooms. Wundt in his younger years was not interested in education, and was sent to boarding school at the at of thirteen, getting his M.D. at nineteen. After Wundt opened his psychology lab, the first of its kind, is when people give credit to psychology as becoming a field. Over the years Wundt's research gained a lot of attention especially from students in the United States. By the end of Wundt's career he had mentored 186 graduate students, some of who went on to big contributors as well. Introspection was Wundt's main area of studying, he was looking into self reflection, and sensations. However, this is not the only area that Wundt was interested in, and he also spent a lot of time working on what he called volunteerism; which is the study of voluntary movement. Focal flair is one section of volunteerism is that looks at your actions when no other stimuli were present. Wundt also used reflection time as an important factor in a lot of his research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUYEuL4pMVU
This video gives a lot of really great information on Wundt's research process, and his research experiments
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website gives a lot of information about the different forms of Wundt's psychology from voluntarism, structuralism, and introspection.
http://www.wilhelmwundt.com/works-cited.php
This website give a lot of information about Wundt's early life through his days in the lab.
Terms: Wundt, structuralism, introspection, voluntarism,
1) State what your topic is.
I chose to do extra research on James McKeen Cattell. I found him interesting because he was the first American to earn his PhD under the supervision of Wundt. The chapter only gives a little section about his time with Wundt. I was intrigued to know more about him and his accomplishments.
2) James McKeen Cattell was a man of many firsts. The textbook states that he was the first American to earn his PhD with the help from Wilhelm Wundt. While there he studied what was called mental chronometry, also known as reaction time. Before studying at Leipzig, Cattell studied with philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze at the University of Gottingen. After returning to the U.S. and studying at John Hopkins University, Cattell moved back to Germany. During his time there, Cattell felt shut off from Wundt. He would write letters home about how Wundt would not show him the respect he deserved and called him “the typical American”. Finally in 1886, Cattell published his dissertation on “Psychometric Investigation.” Following his earning of a PhD, he went to the University of Cambridge where he spent the next two years of his life lecturing. Cattell was invited to become the first professor in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Here he founded a psychology lab and began to administer mental tests to college students. Several years later, Cattell moved to work at Columbia University where he devoted much of his time to improving mental tests. Cattell went on to found the American Psychological Association. He then became the fourth president of the APA foundation.
3) http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/cattell.htm
This website was helpful in giving a more detailed background about Cattell. I chose it because the page seemed interesting.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/100070/James-McKeen-Cattell
This page was helpful in giving a brief outline of Cattell’s life.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/james-mckeen-cattell.htm
This site was also helpful in finding more information on Cattell. There was so information included on this page, that wasn’t included on others.
1a) State what your topic is:
Hermann Ebbinghaus
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter:
For chapter 4, I decided to do my research on Hermann Ebbinghaus’ experiments and theories on memory. Ebbinghaus was successful in creating the study of memory and the understanding of nonsense syllables and the forgetting curve. He made many and great contributions to the history of Psychology through the study of memory.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it:
Hermann Ebbinghaus and the study of memory interests me because I love learning more about the brain, for I find it to be a spectacular organ that can function in so many ways. Personally, I have a hard time with my memory already and I’m only 22-years-old. Since I have epilepsy, my memory doesn't work as well as it used to because seizures have destroyed parts of my brain throughout the years. Learning more about memory and Ebbinghaus’ research on memory might give me more insight on memory and ways to achieve a better memory. It interests me the most because I personally have a connection to memory and the lack of it, therefore wanting to know more about the original study of memory.
2) Synthesis:
Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who pursued and experimented with the study of memory. He is most known for inventing the spacing effect, forgetting curve, learning curve, and nonsense syllables. It took Hermann some time when it came to getting in the spotlight because of lack of publications. But, soon enough he began to show that higher mental processes were able to be studied through the use of experiments and this is where his major journey started. Ebbinghaus decided to conduct an experiment on himself in order to dig deeper on the concept of memory. Nonsense syllable is what he created which were 2,300 consonant-vowel-consonant combinations. Some examples would be KAF and WID. In this experiment he would memorize the nonsense syllables and run trials to see how much he had retained each time and then how many times it was needed to relearn the syllables. The forgetting curve was created through this experiment as well and it describes how the ability to retain information decreases in time. This curve showed that in the first period after learning or reviewing something, we forget the most. He found that forgetting is rapid and expected. This is why college students shouldn't “cram” for exams because we are more likely to forget that way. We should listen to our professors and study periodically because we have a greater chance of retaining the information then. After countless trails and fixing of the nonsense syllable experiment, Ebbinghaus found amazing results. He was the first person to introduce the idea of a learning curve which reported that the time required to memorize a nonsense syllable increased greatly as the number of syllables increased as well. He also found out that practicing after the learning criterion was established, also enhances memory retention. Ebbinghaus was a very smart man and he made some very important findings in regards to memory.
Some helpful tools the Ebbinghaus suggests to improve memory include using flashcards to study for exams that have terms and definitions. It is said that if you use flashcards to study, you will have about 80-90% retention of the information the next day. Another suggestion he gives is to connect to new information with what you already know. So, there are clearly ways that Ebbinghaus has thought of to help with memory and I personally think these two strategies work, especially the note cards! Ebbinghaus is known for being one of the most important researchers in the history of Psychology related to memory. He had many great contributions and he really opened many doors to the understanding of memory on the human brain.
3) Sources:
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-forgetting-curve/
This source was my favorite out of the sources because it was loaded with factual, detailed information about Ebbinghaus’ experiments and it gave me a better understanding of what took place. I really liked that it gave personal suggestions for people who have trouble with memory and ways to help the problem of forgetting.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
This source also gave great detail into Ebbinghaus’ work and ideas, but it was more formal so to me it was harsher to read. It still went in depth and explained his life in a factual manner. There was not much about Ebbinghaus personally, just mostly about his contributions to the history of Psychology.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This source was very detailed in defining the terms that Ebbinghaus created and it also explained his experiments in detail. I feel like there was the most details in this website compared to the others because it gave stats and specifics.
AS
1a) State what your topic is.
Anthropomorphism
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Anthropomorphism is the attribute of human faculties to nonhuman entities. It was mentioned in the chapter when it talked about George Romanes. Romanes said that spiders have a “fondness” for music and that scorpions commit suicide when surrounded by fire or intense heat. He also thought that dogs were capable of planning, bartering, and recognizing information in pictures.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I find this topic extremely interesting because I often hear about animals having human like tendencies, but I found these comparisons to be a bit intense. What caught my attention the most was the belief of spiders enjoying music, I’m not sure how one would be able to tell that this is true. Do they crawl faster? Or slow down? And scorpions committing suicide when they get close to fire; would it necessarily be considered as suicide?
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
When researching my topic, I found that there are a lot of different emotions that influence anthropomorphism. Individuals who tend to be lonely often give animals human like characteristics. This makes sense to me because if you’re a person who doesn’t really have any other humans to interact with, maybe animals are the only thing that you have. This idea seems a bit estranged to me, but we may all have done this at some point in our lives. I wonder if you this could be related to giving toys or stuffed animals human like characteristics as well.
I was thinking that the environment could also have a lot to do with why a person would give animals human like characteristics. If you’re not familiar with the people in the environment it would probably be easier to anthropomorphize just to make yourself feel more comfortable in that environment. It’s also possible to look at this in a religious aspect as well. A lot of religions that worship a God usually give God human like features and qualities. I think a lot of people do this without even knowing it or maybe they just wouldn’t consider it the same thing when in actuality it is.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/01/why-do-we-anthropomorphize/11766.html
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anthropomorphism
1a) State what your topic is.
Webers Law.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Weber’s Law was one of Ernest Weber’s contributions to psychology. Weber was one of the character focuses of the current chapter. His contributions were made known and are still referred to today.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Weber was subjecting mental events (sensations) to measurement and mathematical formulation. Weber was able to also show that there was not a one to one relationship between changes in the psychical world and the psychological experience of those changes. Lastly he also showed that mental and physical events could be related mathematically. This is interesting because these concepts still hold up today and are still considered, and the research was done in the early 1800’s.
2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.
Weber’s law also called Weber–Fechner law, historically important psychological law quantifying the perception of change in a given stimulus. The law states that the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus. It has been shown not to hold for extremes of stimulation.
The law was originally postulated to describe researches on weight lifting by the German physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber in 1834 and was later applied to the measurement of sensation by Weber’s student Gustav Theodor Fechner, who went on to develop from the law the science of psychophysics. By stating a relationship between the psychological and physical worlds, the law indicated to Fechner that there is really only one world, the psychological. To others, the law meant the possibility of a scientific, quantitative psychology. Weber was subjecting mental events (sensations) to measurement and mathematical formulation. Weber was able to also show that there was not a one to one relationship between changes in the psychical world and the psychological experience of those changes. Lastly he also showed that mental and physical events could be related mathematically.
The combined work of Weber and Fechner has been useful, especially in hearing and vision research, and has had an impact on attitude scaling and other testing and theoretical developments.
3) Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber
This website gives a little information about Ernest Weber himself, his history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law
This website explains the law itself and the mathematics behind it.
http://sunburst.usd.edu/~schieber/coglab/WebersLaw.html
This website I liked about because it gives you some information about the law but also has an interactive experiment to go along with it to help a person better understand the law.
1a) State what your topic is. Wilhelm Wundt experimental psychology
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Chapter 4 discussed German psychologists and their influence on American psychologists during the late 1800s. German psychologists' research and studies became influential because of the education they were receiving in Germany. The educational system promoted a philosophy of Wissenschaft, which emphasized academic freedom and original research. This was the reason that new ides of psychology became a factor. At this time there was a new type of psychology called psychophysics that was the main study for research. This study was the relationship between physical stimuli and the psychological reaction to them. Wundt comes into the topic of the "new psychology" because he is generally known as the founder of experimental psychology. This is the start of experimental psychology and the first journal devoted to describing the results of psychological research.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in Wundt's "new psychology" because he started a whole different type of psychology. He could be considered the father of psychology, but Freud has that, so Wundt is considered the founder of psychology. For him to be the first psychologists to start a journal that was specially used for his type of science was a major event at the time. Wundt's experimenting was based off of Aristotle and Plato claiming that animals have a low level, distinctly nonhuman consciousness and also from Descartes 1630s theory that animals are automata without feeling. Wundt knowing the history of Aristotle, Descartes, and Charles Darwin believed it was time to start experimenting.
2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.
Wilhelm Wundt was born in Baden Germany and was the fourth child in the family. His father was a minister at the Lutheran church. Wundt was allowed little time to play and was pushed through a list of educational regime and attended a strict Catholic school. After attending universities of Berlin and graduating, he became Hermann von Helmhotlz assistant. Wundt ended up teaching the world's first course in experimental psychology and opened the first psychology laboratory in 1879.
Wundt's definition of life included having some kind of mind. He said that even simple organisms such as protozoa have some form of mind. This is very groundbreaking for the little technology that was around during this time period. Wundt's main goal was to carry out systematic research on the mind and behavior of humans, initially through subjecting the basic sensory processes to close examination. Consciousness is "inner experience". Every living being has the inner experience and every living being must always have had this inner experience. All psychology must begin with self-observation recorded through experimentation designed to expose involuntary reactions. This stops quantitative data about consciousness. Wundt believed that psychology was the scientific study of the mental life. Wundt believed that there were two types of observation; external and internal. For Wundt to study external and internal observations, he started focusing on the human senses and consciousness. In one experiment, he asked individuals to report on their sensations when shown a light signal. He set the standard for all future psychological experiments because every participant received the same stimuli.
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/wundt.shtml
This website gave me information about the schools that Wundt attended and some out of his 450+ publications.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website gave me information about Wundt's life and how he was regarded as the founder of experimental psychology.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/650018/Wilhelm-Wundt
This website talked about the first psychology lab that Wundt opened up and gave me more information about Wundt's life and experiments.
1a) State what your topic is.
I choose the topic Wilhelm Wundt because there were two distinct topics I liked reading his studies, one is introspection and internal perception. I also liked reading about Voluntarism and apperception.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
These topics Wundt studied are related to this chapter because they dealt with perception and how one perceives and the different types of perceiving.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in it because I find perception more interesting than how our memory works from our perception, I rather start at perception than contemplate whether my memory is working right or I am remembering the situation wrong.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
One of Wundt main theories was structuralism, that involves describing structures that compose in the mind. His perception of psychology was the science of conscious experience, people that train themselves can accurately describe thoughts, feelings. And emotions through the process of introspection. Wundt called it internal perception if done correctly. People had to be aware of their thoughts and reactions to a stimulus and involved multiple presentations of the stimulus. Wundt studied three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings. Wundt helped stimulate cognitive psychology, if it weren’t for him modern cognitive psychology would not be the same. Some key things Wundt measurements for experimenting with people’s perceptions, one the observer must know when the experience begins and ends, another the observer must maintain strained attention, also the phenomenon must bear repetition, lastly the phenomenon must be capable of variation.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
1a) State what your topic is.
I choose the topic Wilhelm Wundt because there were two distinct topics I liked reading his studies, one is introspection and internal perception. I also liked reading about Voluntarism and apperception.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
These topics Wundt studied are related to this chapter because they dealt with perception and how one perceives and the different types of perceiving.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in it because I find perception more interesting than how our memory works from our perception, I rather start at perception than contemplate whether my memory is working right or I am remembering the situation wrong.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
One of Wundt main theories was structuralism, that involves describing structures that compose in the mind. His perception of psychology was the science of conscious experience, people that train themselves can accurately describe thoughts, feelings. And emotions through the process of introspection. Wundt called it internal perception if done correctly. People had to be aware of their thoughts and reactions to a stimulus and involved multiple presentations of the stimulus. Wundt studied three areas of mental functioning; thoughts, images and feelings. Wundt helped stimulate cognitive psychology, if it weren’t for him modern cognitive psychology would not be the same. Some key things Wundt measurements for experimenting with people’s perceptions, one the observer must know when the experience begins and ends, another the observer must maintain strained attention, also the phenomenon must bear repetition, lastly the phenomenon must be capable of variation.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
1a) James McKeen Cattell
1b) James Cattell was the first American to work under Wundt. While working under Wundt, he earned a PhD in experimental psychology. He wrote extensively in his journal about his laboratory experiences while alongside Wundt. These journals had been combined by a man known as Michael Sokal, and are used as a great source to learn about the laboratories of Wundt and his colleagues.
1c) Cattell interested me with his writing. Reading the brief journal entries in the book allowed me to see how much time he put into figuring out reaction time. He would write letters to his parents about his theories, and he continually questioned his research, but yet it was extensive enough to be supported.
2) Cattell was a Pennsylvania native, but soon after he graduated from Lafayette College, Cattell headed to Europe with nothing much on his mind besides the want to travel. Reaction time was an interest of Cattell, but before this, he was interested in drugs and their affect on the body. This was his first study in psychology, which truly was the starting point for what was to come. James earned his PhD under Wundt while studying reaction time. James was the first person who published his dissertation on reaction time under the supervision of Wundt.
He spent quite a few years over seas, but soon returned back to his home in Pennsylvania where he took a job as a professor at the university. It was at the University of Pennsylvania where the first laboratory was founded in America. During this time, the study of perception of small differences was the most important study within the laboratory. However, he soon decided to take his talent elsewhere and ended at the University of Columbia. At Columbia University he was the department head for psychology, anthropology, and even philosophy. The Columbia University soon became the most accomplished in the country in research and lab work. Though the book hasn’t mentioned it yet, James Cattell established multiple studies while at Columbia University, and while all were essential, one research was the starting point for forensic psychology. Because of Cattell’s research, others in the field became curious. Joseph Jastrow replicated Cattell’s results and started working on his own theories.
Cattell was known as an independent leader. His students didn’t rely on him much while doing research, but he was there if necessary. He was a strong man who took on the position of being a university professor to help others within the field. Under his supervision, forty-six members of the American Psychological Association received their PhD in the program. This is incredible. Not only was he a man who strived for excellence for him, but he pushed others and inspired them to achieve excellence as well.
During his later years, Cattell seemed to have trouble with the outside world who seemed to have more power than him. He had wrote a letter to Members of Congress, which later go called to be a letter of treason. He was kicked off the university board, and let go from the university all together. However, this didn’t stop Cattell from producing work. Cattell was the editor for the Psychological Review. Throughout his lifetime he was the editor of multiple works. Today, there is a fund in his name set up for psychologists who work as faculty members at colleges who are able to own their own institution.
This website spoke in more detail about James Cattell’s contributions to the psychology world in America.
http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/cattell-james-m.pdf
This website spoke about how Forensic Psychology became known because of James Cattell and his studies.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/06/07/how-forensic-psychology-began-and-flourished/
This website gave a good biography of Cattell.
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/cattell.htm
1a) Wilhelm Wundt
1b) Wundt was the person who started the New psychology which brought psychology to a more experimental science.
1c) I’m interested in him because he made such a huge contribution to psychology, I have only known an experimental psychology, so I thought it would be cool to learn about the guy who made the first push for it.
2) Wundt was born in 1832 in Germany, at 13 he went to a boarding school, and when Wilhelm Wundt was 19 he started his college career by going to three different Universities looking for a career in medicine, but in 1857 he held lectures at the University of Heidelberg on physiology. One of the coolest things in his life is he was an assistant for one of the most famous psychologists ever, Helmholtz, he was the assistant for him from 1858-1864. Wundt also had so many books that he wrote that were very influential, but his most famous contribution was changing the format of psychology forever.
Wundt is considered the father of psychology; this name suits him well, being that he was the first person to open up a lab strictly for psychology. With doing that he laid the ground work for what psychology is today. Wundt opening this lab really made a lasting impression on psychology as a whole, it brought the field of psychology away from the stigma of being philosophy based, and more towards a scientific approach, instead of just thinking about what the answer could be, he decided to objectively measure questions instead. In his laboratory, it was a safe haven if you will for people really interested in psychology and everything it entailed. It slowly grew to be for psychologists everywhere; first it started for German students, and then started to grow for the American and British psychologists as well. His lab was where the start of changing psychology to the modern one we know today. Everything we know about psychology really started with Wilhelm Wundt, if we could I think it would be cool to show him what psych has turned into.
Wundt’s most famous experiment was when he tested reaction time in his famous laboratory; it was called the Complication Pendulum. He was interested in seeing if people had a difference in their reaction time, and also if seeing something would be different than hearing it. In the video you see what the pendulum looks like, it is a big clock looking thing that had a bell on it and would ring once it did its full swing. Wundt found something surprising that when seeing the stimulus your reaction time is slower than when you hear it. Wundt found that when you see the pendulum or hear the bell it uses two completely different mechanisms instead of one intertwined mechanism. Wundt found that when you anticipate a sound or visual stimulus your reaction time is better, rather than when you are surprised by a sound, so he came to reason that anticipation played a big factor in reaction time.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This was a great website that talked about his lab and the start of his psychology career.
http://www.wilhelmwundt.com/wilhelm-wundt-psyhology3.php
This was a good website talking about his life before his contributions to the field of psychology and leading up to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7O41r8uEI
This was a very informative video talking about Wundt’s most famous experiment and how it was administered.
The topic I chose to write about is Gustav Fechner. I chose him because he had a huge influence on psychology and he is a genius. He relates to the chapter because he is known as the founder of experimental psychology, so obviously he has a lot to do with it. He also was the founder of experimental aesthetics. Fechner went to college at the age of 16 and already had his medical degree by the time he was 21. He earned money by translating French chemistry and physics to his own language. At the university he worked at he not only had 28 investigations of his own but turned out 1500 to 2000 printed pages of textbooks and reference works between 1822 and 1838. He even wrote a lot of literary pieces. Fechner was doing other research before he developed psychophysics, and it involved staring at the sun for a long time which gave him eye damage so he had to quit that profession. After this incident he kept to himself for three whole years, which is where his interest philosophy. Fechner was a religious man, so that influenced the development of what he called psychophysics. If it wasn’t for his discovery of psychophysics then Fechner probably would have stayed in his “funk” from his injury. In 1860 Fechner wrote a book called “Elements of Psychophysics.” Fechner believed that the mind and the body were “two separate sides of the same reality.” He developed experimental methods for measuring the sensation someone feels compared to the degree of the actual stimulation, using methods called, “the method of just-noticeable differences,” “the method of constant stimuli,” and “the method of average error.” This all proved that psychology could be, in fact, a science. The method of constant stimuli became the most important method out of those three methods.
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/gustav-fechner-psychology-theory-lesson-quiz.html#lesson
I chose this site because it has some good background information, and information about how psychophysics came about.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/242/Gustav-Theodor-Fechner.html
I chose this site because it gave little extra details to what I wrote. I used the fact that Fechner became isolate for three years, and also that the method of constant stimuli became the most important method.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gustav_Theodor_Fechner.aspx
I used this site because it also had a lot of information. I got the number of investigations and textbook pages from this site.
1a) State what your topic is.
Interference Theory (Retroactive Inhibition)
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Retroactive inhibition is a phenomenon found in E.G. Muller’s laboratory, known for its accuracy, experimental control, and extreme attention to detail, one of the first experiments supported by scientific data.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Retroactive inhibition is a concept that deals with memory. As a student, learning about different obstacles when it comes to information retention may be helpful for studies.
2)
While retroactive inhibition was directly mentioned within the book, it is a sub-concept derived from interference theory, which suggest that long-term stored memory runs into complications during memory retrieval due to either prior or incoming information. Interference theory is divided into two different categories: retroactive inhibition and proactive inhibition.
Retroactive inhibition occurs when newly learned material conflicts with the retrieval of previously learned material. Muller had coined the term retention interval, and through his research with memory, he had demonstrated that tasks and material performed or learned in between the initial learning phase and recall phase results in an extension of the time that it takes when asked for information recall.
The two main theories behind retroactive inhibition are competition, which follows the learning model of association and occurs when new associations would compete with former associations, resulting in loss of the former association during retrieval; and associative unlearning, when new information replaces old information due to associations to the same object. Other theories are the decay theory, which is the concept that memories weaken over time if not recalled upon; and dual task interference where performing two actions at once results in competition for processing memory.
The other sub-concept of the interference theory is proactive inhibition, a phenomenon that occurs when information learned prior inhibits retrieval of newly learned information. Proactive inhibition commonly occurs when the two memories are of similar associations. In terms of lists, when asked to be memorized consecutively, retrieval accuracy had plummeted with each list added on. In experiments regarding working memory capacity, proactive inhibition affects individuals evenly when forced to multitask.
3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyXbdLIBhQo
Used as an introduction to interference theory, offers an overview of an experiment performed to test retroactive inhibition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory
Used as an easily-accessible summary of the history and research projects that deal with interference theory, offers a number of main and weaker theories regarding the concept.
http://www.academia.edu/6012551/RECTROACTIVE_INHIBITION_AND_ITS_EFFECT_ON_MEMORY
An experiment regarded rectroactive inhibition, where researchers detail their experimental design and list their conclusion and data.
1a) My topic is Oswald Kulpe
1b) Kulpe is related to the chapter because he was one of the first people to challenge the ideas of perception and sensation. How things are not always what they seem, the study of the mind and memory eventually lead to his theory of imageless memory. Providing the idea that sometimes memories are more than just what you feel and see but can also be without the sensations and perceptions. Finally Kulpe helped advance the research methods used to change the world observation and interpretation of experiments.
1c) I am interested again because it has to do with memory, I like learning about memory and the processes that go along with it. Memory is such a complex thing and Kulpe helped to advance people’s knowledge about memory.
2) Oswald Kulpe was a philosopher and psychologist that was born in Germany in 1862 (geniusrevive.com). Kulpe studied under William Wundt for years, during these years he began his research on memory, perception and the thought process and spent most of his career working in a lab. Kulpe went on to become a professor at the University of Wurzburg and ended up founding the Wurzburg school of psychology. Kulpe began the theory of the imageless memory, in this theory it was said that memories are not just based on sensory or image recalls all the time but sometimes it is an imageless memory. The imageless thinking was best described as when you are completing a math problem. When you see he numbers along with the symbol incorporated in the problem you are able to come up with an answer, but why. It is because of imageless thinking, there is no imagery or sensations that go along when you complete a math problem but yet you are still able to solve the problem due to memory. When Kulpe revealed his theory he was faced with attacks from other psychologists including Wundt. Eventually they went on to discredit his work and challenge his ideas making them appear to be made up. Kulpe went on to help psychology in their research methods, teaching people that they didn’t always have to go right by the book when observing an experiment but sometimes it is just basic knowledge and observations of an interpretations of what is happening that mean the most.
Sources:
http://geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses.html?pid=73&sid=409:oswald-kulpe-founder-of-the-wrzburg-school
I used this source because it helped with the background of where Kulpe came from and what happened to get him to where he is now. It broke down the early years of Kulpe and what were some major points of his life.
http://www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/w_schule/WSCHOOL2a.html
I used this source because it showed what was going on after he began teaching at theh University of Wuerzburg. What was accomplished and the early developments of the imageless memory.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/kulpe.html
I used this source to explain more of what Imageless memory actually was, it broke down the concepts of it more so that it was understandable. It was a good source of knowledge to explain how Kulpe came up with his theory as well as how it is applied.
1a) What is topic? The topic I have decided to write on is the concept and controversy of imageless thought.
1b) How does it relate to the chapter? In the section near the end of the chapter the concept of imageless thought is introduced after discussing mental sets. More broadly this concept relates to the chapter in that its discovery by the German Wurzburg lab was a significant contribution from the descendants of Wundtian psychology, which the chapter highlights.
1c) Why interested? I was interested in this subject because it was something that I had been hearing of for the first time. I was curious to find more information about imageless thoughts in general but I was also intrigued by the controversy and debate surrounding the subject. I find debate between different schools of thought within the same discipline fascinating as I feel many discoveries originate in these kinds of conflicts.
2) Synthesis
The first question I sought to answer when writing this blog was simply ‘what is imageless thought?’ Although this was outlined in the text I didn’t understand the explanation very well and wanted a more clear definition. According to my sources imageless thought is described as feelings or associations that are formed without the presence of connected imagery from any of the senses, such as sight or sound. An example of this could be when someone was exposed to a stimulus and experienced the feeling of fear but no visual imagery associated with the stimulus came to mind and no other sensory response was elicited. Oswald Kulpe and other researchers at the Wurzburg laboratory believed that through their experiments they had found new areas of consciousness and labeled them ‘conscious sets’, ‘awareness’, and ‘thoughts’.
The controversy surrounding imageless thought began almost as soon as it was discovered. Wundt himself was strongly opposed to the findings of the Wurzburg school in this effect and denied them on many occasions. Those who shared in Wundt’s opinion did so as well because of the fact that many of the individuals tested in the imageless thought experiments were scientists that served on the team at Wurzburg researching the concept, which undermined the validity of the research. Also there was no way to accurately test for or disprove introspective thought, and this is the idea that those in opposition to imageless thought found the most disturbing. While it seems fairly clear that those who opposed imageless thought were in the right, the great debate was not over imageless thought in itself. Instead, the method of self-reporting and introspection used to collect the data from which imageless thought was based on were the main source of debate. This is significant because from this controversy came the abject lack of trust from experimental psychologists towards introspective reporting and its legitimacy. Equally significant, it is said by many of my sources and the text that this lack of trust and eventual disqualification of introspection made ready the field for the behaviorist movement and its advances.
Sources:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/
This source contained a lot of detailed information about the imageless thought and provided meaningful and educated findings on the subject.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/kulpe.html
This source talked a little bit about imageless thought and gave a good information regarding the controversy of introspection as a reporting method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology
This article about the Wurzburg school was quite informative and also gave good insight into the controversy over the validity of imageless thought.
1a) State what your topic is.
My topic is Wilhelm Wundt.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Wilhelm Wundt was a German psychologist that changed the game in psychology. He influenced a different branch of psychology that influenced the work of many other prestigious psychologists, including Weber and Fechner. This topic relates to the chapter by showing the evolution of psychology and how Wilhelm Wundt transformed it into a science.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Wilhelm Wundt because he was so influential in the history of psychology. He made an impact in history and opened up new doors for psychology by making it a science, and a subject up for experimental research.
Wilhelm Wundt was born in a small village in Germany on August 16, 1832. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and his assistant was Wilhelm’s personal tutor and roommate. At the age of thirteen, Wilhelm Wundt was shipped off to boarding school. By the time he turned nineteen, Wilhelm was studying at a university. Wilhelm initially studied medicine, but happened to be more interested in the scientific aspect of it all.
In 1857, he was appointed as an instructor of physiology at Heidelberg. In 1864, he was became an assistant professor and began teaching his own courses. During his time as an assistant professor he taught a new class that he called physiological psychology. This course influenced prestigious psychological researchers including Weber and Fechner. To his students he was known as quiet, hard working, and methodical. He would lecture in a low voice. No visuals were presented during his lectures, and he would rarely stop for questions. Although Wilhelm had and interesting method of lecturing, his students loved him. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt opened the institute for experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He Wilhelm Wundt had an amazing career, and was highly influential.
Wilhelm Wundt had many accomplishments during his career. He became popularly known as the father of psychology. Although he did not found psychology, he made it a true science. Wundt separated psychology from philosophy. He also was credited with making the first lab dedicated to psychology. During his career, Wundt trained 186 graduate students, and is arguably the founder of experimental psychology. He wrote many books and information on his findings and research in the field. If one were to read an average of sixty pages per day, it would take two and a half years to completely read his work.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website focused on Wilhelm Wundt’s accomplishments and made his findings the focal point.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
This source outlined Wundt’s younger years. It went through his achievements by date.
http://www.wilhelmwundt.com/wilhelm-wundt-psyhology5.php
The last source was a combination of the both sources that also touched base on Wundt’s studies and what he focused on.
Wilhelm Wundt is typically known for founding the first psychological lab, and this founding is typically known as the beginning of modern psychology. Aside from this, Wundt also established a journal titles Philosophical Studies.
Wundt was not originally a psychologist though; he originally went to medical school at the University of Heidelberg. After med school, Wundt went to briefly study with Johannes Muller and later with Hermann von Helmholtz. He was also one of the first people to consider psychology to be a science all its own, and he was one of the first people to teach a scientific psychology class at the university of Heidelberg. I enjoy the fact that Wilhelm Wundt was the first person to really understand the psychology was a science, and experiments needed to be implemented.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
Information on his science.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
More of a time line feel to looking at Wundts life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
Good overview of family and career.
1.
a. This week I chose to write about Ernst Weber.
b. This topic relates to the chapter, because this chapter discusses the many contributions important figures have made to experimental psychology/psychophysics and Ernst is known as one of the founders of experimental psychology.
c. I am interested in this topic because this one man alone set the path to many modern day discoveries for psychologists, physiologists, and anatomists. I think it is incredibly interesting to know that one idea can stem into so many different things.
2. Ernst Weber, one of the founders of experimental psychology, wasn’t always known by this connotation. He studied at the University of Leipzig then went on as a professor of anatomy and physiology until his retirement in 1871. Fro many years Weber has his brothers Wilhelm and Eduard by his side for most of his studies within experimental psychology. While working with them, much of his research on the central nervous system functions of the brain, and physiology was concluded. Weber’s claim to fame was by studying the five senses, better known as the tactile sense. He tested many human beings and their reactions to physical changes in the environment. By doing this Weber was able to map out the relative sensitivity of various locations on the skin of the body. From this he was able to demonstrate a relationship psychological and physicality’s of the body, now known as weber’s law, or kinesthesis. He developed a concept called the just-noticeable difference. One of the ways he conducted this study was by having the clients pick up one weight, then another with a different weight. What he concluded was that the clients could only tell a difference between the two if the weights were significantly heavier. He went on to conduct many studies similar to this, but specific to one sense, like smell, sight, and hearing. These also produced the same results, aside from extremes, just like with the weights. By these results, Weber concluded different sensitivities throughout the entire body and by this, later physiologists were able to discover nerve endings in the body. According to Wikipedia, Weber’s law helps show that psychological events can be studied in conjunction with measurable physical stimulus values or jnd/S=k. Another major contribution Weber made, was his ideas of circulation throughout the body. He paved the road for physiologists today, by figuring out the basic ideas of the circulation of blood.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
This gave me the contributions weber’s work made to physiology today.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber.aspx
This website gave me information about his early life and work with his brothers.
http://neuroportraits.eu/portrait/ernst-heinrich-weber
This website went more into depth about his physiology contributions and circulation of blood.
1a) State what your topic is.
Apperception
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
One of Wilhelm Wundt’s points of focus was on the theory of apperception, and the chapter discusses Wundt to a great deal.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Apperception was a concept that struck me, because while reading it, I realized I was not doing it, so it was interesting to me.
Apperception is defined in the book as to see an event and to perceive it with full clarity, and to solely focus on it. This definition is not universal; other examples of the definition are that it is to take past knowledge to apply it to understand a current experience. One coinciding fact is that perception is the key driving point to this term. To perceive, to look at and understand, to think about what is in front of us, this is what the definition agrees on.
Apperception is one thing that has not fallen out of favor as time has gone on. Today, this idea is being used in the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which is a test where you see a card with an image on it, not the inkblot test, and you describe what you see. How this relates to apperception is when you describe what you see on the card, you are totally focused in on it, and you use past experiences to describe what is being seen. This not only requires past experience, but with such a focus on it, it is harder to focus on other things as you are zoned in. In the book it talks about apprehension, which is when things draw your focus away from what should be perceived. The classic example is listening to music, if you can pick out words, rhythms, or think of the artist, then you are not fully focused on something, so apperception is not happening. In the test, there are many limits on what could pull your focus away, so it is a good way to dive into somebody’s psyche.
One example of the TAT that is was easy to find, was the first card used in the test. This card shows a boy on a table looking at a violin. This could be interpreted, or perceived in many ways. This is where the process of apperception and the psych parts come in. A person will look at that, perceive it, understand it, compare it to past experiences, and give a detailed account of what it means to them. Their account of the picture is what can be used to delve into a person’s past and understand them more, but that is a tangent.
Overall apperception will continue to be used, and it is an interesting idea to look at when understanding somebody’s psyche. The idea now can be asked to you, professor, did you apperceive this post, understand it with full clarity and focus, or just apprehend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apperception - Gives a full definition among other uses of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_Apperception_Test - Shows current uses of the theory of apperception and where it is now.
http://web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/tat/tattx1.htm - Gives a detailed account of the first card in the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
1a) Wilheim Wundt
1b) This topic is important to the chapter because Wilheim Wundt was very influencial to the development of psychology. He came up with new ways to study psychology and was the leader in experimental psychology
1c) I chose this topic because I think that it was interesting that he was the first to really study and look at experimental psychology, and how he brought about new ways in studying psychology.
2) Wilheim Wundt has been called the father of psychology. In 1879, he created the Institute for Experimental Psychology. This was located in Germany at the University of Leipzig. Wundt is known by many as being the leader of experimental psychology. The laboratory he created was first designed for those that were very serious about studying psychology, and then later he would open it up to some philosophers and students. In his experimental work he used natural sciences for his experimental methods. This was not done at this time, and work was usually done through rational analysis. Wundt took a whole different approach to his experiments. Wundt looked at psychology and philosophy as two different things when looking at the mind, and he focused on measurement and control. Wundt looked at the mind as an activity and not a substance. He wanted analyze thoughts and sensations, kind of in the same way as chemist break down compounds to understand them. Wundt had a belief in reductionism. He believed that the consciousness could be broken down and look at its basic elements. He also came up with the theory that he could scientifically study them through introspection. Introspection was identified as a form of self-examination. Wundt “trained psychology students to make observations that were biased by personal interpretation or previous experience, and used the results to develop a theory of conscious thought”. This method did not stay intact and was not used in psychology past the 1920’s. A main contribution he made to psychology was how he carefully controlled his conditions.
3) http://www.intelltheory.com/wundt.shtml
-This site helped with the background of his institute and some of his studies.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This site was great for background, theories, procedures and impact.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/650018/Wilhelm-Wundt
This site was good for looking at his impact on psychology.
1a) This week I decided to do my topical blog on Wilhelm Wundt.
1b) This relates to the chapter as it was on Wundt and German psychology. It discussed the contributions which he made to the field and how he developed experimental psychology into some of what we call modern psychology today.
1c) Wundt seemed to do so much in contributing to American psychology from the first experimental psychology lab to developing the first journal of psychological research. He separated psychology apart from philosophy and even worked with Helmholtz who we learned about in the previous chapter.
2)
Wilhelm Wundt was many things; a physician, physiologist, philosopher and professor but is best known today as the father of experimental psychology and one of the founding fathers of modern psychology. He was also one of the first to call himself a psychologist. His importance within this field remains a hot topic today among several psychologists as its gone through many scholarly reconsiderations over time, however he was an extremely powerful influence. He played a very significant part in psychology actually become a discipline, particularly in the United States.
Wilhelm Wundt was born in the year 1832 in Neckarau, Germany. His father was a Lutheran minister and his grandfather a Geography professor. When Wundt was young he was very intelligent and particular but also very shy. Friedrich Muller, his fathers assistant, schooled Wundt and the two become very close. The became quite attached and he eventually moved in with Muller. At the age of 19 he made his way into the University of Tubingen but a year later transferred to the University of Heidelberg where he took on the field of medicine. By his third year at the institution he created his first text but eventually switched into physiology where he studied with Johannes Muller. In 1856, at the age of 24, Wundt obtained his doctorate in medicine. A few years later he started his journey with Hermann Helmholtz. The two worked together within the same laboratory until 1871. After Helmholtz moved, Wundt was granted his replacement and three years later accepted the chair in Inductive Philosophy. The following year on August 14 he married Sophie Mau. The couple had three children together. Three years later he accepted the first class chair at Leipzig where he became famous.
Wundt as well was the creator of psychology’s first laboratory which eventually grew into eleven rooms and came to be known as the Psychological Institute. It caught the attention of many scholars from all who wanted to jump into the new science which had been created. It was officially recognized by the University in 1879. Wundt was responsible for setting the course of research but it was actually his students who did a majority of the experimenting and publishing of data. A popular quote I found stated that, “Enrollment in his courses doubled about every 15 years, reaching a peak of 620 students in the summer of 1912. Wundt ended up sponsoring 186 Ph.D. dissertations..” Some of his students even went on to become distinguished psychologists as well. One of Wundt’s students however is responsible for some mistranslations of his work.
His publications which estimate around 53,00 pages cover everything from animal physiology to politics. He is even responsible for developing the first journal of psychological research in the year of 1881. One of his most important works in the history of psychology was titled, Principles of Physiological Psychology which was published in 1874 and was the first ever textbook devoted to the field. Wundt had the dream of developing a philosophico-scientific system of knowledge, practice and politics all combined. He made immense contributions to several fields such as psycholinguistics. Throughout his life he explores religious beliefs, mental disorders, abnormal behavior and brain damage. He even established “hybrid science”. Throughout his career he faced quite a bit of opposition but remains one of the most influential individuals in psychologies history today. Wundt eventually passed in 1920 after a career of 65 years.
3)
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
This website contributed a ton of great information. In the beginning it contributed a general overview. It listed a biographical timeline which was nice. Towards the beginning it discussed his home life and how he grew up. It then got into his time with experimental psychology, work with sensation, consciousness, and much more. It talked about how his career developed and mentioned some of his most famous publications within. At the end it listed every work he has ever published.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
This website has quite a bit of good information as well. It talked quite a bit about his personal life and family and then got into his career from university to his time as a professor. It also discussed his influence on what is now modern psychology, his views and publications. Overall it was a decent source for Wikipedia.
3. http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website didn’t have a ton of information but it included all of the important aspects of Wundt’s life. It talked about his laboratory, theories, and influence he created throughout his life. Like the other sites it also got into his academic career and publications as well.
1a) Wilhelm Wundt and sensation
1b) Wundt is considered the “father of psychology”. He had the first psych lab, and that is very influential to modern day psychology and to this chapter. After all, his name is a part of the chapter title.
1c) I wanted read more about Wundt’s life and his study of sensation. I thought the idea of separating different elements of the mind to help study and better understand them was fascinating.
2) Wilhelm Wundt was born in August of 1832 in Neckarau, a town in Germany. He completed most of his education at the University of Heidelberg where he studied medicine. Wundt had the opportunity to study physiology under Muller at Berlin, and later, Wundt taught physiology for two years at the same university.
In 1879, Wundt’s lab at Leipzig University was the considered to be the first official psychology laboratory. At first, the lab was used mostly by German psych students, but as the popularity of psychology grew, students from Britain and America traveled there to study.
Wundt believed that sensation connected a person’s body to their psyche. He spent a lot of time taking the elements of thought and sensation and separating them to get a better understanding of the mind. Wundt coined the term voluntarism meaning the organization of the mind. His student. Edward Titchener, later coined the term structuralism meaning the study of the components of the mind.
Wundt also used experimental psychology to study human consciousness. He believed consciousness could be studied in the controlled environment of his lab. This would create psychological products that could be reproduced.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
I chose this website because it contained a lot of good information I could pick and choose from.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website is a short biography of Wundt’s life that I was able to used for some background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
Wikipedia also offered a decent biography and some extra information that I was able to pull from.
1. My topic is Gustav Fechner
1b. My topic relates to the chapter because Fechner was a German physiologist who made a large impact on experimental psychology, which is the commonality for everyone discussed in the chapter. Fechner studied in the realm of many things (philosophy, physiology, experimental psychology) but his legacy belongs in his starting the field of psychophysics.
1c. I am interested in this topic because Fechner was brilliant person who often took the love of his field to the extremes, such as experimenting on himself in drastic ways. He enveloped his life in his work and made many interesting contributions to psychology.
2. Gustav Fechner was remarkable man in many ways and made many different contributions to psychology. Gustav was born in Germany and made his mark as a philosopher, physiologist, and experimental psychologist who is credited as being the founder of psychophysics. He spent his early academic career studying in Dresden but went to the University of Leipzig in 1818 where he spent the rest of his life. In his early career he was a professor of physics at the University of Leipzig. He published many books, often under his pseudo name Dr. Mises. He also spent time translating different texts. In 1839 he damaged his eye sight from staring at the sun to judge the effect of what is now known as afterimages. This damage led him to take leave from his position at the university and go into a deep psychosis which lasted several years. He emerged from this illness with a new philosophical insight and turned his attention to riddling the mind body problem. Along the way Fechner studied a variety of interesting things. One of the most important theories he helped establish was the Weber-Fechner law. This law states that it takes an increasing intensity or quantity (which can be quantified mathematically) of a stimulus to produce a noticeable difference to our senses. He discovered what is known as the Fechner color effect. This effect happens when black and white colors spin rapidly causing people to see different patterns of black and white in which not all people see the same colors or the same pattern. This phenomenon led to the invention of the spinning top; it is also important to mention that this phenomenon is still not completely understood. Fechner is also credited for coming up with the concept of a median, which is an important measure of central tendency. In his later years he made the first empirical research study of synesthetes in where people saw letters as colors. After Fechner recovered from his psychosis he emerged a more spiritual person. His views at this time were what is known as animistic. He saw the life and soul in everything, plants, trees, stars, and argued against the concept of dualism, or that the mind and the body were two separate things. Rather, he thought that the mind and body were just different sides of the same reality. He felt strongly that he could prove this through mathematics and his passion for this endeavor led him to create what is now known as psychophysics. He also went on to prove that shapes found in nature are intrinsically pleasing to our senses. On October 22nd of 1850 it is said that Fechner awoke with a sudden idea of how he could quantify the mind experimentally to further prove the relationship between the mind and the body. This day had become known as Fechner day.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Fechner
This website helped by introducing me to the many things that Fechner accomplished throughout his life. It gave very specific information that expanded what I knew about him.
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/gustav-fechner-psychology-theory-lesson-quiz.html#lesson
This website was helpful in that it reinforced the things I learned from the first article and helped me to better understand how Fechner’s study of psychophysics.
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/gustav-fechner-psychology-theory-lesson-quiz.html#lesson
This website helped me to better understand why Fechner created the study of psychophysics.
1a. This week, my topic will be Wilhelm Wundt.
1b. Wundt is regarded as the father of experimental psychology and this chapter is dedicated to exploring most of his work which led to psychology being regarded as a science.
1c. I found Wundt interesting because of his contributions, the study of psychology was radically changed which has in turn inspired and generated other studies and psychologists throughout the 20th century. I believe that if it wasn't for Wundt's contributions, psychology would be very different from what it is today.
2. Wilhelm Wundt was born on August 16th, 1832, in both the textbook and on online biographies and journals it is said that he was a very different child compared to others. At the age of 19 he entered the University of Tübingen and then after a year he transferred to the University of Heidelberg, majoring in medicine. Having completed his MD in 1855, Wundt began to study experimental physiology in Berlin under Johannes Müller, who is known as the father of experimental physiology. In my research, Wundt's career really kicked off when he began work as a laboratory assistant of Hermann Helmholtz at Heidelberg. During his time there, he began publishing works, including papers and two books that showed signs of his call for a scientific approach to psychology. Leaving his laboratory assistant job in 1864, Wundt set up a private laboratory and throughout the years he continued to publish works and reached several accomplishments, becoming a renowned professor at Heidelberg which led him to a position at Leipzig in 1875. When he arrived at Leipzig he opened the first experimental psychology laboratory for use of students to conduct research.
3.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#LifTim gives information about Wundt's life
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1413739?seq=3 biography journal about Wundt
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm provides a general history of Wundt and his influence on psychology
1a) Wilhelm Wundt
1b) This topic relates to chapter four as shown in the title, Wundt and German Psychology. Wundt establishes a new psychology which deals with experimental studies throughout this chapter. He holds great significance in this chapter with his findings.
1c) I am interesting in Wilhelm Wundt because of his accomplishments in creating a new psychology. I find the two different programs within his findings very interesting with the whole experimental laboratory approaches.
2) Wilhelm Wundt, also known as the “father of experimental psychology”, is very important in today’s modern psychology. He saw psychology as a science separate from biology and philosophy. Wundt attended the University of Heidelberg, where he also was a professor and founded the first psychological laboratory at Leipzig. With his ability to explore this led him to the conception of this new psychology. Within this concept it included two major programs, the examination of “Immediate” conscious experience and the study of higher mental processes.
Studying immediate conscious experience involves introspection, the human mind, dealing with self-observation and internal perception. Self-observation views experiences through introspective reflection and internal perception is narrower and reactions were found to be more controlled by stimuli. Studying higher mental processes such as myths, religions, and languages of cultures, he was able to see inductive observational techniques and cross-cultural comparisons. Wundt’s experimental psychology approach by using experimental methods interested other areas such as behaviorists and it stimulated the interest in cognitive psychology. Making such significant discoveries Wundt is a well know psychologist today and his findings have led to many more.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt - always enjoy using this site, it’s good outline and accomplishments are easy to follow
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm - good biography of Wundt, good lay out
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html - very simple and easy to read, good points
1. a)For this week’s topic I chose to discuss Wilhelm Wundt.
b) Wilhelm Wundt’s contribution to psychology was discussed throughout the chapter. He was considered the ‘founder of psychology’.
c) This area interested me because of how his work has been presented throughout history. I always find discrepancies in textbooks interesting, and that the author of this textbook brought this issue to our attention made me want to do more research on Wundt.
2. Wilhelm Wundt was born in Germany in 1832. He graduated from Heidelberg in 1856 with a degree in medicine. From there he worked as an assistant to more than one notable figure’s in history, including Muller and Helmholtz. It was working with Muller that he wrote one of his most famous writings, ‘Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception’. Wundt wasn’t interested in medicine though; he was more interested in experiments and writings. He offered the first class in scientific psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Not only did he offer the first class in scientific psychology, he also opened the first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig in 1879. There he focused on sensation and introspection. He was able to turn psychology into a scientific experiment. Over his years he trained 186 graduate students, and wrote over 50,000 pages on various psychology topics. It was all of this combined that gave him the name that he is still known as today, the ‘father of psychology’.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
I found the above website important in my research because it gave detailed information on Wundt, including several topics that were important explaining his research.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
This website was helpful because it included a timeline of Wilhelm Wundt's life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
This website was helpful for a better understanding of his past. It served as more of a biography of his early years.
The topic that I chose to learn more about this week was the two point threshold. This topic was mentioned in the chapter as one of Weber’s discoveries. There is a section dedicated to this in the text and a picture reference of the arm, but I wondered about other parts of the body and how this test resulted elsewhere. I am interested in this topic because it is an area that I am unfamiliar with. I have taken classes that talked about pain receptors, but not so much about overall sensation receptors.
The two point threshold is a test that used to determine the point at which a blindfolded person can feel two point on their, for example, arm being touched as opposed to one. This was test was done by Weber using a device similar in appearance to a two-point drawing compass, but could be done with two pointed objects such as pencils or an unfolded paperclip. If the two points are too close, they are both simulating the same receptive field which will cause only one neuron to fire in the brain, therefore only perceiving the point in one spot when it is really in two. On certain areas of the body, such as one’s fingertips, there are more nerves and the threshold for which one can identify two separate points touching them is smaller than for less sensitive areas of the body, such as the upper arm. The two point threshold on the forearm is 30mm and is 2mm on this finger. The two point threshold on the finger is the smallest for any point on the body, as the fingers and the lips are the most sensitive parts of the human body. The back and the stomach are the least sensitive, which is why the two point threshold for the back is 70mm. This is because we use our hands for almost everything that we do and need more nerves there to tell our brain if something hurts or is being done correctly. This makes me think of things such as last week when I got a bruise on my arm near my elbow and it hurt on the moment of impact but I completely forgot about it afterward. However, that same week I also got a paper cut on my hand. That paper cut hurt every time I bumped it for days afterward. This is because of the larger number of nerves in my hand as opposed to my elbow. A sex difference in sensitivity shows that females tend to be more sensitive to touch than males on average. The two point threshold test can also be used to test for nerve damage, which I found very interesting. Another interesting fact that I discovered was that this test was instrumental in the creation of braille. The dots in braille are all placed 2mm apart because if they were any closer we would not recognize them as two separate points. What I observed when trying to choose resources was that this test is mostly performed on the hand, arm, and neck. I am unclear as to why this is the case. I would like to know what the two point threshold is on the leg or foot, for example.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/nerves-twopoint-threshold/
I chose this resource because the two point threshold was written about in a simple way that anyone could understand.
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/bruno/psc129/lecture-notes/touch/touch.html
I used this website because it mentions the minimum of the two point threshold on various parts of the body.
http://ucalgary.ca/pip369/mod7/touch/neural1
I used this source because it was very informational and it had diagrams which made the information easier to follow along with. This cite also talked about the two point threshold in terms of neurons.
For this week’s blog, I decided to look a little more into apperception. When an individual apperceives something, whatever it is has the individual’s full attention and helps the brain make sense out of what is being consumed (Goodwin 2012). This relates to chapter for because the reading is all about Wundt’s combination of physiology and psychology. By studying apperception, we are looking at a physiological action with psychological consequences. Apperception intrigues me because it encompasses the very thing that I struggle with the most: Focus. I also, very simply, want to learn more about what apperception is and how it has changed over the course of history.
Leibnitz, the man who introduced apperception to philosophy, understood apperception as a focus on an object outside the self. The object in the focal point was recognized as both different than and related to the person perceiving the object. The “turning point” for the understanding of apperception came with Herbert’s treatment of the subject. According to him, apperception included past experiences that modified what how you treated the apperception. Wundt seems to include both of these theories in his own attempt at explaining his views on apperception (Baldwin 1901).
From chapter four, we learned that, according to Wundt, there are two fields of focus whenever we are concentrating on a particular task. These two fields are apperception and apprehension or perception. When you are focusing on a topic, you are apperceiving the information. It is the focus of your attention. However, anything going on outside of your main focus (e.g. a noisy restaurant, television, music) that information is in your periphery (Goodwin 2012).
Apperception only applies to situations where an individual has a single focal point. It is different than perception, which is a representation of something that one concludes internally. The theory of apperception only focuses on information that an individual is fixated on at one point in time. At any point that focal point can change, and the individual can be totally focused on something that used to be in their periphery (Stanford 2006). Strictly defined, apperception is the process of taking in information. Whatever you focus on, and whatever you take in from the outside world is being apperceived. All of that information builds until it reaches a perception of a particular situation, object, or person (James 1899).
References:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#Sen
I used this link because it gives a really solid example of what the definition of apperception contains. It helped me understand apperception and perception a lot better than I had understood it previously.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/A4defs.htm
This link helped me look at historical figures in the study of apperception and understand how they studied the topic.
http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/tt14.html
This link helped make the definition of apperception a little bit clearer.
1a) State what your topic is.
The topic I chose for this week is Wilhelm Wundt and his work on introspection.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
In relation to the chapter Wundt plays a major role, as being the creator of New Psychology and the founder of experimental psychology. His breakthrough in testing basic questions with an experimental method was only one of his major contributions. With this came one of his most notable influences to the psychology world, being the founder of the first psychological lab at that time. Another major contribution came from Wundt on his studies of internal perception and self observation, which I decided to research further.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Wundt’s studies on introspection because I think it is very interesting that he believed self-observation to be unreliable because of the time lapse between event and reflection. This unsystematic approach was replaced by eliminating the time after experiencing an event, to reflecting immediately prior. Wundt called this internal perception. This interests me because I am unsure how he could train his students to help him get unbiased, quick, and consistent results.
2) After getting his MD from the university of Heidelberg, Wundt studied with two psychologists we have read about in our book, Johannes Muller and Herman von Helmholtz. Both of these men are thought to have greatly influenced Wundt’s later work. While working at the University of Leipzig, Wundt opened psychologies first experimental laboratory. In this laboratory is where Wilhelm Wundt first introduced structuralism. Structuralism, as Wundt described it, was the study of construction that comprised within the mind. Within structuralism, or introspection, two methods were described, self-observation and internal perception. Self-observation is defined as the analysis of one’s experience through conscious beliefs and emotions. Even though this term and idea was coined by Wundt, he thought of this to be an unreliable test of measurement due to the time period between experience and reflection. To eliminate the time between experience and reflection, Wundt introduced the idea of internal perception. Internal perception, Wundt thought would be much more reliable. To test internal perception, Wundt trained over 150 students to respond immediately to specific stimuli (set up by Wundt), without any bias. While the students knew exactly how to respond Wundt’s questions, the process of experimenting ones personal experience would not past the test of time though. These experiments were seen as more of a building block for Wundt to influence an experimental side of psychological study, which would prove the test of time and influence behavior studies in the future.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This website helped in giving specific details into Wundt’s studies and how he influenced the past.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/wundtprofile.htm
This site really helped in breaking down internal perception from self-observation, and giving the pros and cons of each.
http://andrewhoff.com/psych/cognition/misc/wundt-introspection/
This last site was very helpful in explaining the disadvantages of introspection, in addition to explaining Wundt’s over all addition to the psychological world.
The topic I chose to write about from this chapter was Hermann Ebbinghaus and human memory.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was an experimental psychologist which was the main topic of chapter 4. He mainly focused on the experimental study of the human mind. Ebbinghaus got inspiration from one of Fechner’s books that described how the mind can be acted upon with the scientific method.
I am interested with Ebbinghaus and his work on human memory. Memory and the brain and extremely big interests of mine and I take any chance I get to learn more about them both. Memory affects every single one of us every day, especially as students trying to study for tests. The work Ebbinghaus has done can give me a better technique when it comes to studying especially when it came to his forgetting curve.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first to actually study memory. Ebbinghaus was not originally interested in psychology until he came across Elements of Psychophysics by Fechner in a library one day. His interest in psychology started in that library and soon he had the 3rd psychological testing lab in Germany. Hermann wanted to prove to the world that high mental processes like memory could by studied using the scientific method and experimentation. He thought that in order to form memories it had to be created by new associations. In order to retain these new associations or ideas, one would have to use repetition to keep the memory. In order to study how memory works, Ebbinghaus had to figure out what things to test on. He believed for this experiment that the testing shouldn’t consist of any meaningful words like songs or poems, but something that meant absolutely nothing to anyone. This is where he created the nonsense syllables, which was a set of three letters that contained a consonant a vowel and then another consonant (CVC). His method for the experiment was quite simple once he created all the possible CVC combinations. He would then take the 2300 CVCs and pick them out by random selection. To test memory retention he would use 16 to 20 sets of these CVCs on one list. Once the list was created he would recite each CVC out loud and at the end of the list try and recall what he read. He discovered that the more repetitions there are the number of items he could recall increased quickly and then slowed down, which was the first learning curve. This was one of his many tests of retention; recall which was remembering each item but it broke down into two different tests, free recall (recalling the listed items with order not being important, and serial recall (recalling the listed items in exact order. Ebbinghaus made several contributions to psychology along with his memory studies. He published his most important piece of writing called Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Hermann_Ebbinghaus.aspx
This website gave a very detailed information on his professional work before and after his experiments with memory.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This website gave a methodical point by point explanation of Ebbinghaus’s memory experiment and also many phenomena that he found as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus
This website gave a general overview into his life from the birth until death and talked about his other contributions in experimental psychology.
1a) Experimental Psychology
1b) The chapter is about innovations and discoveries made by Germen psychologists. One of these innovations was the creation of experimental psychology.
1c) Experimental psychology is a methodology that utilizes the scientific method to research and test psychological hypotheses. This includes research on humans and animals in areas including sensation and perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion, developmental processes, social psychology, etc. It can be divided into four canons of science: Determinism (all actions have meaning behind them), empiricism (making observations), parsimony (simplified and organized research), and testability (theories should be testable). The Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) oversee all psychological experiments in order to ensure that all experiments are ethical and safe. People
Experimental psychology has a lengthy history. It all started with Wilhelm Wundt in 1874, when he published Grunzuge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology). This was known as the first textbook for experimental psychology. In 1879, Wundt opened the first experimental psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany. G. Stanley Hall opened an experimental psychology lab at John Hopkins in 1883, which was the very first experimental psychology lab in the US. In 1885, Herman Ebbinghaus published his research on learning and memory in a book which would later be translated as: Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. In 1929, Edwin Boring published his book: A History of Experimental Psychology. John Watson’s, “Little Albert” experiment also occurred that year. Other important figures in experimental psychology include Charles Bell, Ernst Weber, Gustav Fechner, Oswald Kulpe, George Trumbull Ladd, and Charles Sanders Pierce.
Experimental psychology can be done in colleges, universities, research centers, government and private businesses. Professionals usually research cognitive processes, animal behavior, neuroscience, personality, etc. or teach researching methods to college students. Methods of research include case studies, correlational research, and naturalistic observation. who work in experimental psychology typically receive masters in research psychology. It is usually a requirement for those looking into teaching experimental psychology at the college level to hold a masters in this area. The job outlook for experimental psychologists looks promising, as job growth is expected to increase by 12% by 2018.
http://psychology.about.com/od/researchmethods/a/what-is-experimental-psychology.htm (History and basic information)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology (Extended information about significant figures, four canons of science, and IRBs)
http://www.psychologycareercenter.org/experimental-psychologist.html (Job as an experimental psychologist)
1a)Wilhelm Wundt.
1b) As considered the ‘father of psychology’ his contributions and achievements are detailed throughout the chapter.
1c) This area interested me because of how his work has been presented throughout history. I always find discrepancies in textbooks interesting, and that the author of this textbook brought this issue to our attention made me want to do more research on Wundt.
2a) Wilhelm Wundt graduated from Heidelberg in 1856 with a degree in medicine and from there he worked as an assistant with both Muller and Helmholtz. It was working with Muller that he wrote one of his most famous writings, ‘Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception’. While Wundt wasn’t so much interested in medicine, he had a fondness for the actual practice and experimentation. He would later go on to teach the first class in scientific psychology at the University of Heidelberg and later he opened the first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig in 1879. There he focused on sensation and introspection. Wundt would also get into the study of reaction times and sensory processes and attention. For example, participants would be exposed to a standard stimulus (e.g. a light or the sound of a metronome) and asked to report their sensations. Wundt's aim was to record thoughts and sensations, and to analyze them into their constituent elements, in much the same way as chemist analyses chemical compounds, in order to get at the underlying structure. Overall, one of his major contributions was that he was able to turn psychology into a scientific experiment. He separated philosophy from psychology by taking it into a more scientific spectrum. Over his years he trained 186 graduate students, and wrote over 50,000 pages on various psychology topics. Wundt is the ‘father of psychology.’
This website gave detailed information about Wundt’s various experiments:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.htmlI
This website included a timeline of Wundt’s life.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt
This, again, was a timeline but acted as more of a biography.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
Topical Blog Week #5
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
The topic I chose to conduct further research on was Ernest Weber, psychophysics, and how his experiments and discoveries impacted psychology. This fits into chapter four because this chapter was all about experimental psychology. Weber’s two-point threshold test and Weber’s law are two great discoveries which can link mental events and physical events together, mathematically. This is interesting to me because this is a textbook definition on how we evolved from the idea of philosophical psychology to more of a mathematical, empirical type of psychology called experimental psychology.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
First off, for this assignment I would like to talk about Ernst Weber. I then would like to go into detail about what psychophysics is. Thirdly, I would like to talk about his two-point threshold experiments and what it did for psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Ernest Heinrich Weber was born in Wittenberg Germany. He began to study medicine at the University of Wittenberg in 1811. He received his M.D. from this college in 1815 where he specialized in comparative anatomy. He is most known for being a German physiologist and psychologist. It is said he is also one of the founders of experimental psychology alongside Wilhelm Wundt. Weber is also known as one of the founders of psychophysics. Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between perception of a stimulus event (“psycho”) and of the stimulus being perceived (“physics”) (Goodwin, 2015).
One of Weber’s more well-known experiments is called the two-point threshold test. This test is used to examine sensitivity on the skin of a blindfolded participant. The participant’s part was to judge whether or not two points were being felt. He would place this device on an upper arm, for this particular location, each point would need to be place further apart to be able to recognize it being two different points. Unlike the arm, the thumb does not need the points to be very distant to recognize that there are in fact two different points. What we can conclude from those two examples are the arm is less sensitive in perceiving stimulus and the thumb is more sensitive in perceiving the stimulus. If we were to conduct this test we would have a participant sit down at a table and have them lay their hand out, palm up, in a comfortable position. We would then blindfold them, ask them to look away, or to close their eyes. We would start with the device measuring 5 mm (millimeters). We start with 5 mm to formulate a good baseline. We would lightly poke the participant’s finger with the device and ask them if they feel one or two points. If the participant reports they feel two points, we would begin to decrease the measurement (the points begin to get close together). We would go from 5 mm, to 4mm, to 3 mm, and so on. This test is often times used in occupational therapy and also helps in diagnosing injuries.
Weber’s second contribution was called Weber’s law. This was another study of thresholds and how the mind perceived the stimulus. This specific law had to do weight-lifting experiments. For example, if someone could not tell the different between a 20 gram weight and a 21 gram weight but could tell the difference between a 20 gram weight and a 22 gram weight, there must be some kind of threshold passed. When someone could distinguish the difference between a 20 gram weight and a 22 gram weight he called this the “just noticeable difference”. He found out that the jnd depended not on the absolute size of the difference between the weights, but on the relationship between the jnd and the smaller of the two weights (standard stimulus). As the standard stimulus became heavier, a greater difference between it and the comparison weight was necessary before the difference was noticed. (Goodwin, 2015) He came up with an equation to define this relationship, jnd/S = k. The just noticeable difference divided by S (standard stimulus) = k.
You may be wondering what in the world has this to do with psychology. Well, Weber’s experiments and discoveries eventually made psychophysics a key section to Wundt’s new experimental psychology. He also showed that there was not a one to one relationship between the physical world and psychology experience. Because increasing the weight by 5 grams does not always produce the same sensation. This helped us understand how the mind organizes its experiences and how it requires knowing more than just the physical dimensions of what we are exposed to. One of the greatest things that came of his experiments is it showed that mental (psycho) and physical (physics) could be related to each other mathematically.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
URL 1: http://geniusrevive.com/en/component/sobipro/156-ernst-weber-one-of-the-founder-of-psychophysics.html?Itemid=0 I chose this particular website because it gave a great, in depth biography of who exactly Ernest Weber was. The information I used from this website was his birthplace and facts about his education.
URL 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt6P01jBQ8 I chose this video because overall, it did a good job on explaining how one would go about distributing the two-point threshold test. The information I used from this video was how they set up the study and the particular measurements used when testing it on a participant (millimeters).
URL 3: http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/WebersLaw.html I chose this website because it held a lot of information about Weber’s law and the “just noticeable difference”. The information I used from this website helped me explain how his equation works and the relationship between physics and our mental processes.
Terminology: Ernest Weber, experimental psychology, two-point threshold, Weber’s law, psychophysics, just noticeable difference, standard stimulus, Wundt.
the topic that I am interested in is the two point threshold. this interest me because I have always in a way been in a way been interested in the nervous system in general. this topic is related to this weeks chapter through Ernst Weber.
Ernst weber was born in Germany. he obtained his medical degree from wittenburg university. in 1821 he was hired at the university of Leipzeg where he spent his entire career. Weber was among the first to start studying psychophysics experimentally. most of his research in this area had to do with sensitivity to physical stimuli (website 3). after a while he started to notice that peoples sensitivity to different things such as touch or brightness were not the same. he then began to focus his studies on skin senses and this is where the concept of the two point threshold was born. he discovered this simply by observing that certain points on the body were more sensitive than others.
the two point threshold is a sensation part of the nervous system. the two point threshold is essentially the point at which two separate objects are sensed as two separate objects on the skins surface. the thing is that some areas of skin are more sensitive than others and in those areas there are more mechanoreceptors. Mechanoreceptors are receptors that are sensitive to mechanical pressure or deformation of the skin (http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/2point.html).So due to this in areas with more of these receptors the two point threshold than it is in area with lower levels of receptors.
the two point threshold is usually tested by using a somewhat sharp objects with two points. the object is placed on the skin and slightly pressed so that the person can feel it. from what I found the points are then moved by one millimeter at a time until the subject can clearly identify that there are in fact two separate pints of contact. to this day this test is still used during neurological examinations and is a widely used test to determine an individuals level of tactile agnosia. tactile agnosia is the ability to recognize the form of an object without the use of vision or auditory stimulation. that is why for thest in a medical sense the individual must keep their eyes closed. doctors may even change between using one point and two points of contact. the smallest distance between two objects being identified is then known as the patients two point threshold.
1)http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/2point.html
form this site I got info on what the two point threshold is and why it shows up how it does.
2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-point_discrimination
I used this website along with the one listed above to figure out how this is tested.
3)http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/weber.html
this is the website where I obtained the bio info on Ernst weber.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I chose the topic of the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This fits in with the chapter we read because his theory and experiments about memory are talked about toward the end of the chapter. I am interested in this topic because I have always found the process of memory to be rather intriguing,
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The three aspects I am going to talk about the experiments done by Ebbinghaus, the different theories that explain memory loss, and how you measure memory loss.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Ebbinghaus was of the the first people to study memory in a scientific way. It is believed that he did this in spite of Wilhelm Wundt. Wudnt stated that memory could not be studied experimentally. Ebbinghaus conducted his studies by himself and used himself as his sole subject. First he tested immediate memory. He would look at lists of one syllable sounds. He would then look away and see how many on the syllables he could remember. It was found that the immediate/short term memory can retain 6-8 items at a time. He also found that it was much easier to remember actual words or sentences than it was to remember nonsense sounds.
Ebbinghaus also did a study in which he created a list of 2300 one syllable sounds. He split them into smaller lists. He then studied them until he had all the lists memorized. He recorded how long it took him to memorize them. He then waited 24 hours and then studied them again until he had fully memorized them again. He found that it was easier to re-learn the syllables the second time. He concluded after re-learning the syllables the second time that after 24 hours, the mind only retain about 30% of the information that had been learned. This Is what created what we know today as the Forgetting Curve. It shows the rate at which memories are lost over time.
The next question one might ask is how do you measure memory loss? Well there are two ways too measure it, the first is by recall. Recall is when you are asked to memorize or remember something. Researchers can measure how much memory loss occurred by how many item the subject remembered. Another way to measure memory is by using recognition. This is when a person is given a test and then tries to identify as many items as possible. A multiple choice test is a good example of the recognition technique.
Because of these experiments other researchers were able to create several theories about memory loss. The first is the interference theory. This theory, like it says, states that you are unable to recall you memories because new have been made since then and are not interfering with your ability to recall them. The second theory is the decay theory. This theory states that it is the time between the memory and the recall that plays the biggest role it determining whether or not the memory will be retained or not. And the last theory that has come about since Ebbinghaus' discoveries is the retrieval failure theory. This theory, states that the reason we can remember thing is because we never actually learned them. For example, if someone told you to draw the back of a dime, chances are you would get the shape and size correct, but the details would be a little off. This is because we distinguish better a dime and a penny by the size and color not by what is on the back of it. We never really learn what the back of a dime looked like.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/201/Hermann-Ebbinghaus.html --> I used this website because it gave me a lot of good information about the experiments done by Ebbinghaus
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/p/forgetting.htm --> I used this website because it talked about the different theories that come about as a result of experiments done by Ebbinghaus
http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ebbinghaus%20Retention%20Curve -- I used this website because it gave a good definition of the Forgetting Curve.
Terms: Ebbinghaus, Forgetting Curve, retrieval failure theory, interference theory, memory, recognition, recall, wilhelm wundt, immediate/short term memory
1) I chose to do more research on Wilhelm Wundt and structuralism. Wundt’s development of structuralism was covered in a portion of a section within the chapter and focused on consciousness and the functions of the brain and its structures.
2) Three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment included: a more in-depth look at structuralism, the first school of psychology, and criticism involving Wundt and structuralism.
3) The definition of structuralism is the study of the elements of consciousness and the researchers wanted to find the relationship between conscious experiences and involved psychical processes. The theory of structuralism began with the idea that all conscious experiences can be broken down into basic elements of consciousness. Similar to a physical process was beginning to be viewed as consisting of chemical structures which could also be broken down into basic elements. Introspection is the observation of one’s mental and emotional processes and was a key element that structuralism relied on. The basic component of structuralism can be viewed as experimenters studying sensory perception through manipulating stimuli and then having people report back on their individual experience. As Wundt’s theory continued to develop, it was believed that sensations, such as taste, smell, feel, were the basic elements of consciousness. Wundt stated that a person’s mind compares sense and feelings and can use them to describe the experience thought quality, duration, and intensity in order to find the connection between conscious experiences.
As Wundt began to develop his theory, he founded the first school of psychology in 1879. It was the first psychological lab and was in Leipzig, Germany. The school was founded on structuralism with Wundt being known as the father of structuralism. In the school, Wundt and his researchers would try to describe their own interpretations on events or object in order to dissect the basic elements of consciousness that was involved in the experience. The school of structuralism is now viewed as unreliable and discredited. The school, for the most part, is completely dead in the field of psychology today. The school died out after Wundt past away and the findings began to be viewed as incorrect and unreliable
The school of structuralism did not last because other research found a lot wrong with Wundt’s methodology and found flaws that are not consistent with current experimental psychology. These flaws involved agreement and reliability that focused around the fact that the data recorded was from researchers describing an experience in concrete terms. They said it is very difficult for multiple observes to agree independently on one event that is being experienced. In fact, one of the greatest criticism was the face that the researchers were students that were trained by Wundt who resolved all disagreements they had about an experience. This effected the reliability and agreement among the observers in the experiments because their recording was influenced by Wundt’s bias. It was also criticized that structuralism theory dealt with nonobseravable events and the conscious experiences for each individual were different. All of the finings assumed that people had a complete understanding on conscious experiences and would be able to verbalize their own thoughts and perceptions. All of the criticism involved in Wundt’s theory have led to structuralism becoming extinct in today’s field of psychology.
4) URLs:
http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/structuralism.htm
This website was very helpful in giving me more in-depth information on the basic elements of structuralism. More importantly this website gave me the most information involving the school of psychology, which was developed by Wilhelm Wundt
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Wundt.html
I found this website very helpful in learning more about the criticism associated with structuralism and the problems within the field of structuralism.
http://www.business-science-articles.com/css/psychology/462-structuralism
The final website I used gave me more information about the different elements of structuralism and more criticism on the matter. It also informed me on the current standing of structuralism as it is related to psychology now.
5) Terminology Used: Wilhelm Wundt, structuralism, school of psychology, psychology, conscious experiences, introspection, sensory perception, sensations, experimental psychology, methodology, reliability, agreement, concrete terms,
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is Hermann Ebbinghaus. He fits into the chapter because he is talked about as one of the people who followed and added to the new psychology movement. I am interested in learning more about him because of his experimental research on memory. Memory is an interesting topic and many people struggle with their memory. I want to know why he was interested in studying memory and what method he used to study it. I am also hoping to learn more about his idea on savings method. I think it is interesting that he came up with an idea of memory savings and he did studies on how long you can remember things. I think that some of his findings are still consistent with today’s research on memory loss.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment I will talk about his memory research, his contributions to memory research, and his overall contribution to psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Hermann Ebbinghaus is most famous for his experiments on memory. He wanted to prove that you could do experiments on higher levels of thinking. He did experiments on himself. What he did was try to memorize or learn nonsense syllables. He wanted to use nonsense syllables so that he couldn’t associate words with pictures to help him to remember. Nonsense syllables were constructed of a consonant then a vowel then another consonant. Once he eliminated all the nonsense syllables that were words he came up with more than 2300 syllables. He would study these nonsense syllables and he would test himself on them. He would keep track of how long it would take him to memorize a set of nonsense syllables. After he would memorize the syllables he would then test himself every day and see how many he could remember or a series of time. He found that after he had learned the syllables his memory dropped quickly and then slowly fell off after a certain point. Because of his results with learning and forgetting he came up with the idea of a learning curve and a forgetting curve.
His contributions to memory research are huge. He came up with terms that we still use today. He came up with concepts such as learning curve and forgetting curve as mentioned earlier. But he also came up with a concept call the serial position effect. This theory says that we are most likely to remember the first and the last thing that we hear. He called the beginning of a sentence the primacy effect and the end of the sentence he labeled the recency effect. He learned that we remember the first thing that we hear in a list because after each new thing that is presented in the list we start back at the beginning and re-list the things off. The more that you relist the same words the more likely you are to remember them. The end of the sentence or list is known as the recency effect because you heard that part most recently. If you have heard something recently it is easier to remember it. His research on the forgetting curve and the position effect are still used today. The position effect is still used by psychologist and linguistics to explain why we remember the beginning and the end of a conversation. Many people still use his research on the forgetting curve. Many people are aware of his findings and use the principles of his research without even knowing it. For example, college kids know that they should go over and restudy the information they learned earlier in the semester.
Ebbinghaus has made many contributions to psychology. He was one of the first to develop a way to study memory experimentally. He came up with the learning curve, the forgetting curve, and the serial effect. Psychologists still use these principles to help their clients. He was the one who got others interested in the field of memory experiments. People criticized his results of his studies because he was the only subject in his experiment. Even though he was the only subject he still was able to produce accurate theories.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus- this site helped with his meomory research.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/ this site helped to come up with his contributions to memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPTQmRRPSQ this site helped to describe his serial position theory and memory curve theory.
1) To me, it was very surprising and interesting to learn about our memory. I didn't know that once we learn something we start to forget it right away. It occurs rapidly and later tapers off. Hermann Ebbinghaus and his research and experiments on memory just go to show how bad our memories can actually be. Why don't we have good memories, and what causes us to forget things right away? These are some of the questions I would like answered and after reading chapter four it helped me understand these questions. Hermann Ebbinghaus and his experiments and contributions are mentioned in the chapter in great detail. His research on memory was probably his biggest accomplishment to the field of psychology. But, this is not the only thing he did to contribute. I have a bad memory myself and I was interested in this certain subject and person because I wanted to find answers as to why I have a bad memory. It would also be nice to find out why some people have good memories while others do not. What are the causes and contributions to memory?
2)In terms of Ebbinghaus' research I would like discuss what he has done and contributed to the field of psychology. His work on memory is very important to psychology and I will explain why. The first aspect I would like to discuss his book, "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology." This book entails the ideas he came up with such as the nonsense syllables and serial learning. The next thing I would like to discuss is Ebbinghaus' "Forgetting Curve." This was his most famous study and includes a method he came up with called the "savings method", and the term "ecological memory." Lastly I will discuss his other contributions to the field of psychology. Although he is most known for his research on memory, he has done other things to contribute to psychology such as mental testing.
3)Hermann Ebbinghaus was inspired by Fechner. It was Fechner's book "Elements of Psychophysics that motivated him to do his research on memory. Hermann was a a German philosopher who was pushed at a young age by his father to pursue academic studies and excel. In his research of memory has come up with some ideas. The first is the idea of nonsense syallables. Ebbinghaus found it difficult to study memory experimentally. Memorizing things can be hard to do and he came up with nonsense syllables to make it easier. These syllables, also known as CVCs are three-letter units that include two consonants with a vowel in the middle. He realized that using materials that are not related and were not meaningful at all to come up with these nonsense syllables. He also used serial learning to better understand associations. Memory contains a build up of associations that can be hard to remember so by using this method he found it was easier to retain an abundance of information. Serial learning can be defined as recalling and accurately reproducing a set of stimuli in the exact order of their presentation. (Goodwin, p100)
Another great contribution that Ebbinghaus is most known for is called the "forgetting curve." He came up with this because he found that the rate of forgetting information that we have already learned happens fast. He used the savings method which allowed him to measure memory after time has already passed.(Goodwin, p102) This forgetting curve illustrates that after we learn new information, we start to forget that information in a short period of time. What he found was that just after twenty minutes after learning new information we can forget it. After a day has passed the loss of this information is not as rapid as starts to taper off.
Not only was Ebbinghaus most known for his research on memory, he also was a pioneer for mental testing. He invented a test made to test your mental ability in 1895. To complete this test you were to complete sentences. This was similar to the intelligence tests that were to come later from Binet. Ebbinghaus was also a big part of college universities in Germany and created many psychology labs.
www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
This website was very useful to me because it not only provided a brief biography of Ebbinghaus, it also discussed all the work he had done to contribute to psychology. It also had listed the work he had done that was not mentioned in the textbook, so it was interesting to me that he had a lot more work he had done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDPTQmRRPSQ
This video was very informative. It went into great detail about Ebbinghaus' forgetting curved. It explained this curve very well and helped me to understand how and why it is that we cannot hold new information very long.
www.famouspsychologists.org/hermann-ebbinghaus/
I used this website because it explained and discussed Ebbinghaus' work other than what he is greatly known for, memory. I learned that he also contributed to mental testing.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
This week I choose to focus on Wundt’s reaction time studies. I choose this because reaction time is very interesting to me and was a big part of Wundt’s career. This chapter really focuses on him and his research, which this is.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I would like to talk about the experiments or studies that he preformed, then I would like to talk about the discoveries and equipment he used in his experiments, finally I would like to talk about how it applies to us know and what the studies did or accomplished for psychology.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Wundt was a diligent student of Helmholtz who we talked about in the last Chapter. (It is interesting to me how everyone in early psychology seems to be connected in someway) Wundt was his student, and was able to learn from him what he knew about nerve reflexes. Many believe this is why Wundt became interested in reaction time in the first place. To measure reaction time Wundt came up with a The Complication Pendulum was one of the first devices that Wundt made to rest reaction time. The device was surprising looking in some ways like a clock protractor and pendulum all mixed together into one. In some cases he had participants judge the distance of the pendulum when the bell sounded. In other experiments again he had man participants in his studies and had them self report when they were aware of a stimulus usually it was a blinking light. Now we know some of what applied in Wundt’s study in that visually people were sometimes slower to respond than when it was just based on hearing. In the end the reaction time experiments did not just accomplish new findings about reaction time, according to McLeod based on these experiments Wundt created the concept of experimental psychology. He was one of the first ones to perform his experiments in controlled environments with controlled conditions.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7O41r8uEI
I used this video to learn about the different equipment he used in his studies and which ones were successful and those that weren’t so successful.
http://pec.sagepub.com/content/4/3/255.full.pdf+html
I choose this article because it explained the process of the experiments very well in more lay terms.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
I used this article to talk about Wundt’s contributions to society through the reaction time experiments.
This week, I decided to do some research on Ernst Weber. He is mentioned in the beginning of this chapter in the section about psychophysics. This chapter also had a lot to do with experimental psychology, which Weber used. I thought that Weber’s research on the two-point threshold and the just noticeable difference was interesting, and I wanted to learn more about it. First, I will talk about psychophysics and Ernst Weber. Then I will talk about the two-point threshold and Weber’s Law.
The definition of psychophysics is the study of quantitative relations between psychological events and physical events, or between sensations and the stimuli that produce them. The credit for the establishment of psychophysics is given to Gustav Theodor Fechner. He was the one who coined the term “psychophysics”. He also developed methods for psychophysics and did many experiments in this field of psychology. He even wrote a book called Elemente der Psychophysik which shows his beginning work in both psychophysics and experimental ecology. Some of his methods are still being used in experiments in psychophysics today. Ernst Weber was one of the psychologists who worked extensively in psychophysics. Weber was from Germany. He was an anatomist and physiologist. Weber had a doctorate degree in medicine, and was a professor for a while. He had two brothers, and both of them were also scientists. Weber is most known for his research on sensory response to different stimuli. He was one of the first scientists to actually do experiments instead of just thinking about things.
One of Weber’s more famous experiments was his research on the two-point threshold. For this experiment, Weber used an instrument that was similar to a drawing compass, with two points on it. He would set the two points at various distances apart, and put them on different parts of a blindfolded subject’s body. He would then ask the participant if they could feel two touches or only one. He discovered that different parts of the body have different sensitivities to touch. The more sensitive a body part is, the less distance had to be between the two points before the subject could detect the two points. His research became even more significant once nerve endings were discovered. Areas with many nerve endings are very sensitive, such as the tongue. The areas with more nerve endings were able to detect the two points when there was less distance between them.
Weber’s other well-known experiment was when he came up with Weber’s law. This was around the same time he discovered the just noticeable difference. In the beginning of this experiment, Weber would have his participants lift one weight and then a different one to see if they could detect a difference between the two. If there was only a small difference between the two weights, the participants thought that they weighed the same. Weber kept working and found the smallest difference between the weights that could be noticed by the participants. This is what is called the just noticeable difference. He also found that the just noticeable difference was different as the weights got heavier. As the weights got heavier, there needed to be a bigger difference between the two weights before the participants could detect that difference. That is what is known as Weber’s Law. Weber’s law applies to many other types of perception as well, such as vision, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. After Weber’s research on the just noticeable difference, there was much more research done on sensory response. One of the interesting things that I found was the research on absolute thresholds. An absolute threshold is the smallest level of a stimulus that a person is able to detect 50 percent of the time. I found the absolute thresholds of the human senses to be very interesting because they are much smaller than I thought. An example of the absolute threshold for vision is a candle flame 30 miles away. For hearing, it is a watch ticking from 20 feet away. For smell it is a drop of perfume in a 6 room house. The absolute threshold for taste is a teaspoon of sugar in gallon of water, and for touch it is a wing of a fly on your cheek dropped from a centimeter.
http://www.britannica.com/science/psychophysics
I got my general information about psychophysics and Gustav Theodor Fechner from this website. I chose it because it had general information that was easy to understand.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber
This website gave me information about Ernst Weber. I chose it because I just wanted some general background information about him.
http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/74/Ernst-Heinrich-Weber.html
I got more information about Weber’s life from this website. This website also had some information about the two-point threshold and Weber’s law.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/absolute-threshold-examples-definition-quiz.html
This website had information about absolute thresholds.
Ernst Weber, psychophysics, experimental psychology, two point threshold, just noticeable difference, Weber’s law, sensations, physical events, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik, sensory response, touch sensitivity, nerve endings, absolute thresholds
1.I have chosen to research and talk about Wilhelm Wundt. I thought he was very interesting and I was interested in learning more about him and his life. This fits in the chapter we covered this week because he was discussed a lot throughout the chapter. I think him being the father of psychology is a reason enough to be interested in studying him and his work. I think all the contributions he has made to the development of psychology as a field and the development experimental psychology is very interesting. He made a huge difference in the history of psychology. Without him we may not be were we are with psychology and who knows if psychology would even be the same as it is today without all of his developments and work to make the discipline what it is.
2.The first topic that I will be talking about is Wilhelm Wundt’s life. The second topic I will be talking about is his schooling and work within the universities. The third topic I would like to talk about is his many contributions to psychology.
3. Wilhelm Wundt, a 19th century German psychologist and physiologist, was born in Neckarau in Baden, Germany on August 16, 1832. His father was a pastor at a Lutheran church. He lived with he tutor whom also happened to be his father’s assistant at the church. He was a very studious boy that got sent to boarding school at 13. When he finished boarding school he then attended university at 19. He studied at Tubingen, Heidelberg. He was studying medicine. His first year at Tubingen he was not very successful. After the death of his father he got back into his school and started to excel academically. In 1855, he got his Doctorate of Medicine. When he graduated he went to the University of Berlin and continued to study. A few years later, he began teaching at Heidelberg as a professor in physiology. He was Helmholtz assistant from 1858 to 1864 and studied the chemical stimulation of muscles and the neurological stimulation of muscles. Later the final year of being Helmholtz assistant he began an assistant to a professor at Heidelberg. He started his own course a few years later combining physiology and psychology. In 1873-1874 he published a piece of work known as Gründzuge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology). This book was one of the most important in the history or psychology. This covered the methodology that was known as introspection or conscious examination of conscious experience. Later that year he became a chair of “inductive philosophy” at Zürich. For the following forty-five years he was a professor at Leipzig starting in 1875. Before Wundt, the studying of psychology usually fell under the category of medicine and or the life sciences. His biggest contribution to the field of psychology was just simply recognizing it for what it actually is and not categorizing it under something else. He founded the very first psychology research laboratory. Over one hundred laboratories were built based on the laboratory that Wundt built within just a few years by 1900. He was also known for his work with the human brain and in linguistics, with this work he created the Wundt Illusion. Wundt and William James, another well-known famous psychologist, became the co-founders of American psychology. Because of this the two men had an American Psychological Association award named after them. Although he was known for a lot of his famous work and his contributions, one of his biggest contributions in my opinion was that he helped mentor over one hundred graduate students with psychology degrees. Most of those psychologists went on to be well known. Who knows if those people would have gone on to do the things they have done if Wundt wouldn’t have helped and mentored them when they were in school. Some of his more famous students that he mentored were Külpe and Munsterberg. For many of the following reasons I mentioned before and for establishing experimental psychology he is known as the Father of psychology. He believed that there was more to psychology than just the experimental study of sensations. He studied sociocultural psychology in his later years of his career. Shortly before he died in 1920 he wrote an autobiography, Erlebtes and Erkanntes. Wilhelm Wundt lived to be 88 and died on August 31, 1920.
4.http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
I chose this article because it had a lot of good information about his life and it was easy to understand. It gave good detailed information that really helped broaden my knowledge on Wundt. This contributed to my post in many ways and for all there parts of the topic I chose.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Wundt
I chose this article because it has good information about his schooling and his life.. This helped me with the schooling section and the part about his life. This article helped me a lot to build my knowledge and help me know more about Wilhelm Wundt.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/wilhelm-wundt.html
I chose this article because it gives a lot of good information about his professional life and what he gave to psychology. This contributed to my post in the last part about what he did for psychology and his amazing contributions to the field.
1) This week I decided to look more into Hermann Ebbinghaus and his contributions to psychology with his exploration into human memory. This fits into the chapter well because Hermann Ebbinghaus not only added to the history of psychology with his findings about memory, but he also was instrumental in the experimental psychology phase. Ebbinghaus' interest in the mind brought about several discoveries for psychophysics. I am interested in memory because when I took psychology in high school, we participated in many activities that showed us how memory works, and even got to see Ebbinghaus' findings come into play. It was great because we got to do some hands on stuff. Since I remember how fun it was to learn about memory in high school, I decided that learning more about the man behind the discoveries would be interesting as well.
2) The three aspects I researched and am going to discuss in this post are Ebbinghaus' discoveries about learning and forgetting as well as his findings about memory and trigram syllables. The third aspect I am going to talk about is another one of Ebbinghaus' important contributions called the spacing effect.
3) Ebbinghaus was interested in memory and how a person learns, remembers, and forgets things. In order to test this, Ebbinghaus used himself a lot for the experiments. In order to demonstrate the act of learning, Ebbinghaus came up with these nonsense syllables and then tried to memorize them for his study. He called the 3 senseless syllables trigrams. There were two types of trigrams. CCC trigrams were made up of 3 consonants in a row, where a CVC trigram was a consonant, vowel, consonant in that order. The reason why Ebbinghaus used his trigrams was because people may have some associations already with ordinary words having an impact on their learning and memory processes.
By repeating a list of trigrams, Ebbinghaus noted that by increasing the number of repetitions he did, the more trigrams he was able to recall. His ability to recall the items depended on his increase in repetitions. At first, the learning process, or the number of items he could recall went up rapidly but then slowed down until the entire list could be recalled. From these findings, Ebbinghaus created his learning curve.
Once Ebbinghaus was able to repeat his list of trigrams two times through, he began to wait, and tested himself at different intervals of time to see how fast he began to forget the items he had just been able to recall. He found that forgetting the trigrams on the list happened more frequently right after learning them, then slowed down as time went on. With these findings, Ebbinghaus created his forgetting curve.
Ebbinghaus also studied the most effective way to learn information. His discovery showed that if you space out your repetitions, you will more easily and effectively learn the information than if you were to do your several repetitions right in a row. Ebbinghaus called this finding the spacing effect and has been shown to work for many different types of learning. If Ebbinghaus would have integrated this spacing effect into his learning and forgetting curve, I wonder what the results would have been. If he would have learned one list of trigrams over a period of a month where he kept his repetitions at intervals, I wonder if the forgetting curve would have been more slowly at first and then got faster towards the end. That is something that he should have looked into!
All of Ebbinghaus' findings about memory are extremely interesting to me and can be used easily in every day life. Even though I am coming close to the end of my college career, I can still use Ebbinghaus' findings throughout my life. It is actually very fascinating to think about how the human mind works and is able to recall simple all the way to complex information even up to years later. Ebbinghaus and his studies about memory have definitely helped us understand better about learning and forgetting information as well as helping us understand the brain and psychology a little bit better too. Plus it helps show that professors and teachers who always tell you not to cram right before a test are actually correct.
4)Links:
http://www.intropsych.com/ch06_memory/ebbinghaus.html
This site helped me understand more about Ebbinghaus and the reasons why he chose to study random nonsense syllables when learning about memory. It also showed me the differences between the two trigrams
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This site helped me understand more in depth the learning and forgetting curve and how Ebbinghaus came to his conclusions about them
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-spacing-effect/
This site helped me know more about the spacing effect and how it works. It also gave me some great examples that could give me a better understanding of how the spacing effect can be used in real life.
Terms: Hermann Ebbinghaus, experimental psychology, psychophysics, memory, learning curve, forgetting curve, CCC trigrams, CVC trigrams, the spacing effect
1) The topic I chose to do more research on is Hermann Ebbinghaus. This topic fits into the chapter because the focus of this chapter was growing education in Germany, and Ebbinghaus, a german, made large contributions to this movement. I’m interested in him because of his work with human memory and his creation of nonsense syllables.
2) Three aspects of Ebbinghaus that I would like to talk about for this assignment are: background information on him so I have an understanding of why he chose to study memory; how he created nonsense syllables; and his use of serial learning to to study memory.
3) Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in 1850 in Germany to a wealthy family. From early on in his life, his father encouraged him to pursue a career in academics. At age 17 he enrolled in college but took some time off to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, but as soon as that was over he went straight back to college. By the age of 23, he had earned his doctorate in philosophy.
His interest in experimental psychology and, more specifically, memory was ignited when he read Gustav Fechner’s book “Elements of Psychophysics”. In 1878 he began his first experiments on memory, but it wasn’t until 1885 that he published his first book which can be translated English as, “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”. In his experiments, Ebbinghaus himself was the only subject he used. One of the first things that he noticed of himself, was that a series of seven or fewer syllables required only a single reading in order to recite it perfectly. The significance of this finding is that our “short-term memory” only has a capacity of 7 pieces of information, and if not retained and stored into “long-term memory”, then these things will be forgotten. This is a concept that we know to be true still today. He also found that learning happens through a sufficient number of repetitions, and without these repetitions we will not retain the information. Ebbinghaus is responsible for creating the “forgetting curve”, which a logarithmic function to calculate the rate at which we forget information that is not retained.
Ebbinghaus found that an increased amount of repetitions during a study period does increase the amount of retention of that information, and decrease the amount of “forgetting” that occurs. He was also in favor or spaced out practice, rather than learning the information all in one sitting. Also, the time of day in which our abilities to learn are at the greatest capacities are in the morning rather than later in the day. During later hours of the day, you are more mentally fatigued, whereas in the morning you are most alert. These are all concepts that we still find to be accurate today.
In the years following his studies on memory, Ebbinghaus became interested in studying vision and optical illusions and published work on color-vision. Ebbinghaus made many contributions to the field of experimental psychology so I feel it is important in understanding history, to have an understanding of his concepts and ideas.
4) Sources:
https://principlesoflearning.wordpress.com/dissertation/chapter-3-literature-review-2/the-cognitive-perspective/memory-and-forgetting-hermann-ebbinghaus-1885/
I used this source equally as much as the other source I found because it had good information but I just needed a little bit more to clarify concepts. This was a good source that gave in depth descriptions of Ebbinghaus’ research and was he found.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
This was a good source to collect background information on Ebbinghaus and get a good general idea of what concepts he came up with. I also used it as a starting off point for this assingment to find out what exactly I wanted to talk about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGmtV_51flI
I used this video as a way to help me visualize Ebbinghaus’ concepts. I did not use this as a source while writing this assignment, but it gave me a better understanding of the concepts Ebbinghaus came up with.
Terminology: Hermann-Ebbinghaus, forgetting curve, Gustav Fechner, experimental psychology, memory.
1) My topic is the two-point threshold. It was one of the major contributions to the sciences that was talked about in the chapter. While I was reading I found myself interested in the topic of what all goes into the threshold and I want to learn more about how it works.
2) The three aspects I would like to talk about for this assignment are about what the two-point threshold is, how it can be tested, and who discovered it and how.
3) The two point threshold is the distance between the two points where we can distinguish it is two points rather than thinking it is one. This test is sometimes used to determine if a patient has something wrong based on what they are feeling with the points. The two points that are being used to poke the individual are examples of stimuli. In certain parts of our body we need more stimuli to feel and sense better. For example, the hands, face, and lips are very sensitive areas and the distance between the two points are really close. However, if the individual is being tested on their back the distance between the two would be much farther because we do not need as much stimuli there.
The two-point threshold is really easy to be tested and can be done by really anyone. All it involves is two people and two sharp objects like needles. Then one person closes their eyes while the other one pokes them with the two objects simultaneously. The person being poked determines whether it is one point or two points and then the objects get moved farther apart until the answer is correct. That is a really simple way for individuals to learn about the two-point threshold but there are other ways researchers are doing it now also. Instead of just poking the objects apart from each other they are trying to either align them or put them across from each other to test their spatial receptors.
Ernst Weber came up with the two-point threshold back in the 19th century. He loved science and was intrigued by the human anatomy. At the time there was really no information about the anatomy of humans because the information about the skin, muscle, and certain receptors weren’t discovered until a later time. He used a compass for the two points to find different senses and threshold. His discovery helped future scientists and researchers look deeply into information about receptors, stimuli, etc.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-point_discrimination - I chose this URL because when I was reading it I thought it would be very helpful with writing this. It had information about tests, criticisms, and examples of the threshold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber - I chose this URL because it helped me understand the basic concept of what the two-point threshold was.
http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/weber.html - I chose this URL because it talks about some tests dealing with the two-point threshold.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ernst_Heinrich_Weber.aspx - I chose this URL because it helped me understand how and why Ernst Weber discovered the threshold.
Terms: Two-point threshold, stimuli, receptors, Ernst Weber
1)Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
-The topic I have chosen is James McKeen Cattell. He ties into this chapter since he was the best known of the American students who studied with Wundt, and studied the reaction time method. I find him interesting since he earned a PhD in experimental psychology under Wundt’s supervision. I enjoyed my research methods class, and I remember discussing him and reaction time so this is why I found him interesting and that he usually was one of the participants in his studies. I like that there were few participants that contributed to a great deal of the data, which is now called the experimenter and the subject.
2)What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
-One aspect will be about his background information and how he became the man we study today. The second aspect are about his contributions to experimental psychology. The third aspect is about his failures and criticisms.
3)Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
-James Mckeen Cattell became known as the first American to earn a Leipzig PhD in experimental psychology. He oriented psychology in America toward the use of objective experimental methods and mental testing. He also applied psychology to many fields including education, business, industry, and advertising. He originated two professional directories and published five scientific periodicals. He went to Germany and studied with philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze at the University of Göttingen and with Wundt at the University of Leipzig. Journeying again to Leipzig, he became Wundt’s assistant and conducted investigations directed toward scientific objectivity. After receiving his Ph.D. from Leipzig, he continued his research in the London laboratory of Sir Francis Galton. He received a professorship in psychology, the first ever offered, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. There he established a laboratory and developed a series of mental measurement tests for college students. Cattell became professor and administrative head of psychology at Columbia University and devoted much of his career there to the improvement and advancement of mental testing. Some of his contributions were when he had his fellowship at Johns Hopkins University where he showed great experimental skill by timing individuals’ reading of letters and words and claiming that people naturally read whole words, rather than syllables. This study later reinforced the “whole-word” approach to reading education. This also led to one of his failures since he lost his fellowship and returned to Leipzig. He continued his reaction-time studies in an attempt to measure the velocity of the nervous impulse. With philosopher Fullerton, he extended psychophysical techniques that measured the relation between (physical) stimulus and (mental) sensation, and used his results to argue against any mentalistic interpretation of experiments.At Columbia University, he developed an influential program of “mental tests.” He and his collaborators used standard laboratory procedures that measured reaction times, short-term memory, and the sensitivity of the senses. They measured these to gather quantitative data on psychological differences. But the studies lacked a functional view of how these traits helped people live their lives, and because the tests produced no useful results, psychologists soon abandoned them, which is yet another achievement in a way, then a failure. Cattell then left the laboratory, but his earlier experimental achievement led to his election as the first psychologist in the National Academy of Sciences. Cattell also was an excellent editor and contributed his works to multiple scientific journals. He founded The Psychological Review. Cattell owned, edited, and eventually published many major scientific journals. Some of these included; the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Science, The Popular Science Monthly, American Men of Science, The Psychological Review, and The American Naturalist. Some of his other failures were that American scientists respected Cattell’s scientific and editorial achievements, but they resented his self-righteous approach. His verbal and written statements often included public attacks on others, which cost him friends. The president of Columbia tried to force him to retire, and then eventually Cattell was fired. He actually sued the University for Libel and won a monetary settlement. He used some of it to found the Psychological Corporation, which tried to implement his interest in applied psychology. There were 10 measures for mental testing and reaction time. They were; dynamometer pressures, rate of movement, sensation-areas, pressure causing pain, least and just noticeable difference, reaction time for sound, time for naming colors, bisection of a cm line, judgment of a second time, and numbers of letters repeated on one hearing.
4)
http://www.britannica.com/biography/James-McKeen-Cattell- This biography site helped go into further detail about Cattell’s background information to help explain my first aspect.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/James_McKeen_Cattell.aspx- This site helped with all three aspects since it covered all of them with credible facts.
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/hist19c/subpages/cattell_test.html- This site helped with the aspect of some of his contributions of his experiments. It gave ten measures of his studies and what they studied and how it was measured.
James McKeen Cattell, Wundt, reaction time method, experimenter, subject, psychophysics, stimulus, mental tests, short term memory, jnd,
The topic that I chose to research this week was Hermann Ebbinghaus and the research he completed. This man was mentioned in our text as an important contributor to the study of higher brain functions particularly memory, so I was interested in learning more about research methods and conclusions. I would like to go ahead and first about the methods that Ebbinghaus used to gain his insights on memory as this was an important model for the strict procedures needed in experiments on higher brain functions. I also want to discuss the results and contributions to psychology which were obtained from this research by considering both the learning and forgetting curves.
During Ebbinghaus’ time, experimental psychology was just beginning to blossom as research on the senses and reaction time was introduced to the laboratory. These sorts of experiments were fairly easy to control. A given stimuli would produce a general reaction sometimes characterized by introspective accounts. Studying higher brain functions like memory, however, was more complex and so it was still relegated to philosophical ideas. Ebbinghaus sought to change this by showing that scientific experiments could be performed in this area. As mentioned above, this was not an easy task as Ebbinghaus needed to account for various factors when tackling his research on memory. He knew that associations were made when meaningful information was encountered and that these associations affected learning. Therefore he developed so-called meaningless stimuli known as nonsense syllables. This would allow him to see how one came to learn completely knew subjects with no prior associations. Overall, he came up with approximately 2,300 nonsense syllables which he randomly selected to form lists of different lengths. Next, it was time for the experiment itself of which Ebbinghaus was the only subject. He spent hours upon hours reading and repeating these lists, making sure he spent the same amount of time on each syllable, until he was able to recall them perfectly. A note was then made regarding the number of repetitions it took to reach this perfect recollection of each list. To obtain even more knowledge about memory, after Ebbinghaus had correctly repeated the lists, he would wait a set amount of time and then record how many words he could still recall. But he had another question, is it possible that one might retain information even if they cannot consciously recall it? To answer this question, he began relearning the lists and again making note of the number of repetitions needed before the entire list could be correctly repeated from memory. Once he completed these tasks once, which took a year’s time, he then took another year in which he replicated the experiments just discussed to reinforce his research. These experiments were the majority of Ebbinghaus’ work and formed the basis of his conclusions on the topic of memory which will now be considered.
One of the most notable contributions Ebbinghaus made through the research methods discussed above was the learning curve. The data he collected showed that as repetitions increased, the recall of the lists became better and better until perfect recall was attained. This learning occurs very quickly at first and then begins to level off. By testing lists of different lengths, Ebbinghaus also came to realize that it takes longer, more repetitions, to learn longer lists. Thus, as we often find out now, the more information presented to us, the longer it takes to commit that knowledge to memory. By waiting until he could not recall the list at all, and then taking time to relearn it again, Ebbinghaus showed that learning information another time takes fewer repetitions. He called this phenomenon savings, so in other words this is the percent difference in the number of repetitions required to learn the list the first time and the number of repetitions needed to relearn the material. Finally, Ebbinghaus discovered that one can retain more information when it is learned over a period of time as opposed to cramming all learning into a small window of time. Thus, this shows why cramming is often ineffective. Although this information on learning was very important and introduced the first learning curve, this was not the only meaningful contribution to psychology made by Ebbinghaus’ research.
In addition to the learning curve, Ebbinghaus also introduced the forgetting curve with his research. After attaining perfect recall, Ebbinghaus would wait a specified amount of time and then try to recall the list again. As time increased, more and more syllables were forgotten. This forgetting took place very quickly at first and then began to level off. Ebbinghaus also recognized that there were several factors relating to one’s ability to recall information. Most often, one makes associations with previous information they have learned and this aids in recall. In this case, however, Ebbinghaus specifically chose meaningless material, nonsense syllables. Still, he discovered that humans make an effort to create meaning from these seemingly meaningless items. He noted that items near the beginning of the list were easier to recall which became known as the primacy effect. Also, items at the end of the list were more easily recalled because they were repeated more recently in time. This concept was alternately known as the recency effect. It is the items in the middle of the list which are not so easily remembered. Additionally, overlearning was found to have an effect on learning through Ebbinghaus’ research. If it only took 10 repetitions to recall a list but one repeats the list 15 times, then this would be 50% overlearning. Information that is overlearned is said to be more resistant to memory loss over time. This information as well as that discussed in the previous paragraph would go on to be published in the book entitled Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.
Overall, Ebbinghaus’ research had a great impact in his time and continues to be used in the present. He was able to show that study of such complex phenomenon as memory is possible in the laboratory thus advancing the field of experimental psychology. Ebbinghaus also provided a great example of the steps to take when planning an experiment and the importance of consistency in research. And of course, he is responsible for both the learning and forgetting curve which apply to all humans even today as they move through life. It helps one understand how information is learned and how quickly it can be forgotten while also looking at ways to prevent this loss of information over time. Ebbinghaus was certainly a pioneer in the field of psychology.
http://www.intelltheory.com/ebbinghaus.shtml
This website provided the basic information on the contributions made by Ebbinghaus and the methods he used when conducting research.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
I gained specific information of the results of Ebbinghaus’ experiments from this website as well as some information on how he gained his results.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Ebbinghaus/wozniak.htm
From this website, I was able to get an in depth description of the methods Ebbinghaus used in his experiments on memory and supplement the information I had already gained regarding the conclusions made from his research.
Terminology: experimental psychology, introspective, nonsense syllables, learning curve, recall, savings, forgetting curve, primary effect, recency effect, overlearning
1) I have decided to write about the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This topic really interests me, mostly because it'd be good information to know about and I feel that I could possibly improve my own memory. I feel that this fits into our reading very well because his theory and experiments are discussed a little bit in the chapter and it would be very nice to know more about the forgetting curve and be able to apply it.
2) I want to discuss what the experiment Ebbinghaus performed dealing with memory was, how to measure forgetting, and how to improve memory.
3)
Ebbinghaus hypothesized that the problem with retention was due to the idea that students start to forget the information almost immediately after they learn it if they do not attempt to retain it. In 1885, Ebbinghaus started conducting experiments where he used himself as the subject. He tested his memory by learning three-letter "words" which did not have any syllables and were completely nonsense because otherwise the experiment would be tampered with and the results would be inconclusive. If he had used previously known words, he would have involved drawing on his existing knowledge and associations with the words in his memory.
He tested his memory for varied periods of time, ranging from 20 minutes to 31 days. He recorded his findings and then published them in "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology". His findings have revealed a relationship between forgetting and time. This was shown in a graph plotting his findings. It is now called the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.
To be able to know the relationship between forgetting and time, there are a few ways to measure forgetting. One way is to use the recall method. Recall is what is used when taking a fill in the blank test that you have studied for. When measuring it in a research setting, after the person has been given something such as a list of terms, they must then recall the terms back from memory. By recording how many terms they remember compared to how many were on the list, researchers can identify how much information has been forgotten.
The other way that forgetting can be measured is by recognition. In this method, the person has to identify information that has already been learned beforehand. By being able to identify what terms they have learned before, this also can measure how much they remember just by associating the terms from where they have learned it.
To change the forgetting curve, there are a few ways to help improve memory. One way is to recall the information in regular intervals to be able to force the brain to remember and make neural connections that will last. But to do this, it need to be active information, not just re-reading the information. By putting the information into an activity or question, this makes the memory activate and deepen.
After activating the information in regular intervals, use spaced repetitions to figure out when is the best time to review the information. The best time to review is just before the time of forgetting. By figuring that time out, that will increase the amount of profit gained from reviewing the information.
The last method to improving memory is to connect the new information with what is already presently known. By making these associations, it increases the likelihood of remembering. Using things such as memory hooks or mnemonic devices, it will help to present the new information with the old and make the connection known between the two.
4)
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/p/forgetting.htm
I chose this site because it is first off an education based site and has very insight as to how and why we forget.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-forgetting-curve/
I chose this site because it had very good information and also had application you can use for your own life for measuring memory.
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/forgetting-curve-and-its-implications-training-delivery/162373
I chose this site because it gave very detailed information on Ebbinghaus and his experiments and also gives examples of day to day life.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is The Forgetting Curve, which was discussed in this week's chapter. I was interested in it because it is something I can relate to other classes and just day-to-day life.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
Three aspects I want to discuss are who created the Forgetting Curve, what it is, and how it has an effect presently.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
The forgetting curve was created by Hermann Ebbinghaus. Ebbinghaus was born and studied in Germany, earning degrees in philosophy and history. This is interesting because our class has discussed how psychology's history has developed from philosophy. Despite the fact that Ebbinghaus was not a psychology, his study on memory was and continues to be highly influential in the field of psychology.
Ebbinghaus became interested in studying memory in the late 1870s. In order to avoid conflict with ethics, Ebbinghaus did not experiment with other people's memory. Instead he was the only subject. He created lists of meaningless, nonsense words to memorize and recite. They had to be meaningless because he did not want prior knowledge to interfere with the new information he was trying to retain. He would try to recall as much of the list as possible after certain periods of time had past. These were his results:
Immediately after learned - 0% lost
After 20 minutes - 42% lost
After 1 day - 67% lost
*These results vary per source, but the overall idea of extreme retention loss over a short period of time is consistent per source.
One source on the forgetting curve stated, "If information is retained for a day, the knowledge was there to stay." Not only is this statement applicable to Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve but also to various situations people experience presently.
If Ebbinghaus' study was replicated today, the experimenter would get similar results. This can be supported in an educational setting. If students are taught new information in school, and immediately afterwards are asked to explain or apply that new information, they would most likely succeed. If students are asked the next day to explain or apply new information, they would probably not be as successful in retaining the information. This is why it is vital for teachers to review information with students, so it is not forgotten. At the college level, it is also important for students to review information on days they do not have classes. This will improve memory recall when needed in class, especially for an exam. One of the sources discussed the forgetting curve in relationship to studying. The forgetting curve supports the need to study/review class information a little bit every day. This way information is being recalled every day and is less likely going to be forgotten. The forgetting curve can also be applied to musicians. As a musician, practice must happen every day, not only to improve but to recall how a particular piece should be played. Most people have heard the saying, "Practice makes perfect." This is false. A more accurate saying is, "Practice makes permanent." However one practices, will be how they continue to play because the brain is recalling the information in the way it is practiced. Based on these two examples, it is clear the Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve is still applicable today.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://ol.scc.spokane.edu/jroth/Courses/English%2094-study%20skills/MASTER%20DOCS%20and%20TESTS/Curve%20of%20Forgetting.htm
This site was very helpful to my post. It provided a connection between the forgetting curve and studying.
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/forgetting-curve-and-its-implications-training-delivery/162373
This site was useful because it provided a lot of data from Ebbinghaus' research on memory and the forgetting curve.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/201/Hermann-Ebbinghaus.html
This site did not focus on the forgetting curve but on Hermann Ebbinghaus, who did the study on memory that developed the forgetting curve. It was helpful to understand how the forgetting curve came about.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/251/Forgetting-Curve.html
This site was not particularly insightful. It repeated much information from the other sites. However, this is the site from which I took the quote for my post.
Terms: Hermann Ebbinghaus, forgetting curve
The topic I chose to cover was psychophysics. I chose psychophysics because it was the beginning of experimental psychology. I wanted to find out more about how this field of study sprouted. I chose three aspects of psychophysics to study. I chose the general meaning of psychophysics, Gustav Fechner, and Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics.
Psychophysics is the study of the relationship between the physicals and sensations. People studying psychophysics were trying to find relations between the mind and the body. Johann Herbert was the pioneer of psychophysics. He believed that the mind could be studied using experimental methods. Using experimental methods was a new and popular method. However, it was not always popular. In fact, you were shunned for using experiments instead of mathematics. Herbert had many concepts that he used to help him explain the relationship between physical things and the mind’s perception of things. For example, he used the concept of apperceptive mass, which is a group of related ideas that are at the forefront of consciousness. Apperception was the term used to talk about conscious awareness. Interrelated ideas about attention, idea strength, and mathematical awareness were included in apperceptive mass. Ideas like this were completely inaccurate and unusable, but Herbert did have one important contribution. Herbert was the first person to think about psychology as a discipline separate from philosophy. And in order to understand psychology and psychophysics, you did not have to know physiology.
Gustav Fechner was a man of many talents. He had a degree in biology, developed an interest in mathematics, taught physics, wrote books about medicine, and researched psychophysics. I found Fechner to be very interesting because he was so diverse. Not only was he very smart and accomplished, but he was dedicated. While experimenting on the effects of afterimages, Fechner had a traumatic experience. Fechner was researching the relationship between the brightness of light and the strength of an afterimage. Fechner couldn’t look at just any light, he chose the sun as his source. While looking at the sun too much, Fechner damaged his eyes. The damage was so bad that he had to quit teaching. Fechner went into a depressive state for three years. However, one October day, Fechner had an epiphany. He decided that he was done moping and needed to research and discover. Fechner started his most important (in my opinion) work. Fechner became obsess with finding answers to the mind-body question. While searching for answers, Fechner wanted to defeat materialism, which is the belief that all events are causes that can be traced to physical and chemical changes. Fechner believed mind and matter are the same essence, but seen from different sides. Moreover, he believed that, by means of psychophysical experiments in psychology, the experiment statements could be demonstrated and proved.
Fechner's most significant contribution was made in his Elements of Psychophysics, a text of the "exact science of the functional relations, or relations of dependency, between body and mind." Fechner's fame as a psychologist established new methods of mental measurement and the beginning of quantitative experimental psychology. Throughout Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics, Fechner tested and pointed out the flaws in Ernst Weber’s (a fellow researcher in the field of psychophysics) work. Here is one clip from the Elements of Psychophysics that shows how Fechner challenged Weber, “In short, Weber's law forms merely the basis for the most numerous and important applications of psychic measurement, but not the universal and essential one. The most general and more fundamental basis for psychic measurement is rather those methods by which the relation between stimulus increments and sensation increment in general is determined, within, as well as without, the limits of Weber's law; and the development of these methods towards even greater precision and perfection is the most important consideration in regard to psychic measurement” (http://psiwebsubr.org/SUBR/studyguides/488/Fechner.pdf ). Fechner’s Elements of Psychophysics continue to describe a breakthrough that Fechner had. His most important accomplishment within the Elements of Psychophysics was his systematization of the methods he used to establish thresholds. Fechner’s method of limits, method of constant, and method of adjustment were described and are still used today! The fact that Fechner’s “methods” are still used today is astounding! What I also find astounding is the fact that Fechner was able to overcome such traumatic life events and depression. He still had motivation and success after such events to research, write, and advocate for the new field of experimental psychology!
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~isp/isp/history/texts/PSYPHY-M.PDF - I chose this website because it had a vast amount of information about psychophysics. It’s introduction was what really caught my eye. It was a short clip of the whole vast knowledge and it really added to my own personal understanding of the topic. I did not use a lot of this information, but did take some of it and built on the things I read.
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/242/Gustav-Theodor-Fechner.html - I chose this website because it had a short amount of information about Gustav Fechner. I wasn’t looking for his whole life story, but rather a short summary. I did not use a lot of this information, but also built on what I read.
http://psiwebsubr.org/SUBR/studyguides/488/Fechner.pdf - I chose this website because it was Fechner’s actual writings. I took a direct quote from it, but did not use much more. I mainly stuck to what I learned in the readings.
Terms and Terminology: Psychophysics, experimental psychology, Gustav Fechner, Elements of Psychophysics, Johann Herbert, apperceptive mass, apperception, materialism, Ernst Weber, method of limits, method of constant, and method of adjustment.
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I chose to research Gustav Fechner. I am interested in Fechner’s loss of eyesight, his subsequent downfall, and his recovery. Fechner was interested in afterimages, as was discussed in our chapter. Fechner focused a lot of time and energy on his work, which is one reason why I am so interested in him. He suffered greatly when he lost his eyesight, which caused him to deal with anxiety and depression issues. I am also interested in him because even though he did suffer through that, his eyesight was restored and his recovery was complete by the mid 1840’s after resigning from his professorship in just 1839.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
His research, his vision, and his mental illness.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Gustav Fechner’s main interest was vision and he conducted research on afterimages. His research involved him staring at the sun to see how staring at the sun to see how that affected afterimages. Even though he stared at the sun through colored glasses, his eyes still became unusually sensitive to light. It wasn’t just his eyes that suffered though. He worked so hard that he had a physical breakdown. He resigned from Leipzig, the University he was teaching at and dropped out for three years. At first he got to keep his title as Professor, but eventually he lost his Physics chair to Wilhelm Weber and the university gave him a pension. He couldn’t stand any light at all and spent most of his time in a dark, closed off room where the walls were painted black. He also had a hard time sleeping, became exhausted and could not eat. A friend of Fechner’s told him that she had a dream and that he would get better if she prepared a dinner of raw spiced ham in Rhine wine and lemon juice. He said that he felt better but eventually his symptoms came back and he was worse. It has been suggested that his illness was neurotic because of that and because he had a dream that included the number 77 and surprisingly enough, he got better in 77 days.
During the time that he suffered his nervous breakdown, his interests turned to Philosophy. His main goal was to demonstrate the unity of mind and body. On October 22, 1850, he was lying in bed and that a connection between mind and body could be made through mental sensation and material stimulus. Lastly, Fechner had an impact on Freud’s work. Fechner’s suggestion on the unconsciousness influenced Freud and the development of Psychoanalysis. That is just one example, but Fechner’s work did not end when he stopped researching. He continued to impact other Psychologists in the future.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post. http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/kardas/Courses/HP/Lectures/fechner.html
I chose to use this website because it had helpful information on Fechner leaving Leipzig.
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/fechner.html
I chose this website because I found the information that it gave on Fechner’s breakdown interesting.
http://statprob.com/encyclopedia/gustavtheodorfechner.html
I used this website because I liked the information it gave about what happened to his professional career as a professor when he had his nervous breakdown.
The topic that I have chosen is The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This topic fits into this chapter, because Hermann Ebbinghaus, who was a famous German philosopher, created it many years ago. Ebbinghaus got the idea to study memory from another famous philosopher, Gustav Fechner, who had discovered the realm of psychophysics. So, that is how he ties into this chapter, because he was one of the philosophers that the "New Psychology," spread to. The reason I am interested in this topic is because memory is something I have often thought about myself. The human memory is an incredible thing, and I wanted to learn a little bit more about it.
The three aspects of the topic that I am going to discuss in this essay is who, and what led Hermann Ebbinghaus to create the forgetting curve, what the forgetting curve is, and how I think the forgetting curve should be applied more in schools.
As I stated in the opening paragraph, Gustav Fechner was Ebbinghaus' inspiration when it came to him beginning his path to study memory. Ebbinghaus had bought Fechner's book, "Elements of Psychophysics," second hand, and Fechner's ideas of experimental psychology led Ebbinghaus to want to try some of these experiments on memory. Ebbinghaus moved throughout France and England to different colleges, such as the University of Berlin, and the University of Breslau. In this time he had used the psychology labs to conduct experiments that tested the human memory. Ebbinghaus set up some great experiments, such as the nonsense syllable experiment, but the only problem was he only tested the experiments out on his self. This made other people think that the experiments didn't represent the population as a whole, since it was only being done on one person, but at the same time, a lot of people loved the books he wrote, and the things he brought up in them. One of Ebbinghaus' most famous pieces of work was the forgetting curve.
The forgetting curve is basically exactly what it sounds like. It is a chart that marks out how much information is retained from what one has learned, after a certain amount of time. So, to do this Ebbinghaus created a list of 2300, 3 letter terms and tried to memorize a certain amount of them, and then see after a fixed period of time, how many of those terms he could remember. The terms were in an consonant-vowel-consonant order, and there could be no prior association with those words, and no double letters could be in them either. So, words that wouldn't work would be things like DOG, because that word already exists, or AOA, because that would be easier to memorize. A word that would work would be something like GIH, because that has no prior meaning, and no double letters. The reason for this was to get the most accurate results possible. What Ebbinhaus found out, was once he learned and memorized a set of terms, then waited a certain amount of time, and then tried to re-say the terms he memorized he didn't do very well. After just 20 minutes, 40% of the memory of those terms was gone, after an hour 55% of the memory was gone, and after one day 67% of the memory was gone, and only 33% of the terms was saved. However, in addition to this, he found that after going over these terms again, it was a lot faster to memorize them the second time than it was the first time. So, the memory still holds on to the terms, and once it is refreshed it can relearn them in about 25% of the time, and the retain them for a longer period as well.
This information, though only tested on Ebbinhaus himself, is factual for almost everyone. It is hard to memorize things, and keep those memories for more than a couple days. However, with the added study that relearning things is faster, and helps one to retain the information longer, is something that teachers and professors should consider to help their students actually learn the material. I know from my own experience that I cram like crazy for a test the night before, so that I can apply everything I just learned to the test the next day, but have me take the test a week later, and I'd be screwed because I would've already forgot everything. i think professors and teachers should teach something, have a non-graded practice test, then take a little bit more time to re-teach any of the areas that the class is struggling with, and then take the actual exam. This would allow the students to memorize it once, re-learn the information, and by that time they will have a better memory of it, thus not only doing better on the actual exam, but retaining the information that they learned more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus
The information I used from this website was the stuff on the nonsense syllable. It gave me a lot of information on how Ebbinghaus went about setting up his experiments.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/
The information I used from this website was finding out who Ebbinghaus inspiration was. I found that it was Gustav Fechner, and the core of Ebbinghaus' ideas stem from reading Fechner's book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve
The last website I used was to help find more information on the forgetting curve. This website gave me information on what it was, and some of the statistics to go along with it, that helped me put into perspective how quickly we forget the things we first try to memorize.
1) My topic is Weber’s Law. This ties into the content of this week’s chapter because this topic was discussed in the chapter. I am interested in this topic because I am interested in perception. I find it interesting that Weber was able to create this law which found that a person’s ability to recognize a change in a stimulus is a constant ratio to the original stimulus.
2) Three things that I want to talk about with this topic are; what exactly this law is, who else contributed to this, and the formula to this law
3) Weber’s law is described as that the just-noticeable difference (jnd) between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli. The jnd is at what point an individual is able to detect a difference between two stimuli i.e. two different weights. Weber was the first individual to come up with this on a physical level such as lifting weights. An individual named Gustav Theodor Fechner expanded on this law and used it to explain perception of sensation such as hearing or talking. This is referred to as Fechner’s law or Fechner’s scale. Using the formula from Weber, Fechner was able to expand that law into sensation and it worked. An example would be talking to an individual. If you are in a quiet room, you do not need to speak very loud to the other person for them to hear you. On the other hand when you are at a concert, you need to yell for the other person to hear you. Just like the weights and Weber’s law, the sound around you is the initial stimulus and the intensity in which you are talking increases at about the same proportion as the stimulus, i.e. the louder the room the louder you need to talk. People tend to put these two laws together and refer to it as Weber-Fechner law. As these two individuals put these ideas together, a formula was created to turn this into a law. This formula is ∆I/I=k. The ΔI (Delta I) represents the deference threshold of the two stimuli. This would be the original stimuli being 2 and the second stimuli being 2.2. That .2 would be the ΔI. The I on the bottom represents the initial stimulus intensity, so it would be the original stimulus stated above (2). So those two numbers divided by each other equals K which is the constant despite the variations on the left side of the equation. So since the k is always the same and you have initial stimuli, then the difference threshold will always be a certain proportion of the original stimulus.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law
I used this site to help simplify the law and give a definition for me to work off of for the rest of my paper. This website would be considered the foundation to the post.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-and-medicine/nervous-system-and-sensory-infor/sensory-perception-2014-03-27T18:45:20.451Z/v/webers-law-and-thresholds
This site helped explain what the law was through a video and what the formula to Weber’s law was about. This was very helpful because it gave me visual aid with commentary to help me understand better what the law was about.
http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/WebersLaw.html
This website helped explain better what each of the factors in the formula was and what the represented.
5) Terms: Weber’s law, Fechner’s law, perception, jnd
1. My topic is sensation and perception because it fits into this chapter with all the different studies done by Wundt and other psychologists. I find this topic interesting because of how much psychology has to do with this topic when so many people want to say that it's just "science".
2. Eyes
Experiments
The Differences
3. One of the senses that I find most interesting is sight, and how easily our eyes can be tricked. Hank uses an example in the video Perceiving is Believing of how we can be shown an image and the first question we asked can change how we view the image, like the duck or the bunny. Some may see a bunny first, then be asked what kind of bird they see, then they will see the duck, and vice versa. One of the other examples of how our brains perceive things was the chihuahua example, where it doesn't matter what way it was shown, cartoon or real life, we could tell that it was still a chihuahua.
Many of the experiments done on sensation and perception have found a lot of correlations between how we see people or things, and what we believe to be true about them. I like the experiment done with the blanket and block, where the subjects held one or the other and were told a story, then described the employee they were told about a certain way, and they did so in context of the object that they were holding. Also the idea of distance and the mental state you are in or what you're carrying. If you're tired, distances seem further than what they really are.
While sensation and perception are very similar things, they are also extremely different. Sensation is the processing of our environment around us, whereas perception is the brain taking in and processing what each thing is and what it means, our interpretations of the sensations around us. Along with sensation and perception, there are different thresholds to our senses, like the absolute threshold and the difference threshold.
Sensation and perception have so much to do with much of the research done in psychology because it is all about what the brain perceives our surroundings as.
4. http://brainalchemist.com/2010/09/02/sensation-and-perception-12-examples-of-how-physical-experiences-influence-our-attitude-and-judgment/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n46umYA_4dM
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/sensation_perception/
Sensation, perception, Wundt
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
Hermann Ebbinghaus and the Experimental Study of Memory
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
• Ebbinhaus’ background
• The Study of Memory
• Retention
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Ebbinghaus started college at 17 studying history and philology but became interested in philosophy because of this. He was not able to pursue this topic right away due to a break out of a war. After receiving his PhD, he began tutoring students in order to earn a living. He made a huge impact in the study of memory. He looked at a higher mental process and used acoustic encoding to learn affectively. He used items that had to be memorized and called them nonsense syllables. He created the learning curve because of how many repetitions he would do until he could retain the information. He then tested himself to see how quickly he would forget therefore creating the forgetting curve. This happened much more quickly than the learning curve did. The main limitation Ebbinghaus faced was that he could only preform these experiments on himself therefore making the evidence less confident. I also got to learn about his tests of retention. Retention starts simply with recall. To recall means just trying to remember each item. He developed the free recall which is trying to recall a list of items without a specific order. Serial recall is recalling a list in the studied order. From here, it goes into recollection. Recollection is where you sort of test yourself. You’re given a list of things that you had memorized intermixed with new CVC’s and have to depict which ones were on the list. Savings is the next time. This is when you are rememorizing the information that you had already learned. The savings come into play because if you are looking at the number of repetitions to initially compared to the number of repetitions taken to learn the second time.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.famouspsychologists.org/hermann-ebbinghaus/
This article gave me a look at the background of Ebbinghaus and how he grew up. It gave me a basic background of him and helped me see how that helped to develop his theories.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html
This website went on to talk about how he developed his memory theory. It was very interesting to learn more about his theory besides how it is portrayed in the book.
http://peblblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/new-old-memory-test-ebbinghaus-serial.html
I skimmed through the article here, but I focused more so on the short video. I did this just so that I could get a different way to learn besides from just reading.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
• Ebbinhaus’ background
• The Study of Memory
• Retention
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic this week is memory. I studied this topic because I think that our memory is something interesting to study. We use our memory every minute of every day, and if we start to lose our memory we definitely notice.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I would like to talk about what the Forgetting Curve is. I want to talk about the experiments Ebbinghaus conducted and what he found. Finally I would like to talk about what Ebbinghaus’s tests of retention are.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Hermann Ebbinghaus started the experiments into memory. He was the first to begin to experiment, and he was the first to discover a pattern in his own memory loss. Ebbinghaus experimented on himself, teaching himself three-letter nonsense syllables. He would repeat them to himself and wait an already specified amount of time. After this amount of time had passed, Ebbinghaus would try to recall the list of syllables.
The forgetting curve is the relationship between forgetting and time. Ebbinghaus discovered that as he repeated the syllables more and more times, he was able to recall more of the list. He also found that initially memory was lost at a very quick rate. However, as time went on the rate of decline went down, but it does not continue until all is forgotten. At a determined time the amount of forgetting levels off. One way to retain information more is to overlearn the list. Overlearning the material makes the forgetting curve less steep, and takes more time to forget the material.
Ebbinghaus also discovered different ways to measure what material was forgotten. First there was recall. Recall is seeing how many items from the list you can remember. There are different types of recall; free recall, recalling the lists in no particular order and without prompts, serial recall, recalling the lists in the order that you learned them, and prompted recall, using hints to help you recall. Another is recognition. This is when a person is able to recognize items on a list, but is not able to recall them completely from memory. This technique is measured by giving the participant a long list of items, and having them mark the ones they can recognize from their original list. This technique is also much more sensitive. The final test Ebbinghaus used was savings. After the participant had “forgotten” the memorized list, they would rememorize the list. If the second time it took less repetitions to remember the list, the difference between the two amounts of memorization is the amount saved in your memory. This is the most sensitive memory test, and can indicate some residual memory of the originally memorized list.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/p/forgetting.htm I chose this website because it gave a good summary of Ebbinghaus and his Forgetting Curve. I used this website for each section that I talked about.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html I chose this website because it gave a detailed discription of Ebbinghaus and his forgetting curve. I used this website for the sections on overlearning and Ebbinghaus’s tests of retention.
http://academic.udayton.edu/legaled/online/exams/memory05.htm I chose this website because it went into further detail on memory and how Ebbinghaus studied it. I used this website for Ebbinghaus’s experiments.
5) Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Forgetting Curve, Hermann Ebbinghaus, memory, three-letter nonsense syllables, overlearning, recall, recognition, service, memory test.
1)Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic for this week is Hermann Ebbinghaus and what his contributions to memory research mean to experimental psychology and our education system today. This fits into what we have been talking about in class because Ebbinghaus was one of the first people to study memory and he opened a pathway for others to study other parts of memory. I am interested in this topic because I think we can learn from his research and start changing our education system to fit with the way peoples memory works. I am also interested in this because I am very disappointed in the education system that I was forced to go through and if we looked back at memory research and learned more about it, we could start fixing the flawed education system.
2)What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I am going to talk about Hermann Ebbinghaus and the spacing effect, then I will talk about how we should study in order to retain information and then I will compare and contrast Ebbinghaus’ research to how our current education system is set up.
3)Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who introduced memory into the experimental psychology field. He made some important discoveries about memory which include the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. The forgetting curve is the amount of information a person forgets when that person learns something and doesn’t repeat it for a while and is tested on it again. Usually that person will forget a lot of the information, if not everything. The spacing effect is sort of a solution to the problem of forgetting. Ebbinghaus found out that when a person spaces out studying and tests themselves on the information over a period of time with spaces in between, the forgetting curve was less severe.
Two other cognitive psychologists named Dan Willingham and Robert Bjork have been building off of Ebbinghaus’ research. They have been looking at how information is stored into long term memory. According to Willingham, the process of storing things into long term memory works like this: first you have to pay attention and focus on the information, then this information is in your working memory until you have learned it, the final step to knowing if it is in your long term memory is if you can remember it. If you cannot remember, it was never stored. So applying this information to how college students should study, we should space our studying out so that way we can see how much information we can retrieve from long term memory. In the article I chose, “Study Better: Space it Out and Mix it Up,” they suggest getting a big stack of flashcards and studying them every day because there will be more time in between the recall of information. This helps you learn the information and retain it as well.
So what does all of this mean for our education system today? Our education system is obsessed with testing and teaching to the test rather than the students. I personally cannot remember a lot of the information I was taught in high school because we had to keep up with a certain curriculum and all of my teachers were terrified when it came time to take the ITBS tests. Knowing about memory and the forgetting curve, our schools should teach in a way that makes us apply the knowledge that we are learning to everyday life. Maybe if we used the information we learned in the first unit of the class till the last day of class, high school students would retain the information they learned. Our education system is too focused on learning new things instead of retaining the old and fundamental stuff. If our teachers knew about the forgetting curve and the spacing effect and applied it to their curriculum, think about how much better off our high school graduates would be and how much better prepared they would be for college and the real world.
4)Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.famouspsychologists.org/hermann-ebbinghaus/ I used this site for a little bit more information about Ebbinghaus and clarity on his experiments and discoveries. This contributed a little bit to my post but it helped clear some of my confusion on who he really was.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/everybody-is-stupid-except-you/201009/study-better-space-it-out-and-mix-it This was an article about how you should study and how bad cramming for an exam can be. This contributed a good amount to my post because it helped me understand how to apply the spacing effect to studying.
https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/memory/ This article contributed the most to my post because it talked about how memories are stored and how to apply the memory research to our education system and really brought to light how bad some education systems are.
Terms: Hermann Ebbinghaus, Spacing effect, forgetting curve, experimental psychology, memory, Dan Willingham, Robert Bjork, long term memory, working memory
1) The topic I wanted to discuss is memory and Ebbinghaus' contributions. This fit in with the text because it talked about his different experiments and how he focused on memory as well as memory less and so on.
2) The three main topics I want to discuss are Ebbinghaus and methods of memorization, nonsense syllables, and the forgetting curve.
3) Ebbinghaus was one of the first psychologists of his time to focus most of his experimentation and time on memory. Much of his time was spent with experimentation on himself, testing what methods would help boost memorization. He originally found that there was not much known about memory rather than "common sense" and through special cases or circumstances. Through his experiments he found many different ways of memorization and how to improve memory. One thing he discovered was the spacing effect. This method was using spacing to help aid memorization. Ebbinghaus would memorize a little bit at a time every day until he had it fully memorized. Another method he found worked well was the serial position effect. If a list of items is read to someone or they read it themselves, it is likely they will remember the last few items. This is due to their position in the list. In order to aid his memory experiments, Ebbinghaus realized he needed to come up with material that was not familiar to him. Previously, he believed using poems and such may work but he soon realized this material was too familiar and thus easier to memorize. In order to have material that was not meaningful and did not relate to itself, Ebbinghaus came up with nonsense syllables. These nonsense syllables were consonant vowel consonant combinations that did not mean anything or seem to be any other word. Some examples would be DEK or GIS. Ebbinghaus used these so much in his experimentation he came up with around 2,300 of them to use. Another aspect of memory Ebbinghaus focused on was forgetting and memory retention. His idea of the forgetting curve involved the way memories were lost over time if the person made no attempt to retain it. He found that originally when material is learned retention is at 100% but this quickly drops and then slowly starts to taper off even more. He also found that the speed of forgetting can changed based on a number of factors. These factors include how important the information is to the memorizer and physiological factors like stress as well.
4) http://study.com/academy/lesson/hermann-ebbinghaus-on-memory-illusion-experiment-lesson-quiz.html - I used this website to give background information on Ebbinghaus and memory as well as the different memorization techniques he discovered.
https://www.trainingindustry.com/wiki/entries/forgetting-curve.aspx - This website discussed the forgetting curve, it's meaning, and how it works.
http://ispectrummagazine.com/wp/?p=3016 - This website discussed nonsense syllables and how Ebbinghaus used them.
5) Ebbinghaus, nonsense syllables, retention, memory, serial position, spacing effect, forgetting curve
TB #6 Revision:
Ebbinghaus did a lot with memory and was specifically one of the most well known people of his time to focus on memory. Although he did do a lot of his research on this topic, he also knew that this research would be extremely difficult because when you are testing memory and knowledge of words, it is impossible to get rid of the previous words already known and understood. Ebbinghaus was determined to prove that there was a way that memory could be studied through experimentation, even though most psychologists at this time did not believe it was possible. As I discussed previously, Ebbinghaus created nonsense syllables to help fix this problem. Another problem that fed into Ebbinghaus' research, however, was the fact that he was the only participant in these experiments he conducted. Ebbinghaus did not create a proper experiment with many participants. This now can be shown to be bad because we do not know if his results are as accurate as they should have been. One of the things that Ebbinghaus focused on that I did not talk about previously was seeing how quickly he was able to remember syllables in a list. He wanted to determine how many times he would have to use repetition and repeat words in order to say them all back correctly without any errors. Ebbinghaus came up with the fact that it took much longer and more repeated practice in order to learn the longer lists of words. This seemed like it was pretty obvious at the time, but Ebbinghaus was one of the first to actually put this idea to practice and measure exactly how many times of repetition were needed to successfully complete a list of words. One of his other greater contributions was realizing that 7 was the number of syllables or numbers that could be remembered most easily. This can be shown when trying to remember a phone number. It is often fairly easy to remember a seven digit phone number but adding on more numbers than that makes it much more difficult. Another thing I did not discuss in my previous post was Ebbinghaus' idea of distributing practice. This idea is something that students hear from the time they first get homework or have tests to study for. This idea of distribution of practice is the idea that spreading out studying over time rather than just taking a short period of time to study makes it much easier to remember the material. This was another thing that seemed to be somewhat obvious at the time, and even know, but Ebbinghaus was one of the first to actually test this idea. A final aspect of Ebbinghaus I did not discuss was his idea of the savings method. This idea was that even if we forget something we have actually not completely forgotten. He talks about memorizing something by heart and then waiting a longer period of time. It seems that we may have forgotten what we memorized, but if we try to memorize it again it seems to come back to us. Ebbinghaus had this idea and it showed an extremely interesting idea that even if we may not be able to recall a memory, he said that it still exists and some of the information remains in our memory anyways. Although some of Ebbinghaus' techniques were not always the best and some of his research is controversial based on these ideas, Ebbinghaus did contribute a lot to memory and our knowledge of how memory works. Many of the ideas he came up with still contribute to our knowledge today and are still used in practice when it comes to teaching people how it is best to memorize things and used in schools when it comes to studying or memorizing long lists of things for class.
1) The topic that I chose is Wilhelm Wundt. The chapter talked about him starter of psychology as experimental science. I don’t particularly like research methods, but I think that if I can understand how psychology to become an experimental science then maybe I’ll be able to appreciate that class a little more.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
1. What was his upbringing like?
2. What was his interest in life/how did he end up as a psychologist?
3. What are his contribution to psychology?
3) The opening of Wilhelm Wundt’s Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig in1879 is considered the beginning of modern psychology. Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16, 1832 in Germany. As childhood he was not allowed to play with friend or have “fun.” He had a very strict schedule of learning. But because he was a day dreamer he failed gymnasium. It only took him three years to complete medical training at the University of Heidelberg. He taught on physiology at Heidelberg. He was inspired by the work of Weber and Fechner and started a class that he called physiological psychology. He worked at the University of Leipzig 45 years after being chair of “inductive philosophy” at Zürich in 1874. In 1894, the “Institute for Experimental Psychology” was established at Leipzig. During his years at Leipzig he taught and influence a lot of student who became great contributors to psychology as well. Student like; Edward B. Titchener who founded the first psychology laboratory in the U.S. at Cornell University, Hugo Munsterberg, a developer of industrial psychology and Charles Spearman, an English psychologist who developed the two-factor theory of intelligence and quite a few important statistical analyses, among others. Wundt believe that consciousness could be reduced to its basic elements. Wundt’s introspection or experimental self-observation, included measuring reaction times & word associations and a strictly controlled experimental process for describing sensations. The rules for Introspection are that the observer has to be in a state of “strained attention”, the observations need to be repeated multiple times, and that the experimental conditions are varied systematically. He had different groups study different things like for example one group would study using inductive reasoning experimental science while another would study reflections of higher mental processes like myths, language, religion, aesthetics, and social customs through literature and naturalistic observation. And the third would incorporate social and physical sciences into a scientific abstract theory or talk with no basis in reality. He also had an interest in social or cultural psychology. Wundt influence a lot of student who went on to do great things for psychology and by turning psychology into an experimental science it gave it credibility and make it valid. Research psychology or psychology in general is what it is because of Wilhelm Wundt and his many contributions. He was also the author the author of many articles and book about psychology, philology and physiology.
4) www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
I chose this article because it did a great job of explaining the general contributions that Wundt had on psychology. I wasn’t greatly detailed be it had enough information for me to have an outline of what he did.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html
This website did a good job at talking about Wundt’s contributions to psychology and his life in general.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Wilhelm_Wundt
This website did a good job, I believe, at explaining who Wundt was a person what he contributed and the legacy he left behind. I think that the thing that his reading did differently was that it talked about how his that were influence by him went on to do great things that contributed even more to psychology then he could have done.
Terms: Wilhelm Wundt, experimental science, Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Leipzig, University of Heidelberg, physiology, Weber, Fechner, Edward B. Titchener, introspective, Hugo Munsterberg, Charles Spearman
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is about memory. I could not select one specific topic under memory so I will do an overview of topics that I find interesting or relevant as background knowledge.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I would like to begin with a general definition of memory (What are the types of memory?, How reliable is memory?, etc.) I would also like to look into how much control of memory humans have and the common myths that have been told about memory (How to get rid of a memory?) From Chapter Four of our textbook I think the most interesting part was the section about the “Forgetting Curve” and its creator.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Memory is a complex concept that most individuals oversimplify. There is the image of memory as a filing system, which is no longer entirely accurate thanks to modern advances. Memory is a process that involves encoding, storage, and retrieval (Link 1). Encoding refers to the initial memory being formed, storage refers to the memory being ‘saved’, and retrieval is the ability to ‘open’ a saved memory. There are two broad categories of memory (some also include sensory memory), short term and long term, that can be broken down into much smaller and more specific categories. Long term memory has a variety of memory types within the category. Branched off of long term memory are explicit memory and implicit memory. Explicit memory is conscious memory, while implicit memory is unconscious. Branched out from explicit memory is declarative memory, which involves remembering facts and specific events. Within the category of declarative are episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memory involves specific events and experiences, while semantic memory involves specific facts and concepts. The other category under long term memory, implicit memory, had only one branch. This one branch is procedural memory, which is memory that assists us with tasks and skills. There are about eight types of human memory dimensions (unless you include sensory memory, which makes nine types total).
I researched two ways to control or manipulate memories: one of the ways to manipulate your memory is by using a technique called critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), while the other way to manipulate your memory is by using a technique called eye movement desensitizing and reprocessing theory (EMDR). Critical incident stress debriefing is a seven-step technique that requires an individual who has survived a trauma to express his or her feelings as soon as possible so the memories are not “sealed over” and/or repressed (Link 2). If they are not sealed then post-traumatic stress disorder may occur as a consequence of not sharing memories. The second way to control or manipulate memories is through the eye movement desensitizing and reprocessing technique, which involves changing how the memory is stores; it is a reprocessing of a traumatic memory (Link 3). These traumatic memories may have long term consequences that affect future decisions. It can affect your perspective on life and it can affect your relationships with others.
Another section of memory that intrigued me when I read the textbook and did more research into the topic, was the concept of the “Forgetting Curve.” The gist of this theory is that, initially, you remember a memory very well. As time progresses, though, a lower and lower percentage of material is remembered. I visualize this process as a copy and filing center located within our brains. It eventually evolves into a full file cabinet and certain memories need to be ‘shredded’ to make room for newer, more relevant ones. The diagram in the book placed memory on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. As time increases, memory decreases. The Forgetting Curve is essentially supporting the idea that as time goes by individuals do not remember quite as much as they did at the beginning of the time period (in the example it around a month). The curve leveled off around twenty percent, leading me to believe that twenty percent of memory is stored after approximately a month of storage.
Terms: Encoding, Storage, Retrieval, Short Term Memory, Long Term Memory, Explicit Memory, Implicit Memory, Declarative Memory, Episodic Memory, Semantic Memory, Procedural Memory, Sensory Memory, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing (EMDR), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Forgetting Curve
Link 1: http://www.human-memory.net/
This link provided a general definition of memory. I always feel the need to define terms that I am using so that my audience can comprehend the knowledge is an easier manner.
Link 2: http://www.wired.com/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill/
This link helped me to define Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD).
Link 3: https://emdria.site-ym.com/?119
This linked helped me define Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing (EMDR).
1)
I chose the topic of Gustav Fechner's three elements of psychophysics. This was discussed in the chapter in the section on Gustav Fechner. I find this topic interesting because I found the work of Gustav Fechner to be interesting and that the elements of psychophysics are still being taught and applied today.
2)
I want to talk about the elements of psychophysics: the method of limits, the method of constant stimuli, and the method of adjustment.
3)
First, I will start with some background information on how the different methods are tested. A stimulus is presented to the participant at a predetermined level—typically by the observer but in some instances it is by the participant—and the participant is to inform the observer if they were able to detect the stimulus presented. The participant is supposed to inform the observer with some indication of “yes” or “no”. The first method that I would like to discuss the Method of Limits. The method of limits can be done in two different series. The first is the ascending series where the stimuli starts at level that would not be detected by the participant and then is gradually increased. This increase is continued until the stimuli is detected by the participant and the series is repeated multiple times to find an average level. The second series is the descending series. This series starts with a stimulus that is at a level that would be detected by the participant and then is gradually decreased until the stimulus can no longer be detected by the participant. This series is also repeated multiple times and an average is found. The participant's absolute threshold—the smallest amount of a stimulus that can be detected by a individual—is determined by finding where a “no” response and a “yes” response are given back to back and finding the midpoint between the two stimuli. For an ascending trial, the absolute threshold would be the approximate midpoint between the last “no” response and the first “yes” response, and the opposite for the descending trial. The second method that I would like to discuss is the Method of Constant Stimuli. When testing this method, a series of stimuli of varying value are chosen. Some of the stimuli have a value you that will most likely be detected, some that will unlikely be detected, and some at a value that may or may not be. These stimuli are presented to the participant in a random order (at least not in a clear ascending or descending order) and are repeated a few times within the trial. When the participant responds with a “yes” or a “no” and it is then are recorded. The midpoint is not found in this method, but rather a psychometric function is used for more accurate documentation. A psychometric function is used to display information found in the experimental process of finding thresholds. It is a graph in which data on the amount of times the subject can correctly report presence of a stimuli in direct relation with stimuli level. The graph generally shows a gradual increase in ability to recognize stimuli with an increase in size or amount of stimuli. This type of graph correlates best with the method of constant stimuli and works best to show when a level of sensitivity is at its greatest. The psychometric function does not show a common sense threshold, which is the lowest level at which stimulus can be perceived, however it does a better job of showing levels at which the participant shows more accurate constant levels of feedback. Some of the pros of using the Method of Constant Stimuli is that it is the most accurate of the methods and can provide a complete picture of a participant's sensitivity. This method is also easy for the observer to administer. Some of the cons to using this method are, while it is the most accurate, it is also the most time consuming. It is also not as easy to find a threshold for the participant and it would take many trials just to find one. This method is much easier to test when there is already an approximation for the participant's threshold that the observer can then base the stimuli values around. The third method I want to talk about is the Method of Adjustment. This method involves more active participation on behalf of the subject. In this method, the subject adjusts the intensity of the stimuli themselves and determines when the stimuli is either just noticeable or just unnoticeable. This method is the most simple and the least time consuming of the methods but it is also the least accurate. The observer cam also adjust the intensity of the stimuli, rather than the participant, and have the participant inform them when the stimuli is either detectable or no longer detectable. This method of determination is used in cases where the observer is trying to find the absolute threshold of the participant. The Method of Adjustment can also be used to find the difference threshold in a participant. In this instance, the stimuli intensity is to be adjusted until the participant determines that there is either a noticeable difference in the stimuli or there is no noticeable difference in the stimuli. Typically, these trials are done as either ascending trials or descending trials, where the intensity is either increased or decreased. The observer then alternates the ascending and descending trials multiple times until the thresholds are determined, and then an average of the thresholds is estimated. This method is similar to the Method of Limits, only it is the participant who makes the adjustments to the stimuli intensity and determines the “end point” or threshold. This method makes for a good precursor to the Method of Constant Stimuli, because an estimated threshold is easy to acquire without taking up much time.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/~ece511/LectureNotes/pp04.pdf
I chose this link because Purdue is a college that is recognized as having legitimacy, and the information they put out is trusted against their reputation as a professional organization. I like to use university websites for this reason. This website gave me all of my information on the method of limits.
http://depts.washington.edu/sphsc461/psychophysics/psychophysical%20methods.pdf
I chose this link because Washington is a college that is recognized as having legitimacy, and the information they put out is trusted against their reputation as a professional organization. I like to use university websites for this reason. This website gave me all of my information on the method of constant stimuli.
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~isp/isp/history/texts/PSYPHY-M.PDF
I chose this link because Leipzig is a university that is recognized as having legitimacy and was the actual college that the scientist that I wrote about attended, and the information they put out is trusted against their reputation as a professional organization. They especially would have an insight into the works of a famous renowned scientist who went to and worked at their university. I like to use university websites for this reason. This website gave me all of my information on the method of adjustment.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Gustav Fechner, psychophysics, elements of psychophysics, method of limits, method of constant stimuli, method of adjustment, threshold, absolute threshold, stimuli, ascending trial, descending trial
Let us know if you have any questions.
1) My topic is Wilhelm Wundt, the chapter discussed him and his findings a lot and Wundt interests me because he made a lot of discoveries, and helped advance the science of psychology.
2) One aspect I want to talk about is Wundt’s history, a second is structuralism and how he advanced modern cognitive psychology.
3)
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born in 1832 and died in 1920. At first Wundt had a degree in medicine. He discovered medicine wasn’t his calling and he went into physiology. He first studied under Müller in Berlin and later studied with Helmholtz. He replaced Helmholtz when he left Berlin. He stayed for one year then moved on. As the book mentions he founded the first experimental psychology lab. This was at Leipzig. After he accomplished this two others were founded, however the one at Harvard leaned more towards demonstrations. Wundt also aided in the development of empirical methodologies. This is what really helped make psychology a separate science. He believed that psychology was a combination of both physiology and experimental. He found that human inner experience can be experimental and mathematical. The way Wundt thought about psychology was in a structuralist way. This had a huge impact on his ideas of experimental psychology. (Tichener formally distinguished structuralism. Tichener was one of Wundt’s students.)
4)This site offered some background information on Wundt and Tichener.
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/structuralism.htm
This site went into detail about Wundt’s research, how he helped psychology and
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/
1) My topic is the two-point threshold test, it fits into this chapter we are covering this week because it is one of the earliest and contributions to the tactile-sensory field made my Weber who is a psychologist we discuss in this chapter. I am interested in this topic because it has come up in past classes briefly and it is interesting to me to learn about it more in depth.
2) The three aspects of this topic that I would like to discuss are; what is the test exactly what is the instrument used for this test, and what are the distances for specific areas of the body.
3.)The test is used to determine the how far apart two points have to be in order to determine if is one point or two. The test is preformed with a caliber with a ruler scale to measure the distances of the two points on an area of the skin. The natural question that comes next is what is the smallest and larger gap and on what area of the skin has those measurements; the fingers have a range of 1-5mm while the chest goes up to a distance of 70mm.
4)http://michaeldmann.net/mann5.html Gives a chart of distances and locations on the body where it is able to detect between two points or one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7KbtRwvBk Gives a visual example of how to do the test and what instrument is used to measure results.
http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/2point.html Gives a definition of the test and a worksheet as an example on how to do the test yourself.
Terminology- Two-point threshold
1.) I decided to write about Georg Elias Müller who is only mentioned for four paragraphs in the text. I am interested in him because unlike many other experimental psychologists of his time he actually devoted 40 years of his life to the laboratory.
2.) The three aspects about Georg Elias Müller I would like to touch on are: Why he isn't that well-known or a big name in psychology, his contributions to experimental psychology, and what was unique about him as a psychologist.
3.) The first thing about G.E. Müller and the main reason why I picked him as my topic is because he made many contributions to the psychology field but doesn't get much credit because he is not well-known. Edward J. Haupt talks about how there was “an almost complete lack of translation of Müller's work and. . . distortion of much of his work. . .” Much of this is also because he didn't make any new discoveries per se. He took work that was already done in four different fields and expanded on all of them.
He made contributions in the fields of psychophysics, thought psychology, color theory and memory. In psychophysics, he expanded on the ideas of Gustav Fechner, logarithmic scaling and also gave an explanation of psychophysical judgment of weight lifting. In memory, he expanded on the ideas of Hermann Ebbinghaus. He concluded that if you study list one, then study list two and then try and relearn list one, it would be harder to learn because the second list interferes with the memory of the first. In color theory he expanded on the ideas of Ewald Hering. He elaborated on a two stage theory about the eyes seeing color.
What I thought was unique about Müller as a psychologist was how much time he actually devoted to being in his laboratory. According to the text he “devoted 40 years of hid professional life to the psychology laboratory at the University of Gottingen. He also had many American students, some who were even women. I also found it very interesting how much credit he gave to his students. This is why I liked him so much and wanted to research on him. He seems like a humble man who just wanted to know more about the world.
4.) http://tomperera.com/psychology_museum/haupt/shaper2a.html
I chose this website because it covered a lot of things I was interested in. It talked a lot about how he doesn't get that much credit for his work and elaborated on his contributions to the field of experimental psychology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elias_M%C3%BCller
This website elaborated on color theory and memory and talked a lot about his early life and background.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Georg-Elias-Muller
This website gave a quick, dumb-downed summary of his ideas to make them easier to look at from a broader angle which allowed me to understand the expanded ideas in other texts.
1) Ernst Weber examined tactile sensitivity and found the two-point threshold. Ernst Weber and his discoveries was an important topic from this chapter. I think it is interesting because people have different sensitivities.
2) The three topics I am going to talk about are the how it is found today, the parts of the body that are the most and least sensitive, and criticisms of the two-point threshold.
3) In labs today to find a persons specific two-point threshold they use a tool called a caliber, which has a ruler on it with one two sharp points, one being adjustable. You "poke" the person with the pointy ends at a far distance first, at various areas on the body. Some popular points to test are the neck, lower back, and fore arm. The person you are testing must have their eyes closed during the process. After the poke you ask the person if they felt one to two points. If they say they felt two-points you move the slide closer together and poke them again. You repeat this process until they report feeling only one point of contact.
The lips, genitals, and finger tips are the most sensitive part on the human body. The least sensitive parts are the back of the arms and thighs.In general, it is stated that the more cortex that is dedicated to a certain area the more sensitive it is.
Even though the two-point threshold was one of the first tests for finding tactical sensitivity there are some criticisms of its use. It is thought to be a poor measure for finding tactical sensitivity. It is found to underestimate the actual sensitivity of areas. Also because the person being tested on knows that they are being touched by two-points this can subconsciously affect their responses to points.
4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7KbtRwvBk
this video helped me understand how exactly you find the two-point threshold.
http://apps.usd.edu/coglab/2point.html
this showed a map of the body and its sensitivities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-point_discrimination
this gave me a good idea of the criticisms on the two-point threshold as a test of tactical sensitivity.
two-point threshold
Ernest Weber
tactile sensitivity
1) My topic I chose to research was Galton and about twin studies. This relates to the chapter because it highlighted Galton as one of the him and his contributions to psychology as well as a little about twin studies. I found this interesting because I think twin studies are such a great way to find new information and it helps show so much about genetics and environment and how the two interact.
2) Three aspects I want to discuss for this are Galton and what he did with twin studies and his ideas, how twin studies work, and some specific twin studies/findings from them.
3) When Galton first started working with twins it was not the most easy thing. Although it was mostly assumed that twins were genetically similar because they looked the same, it was not shown through genetics at this time. There also was not much known about the difference between fraternal and identical twins. Many of the things Galton thought about twins were off from what we now know today. However, his use of twins did still help contribute to psychology and genetics. One of Galton's main questions was to see if twins stayed the same remain the same over time or do they start to become different. He also wondered if twins who were different at birth (perhaps fraternal twins, something we know now) become more similar as they get older or not. He heard of many sets of twins and similar things such as one getting sick when the other got sick. Twin studies are normally done with sets of twins raised together. This shows how genetics work because identical twins have 100% of the same genes and fraternal twins share about 50%. These sets can be compared and if there is more alike with the identical twins it can be said that genetics has an effect. One of the studies that was done on twins involved personality. These studies found that about 1/3 of certain personality traits were due to genetics and about 2/3 was environmental factors. This shows that genes and environment do interact and is also true with many other traits as well. Back before all of this research done many psychologists believed that there was either nature or nurture and the two did not interact. It seems that Galton's work as well as Darwin and the rest of the men mentioned in this chapter helped show the evolutionary side and heredity and this later led to this being combined with nurture and showed that the two can work together and do not have to be separate.
4) http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/4/913.full
This website was used to see how Galton contributed to twin studies specifically.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/second.aspx
This website went into more depth about how twin studies actually work.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/09/25/twin-study-finds-heavy-hand-of-genetics-in-personality-disorders/45085.html
This website talked about personality in twin studies and what the results of that study was.
Galton, twin studies, genetics, heredity
(Revisions for TB Week #5)
In my post, I talked a lot about twin studies and Galton and how twin studies did not originate the same way as they are now. Galton was extremely interested in the concept of nature vs. nurture and believed that twin studies would be a great way to look at this concept. Most of the time before this, people believed that it would be very hard to separate the two and research how each one contributed to an individual. Other people at this time believed that they were two completely separate things and they did not work together at all. Galton actually was the one who originally created the term eugenics and used it in his research and studies. Originally, Galton seemed to take on the perspective that nature was the most important part of nature vs. nurture. Galton wrote a book talking about hereditary and most importantly discussing fathers. He believed that great fathers created sons who also went on to do well and do great things based solely on their genetics and heredity. He believed that the environment was not what created these great leaders/people but rather the genetics. Even though he did publish a book on this topic, few people believed in these ideas. Darwin seemed to agree with Galton, but Galton found that many others completely disagreed with this idea. Because of this, he decided he also needed to incorporate the idea of nurture into his research as well and have nature and nurture combine together to show how people develop. This idea of having the two combine together is what ultimately let Galton to focus on twins. He felt that twins were the best possible way to study this because they knew at the time that twins had very similar genetics, so they could take twins who grew up together and compare them with twins who did not and see how much of an effect the environment had on them. Although Galton did do a lot of research on these topics, often times his findings were not the best and were fairly vague. He was able to find some worthwhile information with this research, however. Galton was actually able to figure out that twins were extremely similar. Often times when he would study twins, he would see that what happened to one of the twins would sometimes happen to the other as well. If one twin were to get sick the other would as well, even as far up to them dying at nearly the same time. Many of the twins Galton studied he found to be extremely similar, something he figured was already true but now had further proof. As I discussed in my previous post as well, Galton wanted to know if this likeness persisted in twins throughout their lifetime or if it was just something that occurred when they were younger. He found that twins actually did seem to persist in their similarities even as they got much older, with this similarity lasting throughout the lifetime. Because of this, Galton began to lean back towards his original idea of genetics being the most important factor. Galton was able to study twins who were not reared in the same environment and saw that these sets were also extremely similar. This led him to be even more on the side of nature rather than nurture. Even though this is what Galton found and it was a very important aspect of psychology at this time, I found it interesting how a lot of psychologists do not believe in this today. We know a lot more than we did back then and the views and beliefs have changed a lot. Now we know that almost all psychologists believe that the two must be combined and work together and that you cannot say 100% that nature matters over nurture or vice versa. I also found it interesting that many of the twin studies I looked up actually went the other way, saying that certain traits or personality characteristics involved nurture more than nature. I think this shows how we cannot say with complete certainty that one of these is more important than the other.
TB5 TB5
1) My topic is the method of limits. This topic fits into the sections because one of the German experimental psychologists, Fechner, developed the method.
2) Testing procedure, Experimentation, contexts
3) Testing procedure, in method of limits we find a very experimental feel for the topic. This testing can find the threshold of certain individuals. The experimentation calls for the introduction of a stimulus and the diminishment of a stimulus. At a set rate we intensify the exposure of the given stimulus and measure the sensory response to that intensity set. This idea was introduced by Fechner and his element of Psychophysics. In his method of limits he focuses on an ascending and descending trial where you start from not being able to comprehend the stimulus to comprehension, or comprehending a stimulus into a non-comprehensive result. The method of limits can be applied to many different circumstances.
When we go get a physical did you know that you are using the method of limits? When we get examined for our eyes we are asked to look at and perceive a series of letters. These letters get gradually smaller as we go through the test. This is the application of the method of limits. We take a stimulus, eye sight comprehension, and give in a set of intensities, Larger or smaller letters. Not just in the eye sight comprehension but also a hearing test uses the method of limits. When we go through a hearing test we have a stimulus of hearing ‘beeps’ and gradually the stimulus gets smaller or larger until we can or can’t hear the stimulus. After these tests are done we are measured for how we performed. Test made based off of the method of limits need to remain relatively easy and also need to have a yes or no feel to how participants respond. A clear cut answer to the questions asked hold a strong base.
The method of limits can be applied to any of the senses that we have. The contexts of the experiment are important in understanding the limits. In the eye sight test we give a number 20/20 on average. Any number higher than the first twenty is labeled as below average any number lower is labeled as above average eye sight. Other test like the hearing test are actually reversed. A higher score shows an above average performance while a below average score is represented with a lower number. Context is a very important integration of the method of limits. We need to know what the scores mean and how we can interpret them. It’s important to realize that the method of limits can be applied to any sensation. In touch we have the 2-point test, hearing the hearing test, taste, the taste test, and it goes on. But why is this important? If we have a limitations test we can find out other things. If we know someone who score really high or really low on the limitation test, we can examine them to find out what features they have that others do not.
4) http://psych.answers.com/research-methods/what-is-the-method-of-limits
This web source provides the brief background and implementation of the method of limits. It discusses the history as well as the testing weaknesses of the method. I used this web source to get a generally understanding of the method of limits to create a framework for my response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUjgGiA2Q00
This YouTube video shows the demonstration of the method of limits in both the ascending and descending trail. I used this video to understand the experimentation process of the testing procedure. This video was relatively short but gave me a good introduction to the testing of the method of limits.
My final source was the book chapter 4 ‘Wundt and German psychology’ p.86-87
This book source provides the psychophysics method of limits definition and typical implementation. It gave a very basic understanding and was great for developing perspective of the testing. I used this source to provide the proper deep thinking and understanding of the testing procedure
Terminology: Method of limits, Gustav Fechner Threshold, Diminishing Stimulus, ascending trail, descending trail
1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
For this chapter I chose to write about Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, because his is one of those great “fathers” of a psychology field, that being the field of Experimental Psychology. A lot of these “Father’s of Psychology” no matter what type often are ridiculed, but with a few exceptions Wundt is not seen as a laughing stock (unlike Freud and Maslow). In part because of his research.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
In this blog i hope to emphasise why the field of psychology needed an individual such as Wundt, To show of his intellectual side, and show how the other fields he was in influenced the way he approached psychology and research in it.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Wilhelm Wundt was an extremely busy, well rounded, and highly educated individual. He was a physician, physiologist, philosopher, and professor. With all that going on in his life it’s a wonder he even had time to make his mark on the field of psychology, but each of these fields that he was in influenced him when it came to founding experimental psychology, which is one of the fields of psychology that is hard to refute as a science and poke holes at (unlike Freud). The research in experimental psychology is based on empirical evidence, which was a step in the right direction for psychology, and this is one of the fields that started to solidify us as a “True Science” instead of just the hope of one.
Wund was the first psychologists to found a Psychology Research Lab at the University of Leipzig. It amazes me that there was never a psych research lab before his in 1879, that means we’ve only had a total of 136 years of psychology research. Our field has progressed so far in that time, on a grand scale we are still infantile in our existence. I believe that Wundt was the man that psychology as a whole needed to be taken seriously.
Most of the research in this early lab was on that of sensation and perception. This was important for our field, because our field relies on studying the human condition, and how can we do that if we don’t understand how individuals view the world? In this early research optical illusions were somewhat a focus, so much so that there is one even known as the Wundt illusion. Wundt said that “Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life”. Why was Wundt so fascinated by sensation and perception? He believed in what’s called reductionism (which means that the consciousness can be broken down into basic parts without losing it as a whole). Understanding those basic parts and how they influence consciousness allows you to understand consciousness on a whole new more complete level
“Wundt was important because he separated psychology from philosophy by analyzing the workings of the mind in a more structured way, with the emphasis being on objective measurement and control”. Wundt’s lab was a basic model on which all psychology labs at that time were built on. Sure it was the first lab and they needed their trial and error process until they found an archetype that worked best for psychological research, but his original was not bad in its conception.
“Wundt contributed to the development of psychology was to do his research in carefully controlled conditions, i.e. experimental methods. This encouraged other researchers such as the behaviorists to follow the same experimental approach and be more scientific”. This is what made me drawn to the guy, he had his background in the medical, physiological, and philosophical fields. He took what he knew from them and used them as a basis to model psychology research on, and emphasized a need for empirically supported research. He knew that research had to have test-retest validity in order to be accepted, and that you had to not only have a hypothesis, but also a nulhypothese. This research model seems to still be one of the go to’s for psychology even today. Wundt was somewhat ahead of his time in this sense, but we needed someone to start “Real” research in psychology.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt
This was a great overview of Wundt’s life, it provided a timeline on which it was easier to navigate through Wundt’s life. It was adequate for the purposes of this blog, which is slightly less academic in its research than that of a paper.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html
This source provided a more in depth analysis on what sparked Wundt’s curiosity. Why he conducted his research in the ways he did, and how successful of an impact he had on the psychology community.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wilhelm_wundt.html
Wundt was a very articulate man, especially with his background in philosophy. His quotes shed light on him as a person and i found it of utmost importance to include a few of his highly enlightening words into this blog. In them you can see the way in which Wundt’s mind worked and how he compartmentalised things.
Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, Experimental Psychology, sensation, perception, Wundt illusion, reductionism, consciousness,
1) My topic this week is memory. I studied this topic because I think that our memory is something interesting to study. We use our memory every minute of every day, and if we start to lose our memory we definitely notice.
2) This week I will talk about how Ebbinghaus began to experiment with memory loss. Then I will talk about what the forgetting curve is. Finally I would like to talk about what Ebbinghaus’s tests of retention are.
3) Hermann Ebbinghaus started the experiments into memory. He was the first to begin to experiment, and he was the first to discover a pattern in his own memory loss. Ebbinghaus experimented on himself, teaching himself three-letter nonsense syllables. He would put these syllables in a list and try to learn. He would repeat them to himself and wait a specific amount of time that he had already decided upon. After this amount of time had passed, Ebbinghaus would try to recall the list of syllables. Ebbinghaus discovered that as he increased the amount of times he repeated the list, he was able to recall more of the list. He also found that soon after he stopped repeating the list, his memory was lost at a very quick rate. Even though Ebbinghaus’s experiments were good experiments and contributed to our understanding of psychology that we have now, memorizing lists is awkward because we don’t normally memorize random lists. The random assignment of memorizing lists could have had an effect on his experiments.
The forgetting curve describes how the brain is able to retain information over time. It is graphed out as a curve with retention on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. As mentioned earlier, initially the rate of lost information is steep. However, as time goes on the rate of forgetting levels off before all the information is lost. Even after a long period of time some portion of the information continues to remain, even if it is just the concept. One way to extend the time before too much information is lost is to overlearn the material. This makes the forgetting curve less severe and takes longer to forget the material. In order to overlearn material, the learner must practice the material more than is normally necessary. So if it normally took a learner 5 repetitions to memorize a list, the learner would repeat the list more like 7 or 8 times. It would be said that they had overlearned the material by 100% if, in this same situation, the learner repeats the material 10 times.
Ebbinghaus also discovered different ways to measure what material was forgotten. He called these measurements, tests of retention. First there was recall. Recall is seeing how many items from the list you can remember. There are different types of recall. The first is free recall. Free recall is what happens when the learner can recall the lists in no particular order and without prompts. The second is serial recall which happens when the learner can recall the lists in the order that they learned them. In the third, prompted recall, is when the learner uses hints to help them recall. The fourth is recognition. This is when a person is able to recognize items on a list, but is not able to recall them completely from memory. This technique is measured by giving the participant a long list of items, and having them mark the ones they can recognize from their original list. This technique is also much more sensitive. The fifth and final test Ebbinghaus used was savings. After the participant had “forgotten” the memorized list, they would relearn the list. If the second time it took less repetitions to remember the list, it meant that there was some information left in their memory. This information saved in their memory is the amount of memorized information. This is the most sensitive memory test, and can indicate some residual memory of the originally memorized list.
4) http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/p/forgetting.htm I chose this website because it gave a good summary of Ebbinghaus and his Forgetting Curve. I used this website for each section that I talked about.
http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/Ebbinghaus.html I chose this website because it gave a detailed discription of Ebbinghaus and his forgetting curve. I used this website for the sections on overlearning and Ebbinghaus’s tests of retention.
http://academic.udayton.edu/legaled/online/exams/memory05.htm I chose this website because it went into further detail on memory and how Ebbinghaus studied it. I used this website for Ebbinghaus’s experiments.
http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-forgetting-curve/ I used this website for help on the definitions and ideas on how to expand ideas.
5) Forgetting Curve, Hermann Ebbinghaus, memory, three-letter nonsense syllables, overlearning, recall, recognition, service, memory test.