What was wundts primary experimental interest

This laboratory became a focus for those with a serious interest in psychology, first for German philosophers and psychology students, then for American and British students as well.

All subsequent psychological laboratories were closely modeled in their early years on the Wundt model. Wundt's background was in physiology, and this was reflected in the topics with which the Institute was concerned, such as the study of reaction times and sensory processes and attention. For example, participants would be exposed to a standard stimulus e.

Wundt's aim was to record thoughts and sensations, and to analyze them into their constituent elements, in much the same way as a chemist analyses chemical compounds, in order to get at the underlying structure. The school of psychology founded by Wundt is known as voluntarism, the process of organizing the mind. During his academic career Wundt trained graduate students in psychology. This is significant as it helped disseminate his work. Indeed, parts of Wundt's theory were developed and promoted by his one-time student, Edward Titchener, who described his system as Structuralism , or the analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind.

L III: [ 19 ]. In other words, it is in the controlled conditions of a laboratory that one can, by means of experimenter, experimental subject, and various apparatus, arbitrarily and repeatedly call forth precisely predetermined phenomena of consciousness.

Only in this way is. L III: [ 20 ]. A detailed account of these experiments themselves, however, lies far beyond the scope of this article. Wundt, like most early experimental psychologists, [ 22 ] concentrated his investigations upon sensation and perception; of all psychic phenomena, sensation is the most obviously connected to the body and the physical world Hearst b: Sensations Empfindungen , as the medium between the physical and psychic, are uniquely susceptible to a double-sided inquiry, [ 23 ] viz.

According to Wundt, the representations Vorstellungen that constitute the contents Inhalt of consciousness all have their elemental basis in sensations Empfindungen PP I: Yet, the manifestly composite nature of our representations forces us to abstract such elementary components PP I: cf.

PP II: His treatment of quality and intensity are especially important for getting a clearer notion of his notion of psychological experimentation. The outer sensory stimuli may be measured by physical methods, whereas psychology is given the corresponding.

PP I: —3. Sensation can thus be measured with respect to changes in intensity corresponding to changes in strength of stimuli PP I: —6. Wundt writes:. Or: If in our apprehension [ Auffassung ] the intensity of the sensation is to increase by equal amounts, then the relative stimulus-increase must remain constant.

This latter statement may also be expressed as follows: The strength of a stimulus must increase geometrically if the strength of the apperceived sensation is to increase arithmetically. PP I: Now these various formulations [ 27 ] of WL admit, as Wundt says, of three different, and indeed incompatible interpretations; that is, there are three different conceptions of what WL is a law of.

Wundt rejects both of these in favor of a third, the psychological interpretation; his arguments are instructive. Against the physiological interpretation Wundt raises the following main point, viz. PP I: —2. In other words, WL. PP I: ; cf. WL is therefore not a law of sensation so much as of apperception. His interpretation of WL nicely illustrates how, on his view, physiological experiments can yield mathematically expressible results, not about the physical, somatic processes involved in sensation, but about the relationships among these sensations as apperceived , i.

Psychology finds consciousness to be constituted of three major act-categories: representation, willing, and feeling; our discussion is limited to the first two. Now while Wundt is forced to speak of representations and representational acts as distinct, he is nevertheless clear that they are merely different aspects of a single flowing process.

As discussed in the previous section, all consciousness originates in sensations. PP II: but merely thought, then it is a so-called reproduced representation. Although consciousness consists in the formation of representations, on the one hand, and of the coming and going of such representations, on the other hand—i. We are also aware within our consciousness of another activity operating upon our representations, namely of paying them attention PP II: Wundt appeals to an analogy:.

This feature of consciousness can be clarified by that common image we use in calling consciousness an inner vision. Thus consciousness is a function of the scope of attention, which may be broader as perception or narrower as apperception [ 34 ]. Apperception, in turn, may either actively select and focus upon a perceived representation, or it may passively find certain representations suddenly thrusting themselves into the center of attention PP II: ; PP II: to the extent that it gives the impression of two separable forms of attention able in principle to subsist together simultaneously that is, apperception focusing upon a point in the perceptual field while that field continues to be perceived.

No: perceptive attention becomes apperceptive attention just as it focuses more strenuously, constricting the perceptive field.

Passive apperception may be characterized simply by saying that here the associative form of representational connection is predominant cf. He does not consider the types of association to be genuine psychological laws, i.

We see here the important role played by his so-called voluntarism: [ 36 ] associationist psychologists, according to Wundt, cannot give an account of the subjective activity that immediately characterizes consciousness cf. Wundt b: , ff. L I: Yet this is not to deny association of sensations altogether. Rather, it is to conceive of association as merely a subliminal process, the products of which, representations, then become the actual objects of consciousness.

Apperception operates according to its own peculiar laws PP II: These laws, like those of association, govern acts of combination Verbindung and separation Zerlegung. How do apperceptive laws differ from those of association?

Association everywhere gives the first impetus to [apperceptive] combinations. Through association we combine, e. For this latter representation does not contain the two constitutive representations in a merely external coexistence; rather, in the [representation of the church-tower], the representation of the church has come to adhere [ anhaften ] to the representation of the tower, more closely determining the latter.

In this way, the agglutination of representations forms the first level of apperceptive combination. The more the original associative or agglutinated representations are compressed or displaced, the more they disappear altogether from consciousness, leaving in their stead a single representation whose original composite structure has disappeared.

Apperception is not only a synthetic process; it is also governed by rules of separation. He argues that it is usually the case that. These individual parts and the manner of their connection become distinct only through the separative activity of apperception. Thus, conscious thought and judgment On judgment, see SP I: 34, ff. Only in this way can one explain the.

This would be impossible if the whole had not been represented at the outset. The accomplishment of the judgment-function therefore consists, from the psychological point of view, only in our successively making the obscure outlines of the total picture [ Gesammtbild ], so that at the end of the composite thought-act the whole, too, stands more clearly before our consciousness.

It consists in constantly interacting processes : on the one hand, there are associative processes that fuse sensations into elemental representations. As an activity attention is an expression of will; since consciousness just is attention in its shifting forms, it is the activity of will manifested in the selection, combination, and separation of disposable representations PP II: In other words, as the apperceptive activity becomes increasingly intense it seems as it were to rise above the field of perception, above the field of its own constructs, becoming aware of itself as pure activity, as pure self -consciousness:.

PP II: [ 40 ]. As we have seen Section 3. For if it does not, then these phenomena could never be more than a chaotic muddle, of which there could be no science. Natorp The PPP has caused a great deal of confusion in the secondary literature, which persists in characterizing it as a metaphysical [ 42 ] doctrine somehow derived from Leibniz e. He is therefore not an epiphenomenalist, as some commentators have claimed. Wundt a: , ff.

Van Rappard Wundt compares the distinction between psychological and physiological explanation to the different viewpoints taken by chemistry and physics of the same object, a crystal. Similarly, neuro- physiology and psychology do not describe different processes, one neural and one mental, but the same process seen from the outside and the inside, respectively. Rogers used a therapeutic technique known as client-centered therapy in helping his clients deal with problematic issues that resulted in their seeking psychotherapy.

Unlike a psychoanalytic approach in which the therapist plays an important role in interpreting what conscious behavior reveals about the unconscious mind, client-centered therapy involves the patient taking a lead role in the therapy session. Rogers believed that a therapist needed to display three features to maximize the effectiveness of this particular approach: unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy.

Unconditional positive regard refers to the fact that the therapist accepts their client for who they are, no matter what he or she might say. Humanism has been influential to psychology as a whole. Both Maslow and Rogers are well-known names among students of psychology you will read more about both men later in this text , and their ideas have influenced many scholars.

The early work of the humanistic psychologists redirected attention to the individual human as a whole, and as a conscious and self-aware being. By the s, new disciplinary perspectives in linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science were emerging, and these areas revived interest in the mind as a focus of scientific inquiry.

This particular perspective has come to be known as the cognitive revolution Miller, Although no one person is entirely responsible for starting the cognitive revolution, Noam Chomsky was very influential in the early days of this movement.

Chomsky — , an American linguist, was dissatisfied with the influence that behaviorism had had on psychology. Noam Chomsky was very influential in beginning the cognitive revolution. In , this mural honoring him was put up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. European psychology had never really been as influenced by behaviorism as had American psychology; and thus, the cognitive revolution helped reestablish lines of communication between European psychologists and their American counterparts.

Furthermore, psychologists began to cooperate with scientists in other fields, like anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and neuroscience, among others. This interdisciplinary approach often was referred to as the cognitive sciences, and the influence and prominence of this particular perspective resonates in modern-day psychology Miller, Culture has important impacts on individuals and social psychology, yet the effects of culture on psychology are under-studied.

In this sense, it has remained a descriptive science, rather than one seeking to determine cause and effect. For example, a study of characteristics of individuals seeking treatment for a binge eating disorder in Hispanic American, African American, and Caucasian American individuals found significant differences between groups Franko et al. The study concluded that results from studying any one of the groups could not be extended to the other groups, and yet potential causes of the differences were not measured.

This history of multicultural psychology in the United States is a long one. The role of African American psychologists in researching the cultural differences between African American individual and social psychology is but one example. Sumner established a psychology degree program at Howard University, leading to the education of a new generation of African American psychologists Black, Spence, and Omari, Much of the work of early African American psychologists and a general focus of much work in first half of the 20th century in psychology in the United States was dedicated to testing and intelligence testing in particular Black et al.

That emphasis has continued, particularly because of the importance of testing in determining opportunities for children, but other areas of exploration in African-American psychology research include learning style, sense of community and belonging, and spiritualism Black et al. The American Psychological Association has several ethnically based organizations for professional psychologists that facilitate interactions among members.

Since psychologists belonging to specific ethnic groups or cultures have the most interest in studying the psychology of their communities, these organizations provide an opportunity for the growth of research on the impact of culture on individual and social psychology. Before the time of Wundt and James, questions about the mind were considered by philosophers.

However, both Wundt and James helped create psychology as a distinct scientific discipline. Wundt was a structuralist, which meant he believed that our cognitive experience was best understood by breaking that experience into its component parts. He thought this was best accomplished by introspection. William James was the first American psychologist, and he was a proponent of functionalism. Like Wundt, James also relied on introspection; however, his research approach also incorporated more objective measures as well.

Sigmund Freud believed that understanding the unconscious mind was absolutely critical to understand conscious behavior. In doing so, he separated psychology from philosophy and biology and became the first person to be called a psychologist. At first he did this by studying reaction time - systematically changing the stimuli he presented to participants and measuring how long it took them to respond - inferring that the longer it took to respond, the more mental processes must be involved.

Later, he adapted and developed a process called introspection to infer more about the nature of the processes involved. Company Reg no: VAT reg no