Some Precursors to Psychology

1
Some Precursors to Psychology

• Hermann von Helmholtz c.1850
• rate of nerve conduction 50 m/sec
• perception as "unconscious inference"
• theories of color vision, hearing
• Ernst Weber c.1840
• perceptual judgements are relative, not absolute
• Gustav Fechner c.1860
• "psychophysics" absolute difference in
  psychological experience is proportional
  difference in physical stimulus
• Franciscus Donders c.1865
• subtractive logic in reaction time studies

2
Early Psychology

• Wilhelm Wundt c. 1879 d. 1920 (Leipzig)
• voluntarism emphasizes volition, attention,
  will, choice, purpose more Locke than Hume
• use reaction time, "experimental" introspection,
  etc. to replicate and extend earlier findings
• first "paradigm" in psychology (in both senses)
• only lower level processes studied in lab higher
  processes studied through "Volkerpsychologie"
• examine religion, customs, history, language,
  morals, art, law, etc. to reveal higher thought
  processes
• elements of thought organized by LAWS, but not
  empiricist laws of association

3
Early Psychology

• Edward Titchener c. 1899 d. 1927 (Cornell)
• "structuralism" emphasizes static elements of
  consciousness - structure, not function
• study consciousness (mental experience at a
  moment) mind was the lifetime accumulation of
  experience
• used introspectors trained to avoid the "stimulus
  error"
• catalog sensations and their laws of combination
  -- mainly association by contiguity
• eventually "discovered" 40,000 sensations (30,000
  visual, 12,000 auditory, 20 other)
• all thought was image-based
• ignored applications, animals, abnormality,
  personality, development, individual differences,
  evolution

4
Early Psychology

• Oswald Kulpe c. 1894 d. 1915 (Wurzburg)
• Imageless thoughts arose in context of judgements
  about "heavier than" or "lighter than"
• ex. no images accompanied thoughts of search,
  doubt, confidence, hesitation
• Titchener et al debated this issue, 1907-1915
  arguments about who was doing introspection
  better, more accurately, more reliably
• till finally
• John Watson (1913)
• "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It"