Titcheners Structuralism

1
Titcheners Structuralism

• Experience as altogether dependent upon the
  particular person. (Titchener, 1910/1966, p. 601)

2
Edward Titchener(1867-1927)

• Subject matter
• the world with reference
• to the person who
• experiences it
• Consciousness vs. mind
• Goals analysis into simplest components
• Discover the what(analysis), how(synthesis),
  why(explanation)
• Methods scientific method to mental events
• Introspection

3
So, whats the beef about Wundt and Titchener,
anyway?

• Wundt voluntarism
• Volitional/motivational process
• Synthesis of contents into higher order
• Distinction experimental and cultural
• Introspection described stimuli
• Relevant to contemporary cognition

• Titchenerstructuralism
• Positivist influence
• Elements of conscious experience
• No distinction
• Described nature of conscious experience
• Little relevance to contemporary issues

4
So, why do we study Titchener?

• He brought a school of psychologyseemingly
  intact--to the U.S., where it flourishedfor a
  while
• He trained and encourage many new psychologists,
  including women
• And more to come.

5
The WhatAnalysis of elements

• Elements of experience sensation, images,
  affections
• Imaginal mind concrete abstract
• Image of the word, meaning--I see meaning
  as the blue-gray tip of a kind of scoop, which
  has a bit of yellow above itand which is just
  digging into a dark mass of plastic material
  (Titchener, 1904, p. 19)
• Attributes of elements quality, intensity,
  duration, clarity, idiosyncratic
• The problem of attention and sensory clarity

6
The Method Introspectionsystematic,
experimentalfrom Kulpe

• Sources of variation
• Nature
• Purpose
• Instruction
• Characteristics
• Verbal reports trained introspectionists
  experimental control avoid meaning or thing
  words

7
An Introspective Account

• Observers C and P
• Reporting their memory images
• memory image appears spontaneously
• imageevoked by chance twitches
• of the eyeball Wundts volition
• usually appears in the same direction and at
  the same distance as did the original
• C reported a feeling of accommodation

8
The Howthe SynthesisLaws by which elements
are associated

• Avoid the stimulus error
• use a mental reduction screen

• Principles of connection synthesis
• contiguity
• successive connection
• Mechanical view --additive (no apperception,
  creative synthesis or voluntarism!)
• Passive
• How? Not enough need..

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The Why

• Explanation via NS
• Psychophysical parallelism
• NO CAUSE and EFFECT
• Correlation
• Predictable Physical attends mental
• But not perfect!

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Addenda

• Opposition to applied psychology
• Changes to theory
• Exclusion of women The Experimentalists

11
For many years I wanted an experimental club
no women, smoking allowed..Titchener, 1904

• I am particularly anxious to bring my views
  up..for hand-to-hand discussion before expertsI
  hope you will not say nay!

• Nay!

• I am shocked to know that you are still-at this
  yearexcluding womenHave your smokers separated
  (tho I for one always smoke when I am in
  fashionable society)

• I am not sure that we had better not
  disintegrate! I have been pestered by abuse by
  Mrs. Ladd-FranklinPossibly she will succeed in
  breaking up up, and forcing us to meetlike
  rabbitsin some dark place underground

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Margaret Floy Washburn(1871-1939)

• Inclusion of womenTitcheners students

• The Animal Mind (1908)
• Denied admission to Columbia
• First woman to receive Ph.D.
• (Cornell, 1894)
• Membership in APA, 1894
• President of APA, 1921
• Admitted, National Academy of Sciences, 1934
• Taught at Wellesley, U. of Cincinnati, and Vassar

13
Titcheners legacy

• E.G. Boring

• Laboratories
• A strong base against which others could rebel
  (Schultz Schultz, 2000)
• A significant dead end in psychology and for
  misleading English-speaking psychologists about
  Wundts voluntaristic ideas. Structuralism died
  with Titchener and has seldom been mourned
  since. (Leahy, 1997, p. 209)