Chapter 8: Structure or Function?

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Chapter 8 Structure or Function?

• A History of Psychology
• (3rd Edition)
• John G. Benjafield

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Edward B. Titchener (18671927)

• Graduated from Oxford
• 18901892 Studied with Wundt at Leipzig
• Established psychological laboratory at Cornell
  University, Ithaca

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Titcheners Method

• Believed the unconscious fiction
• Introspection process by which individuals
  describe their experience
• Psychophysical parallelism by referring to
  events in the nervous system we may be able to
  explain mental processes without regarding those
  events in the nervous system as causing mental
  processes
• Psychology the study of the generalized human
  mind by means of experimental introspection

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Phases of Titcheners Career

• 1. 1890s Titchener established the basic
  characteristics of his introspectionist approach
• Structural vs. functional psychology
• 2. First decade of the twentieth century
  Titchener was preoccupied with methodological
  issues
• Experimental Psychology
• 3. Until 1915 Titchener was taken up with
  defending himself against various critics
• Ex. imageless thought controversy
• 4. Titchener made some radical changes to his
  previous beliefs
• Consciousness

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Structuralism

• Structuralism aimed to uncover the elementary
  structures of mind
• Titcheners psychology

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Experimental Psychology

• Provides details about how a beginner student in
  experimental psychology can acquire the
  fundamental skills of the discipline
• Explains that a psychological experiment consists
  of an introspection or a series of introspections
  made under standard conditions
• Content divided into two parts
• Qualitiative
• Quantitative

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Imageless Thought Controversy

• Critics the Würzburgers
• Reported that introspection often yielded nothing
  more clear and distinct than imageless thoughts
• The concept of imageless thought was inconsistent
  with Titcheners way of analyzing mental
  processes

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Dimensions of Consciousness

• Titchener developed an abstract approach to the
  study of consciousness
• Stressed the analysis of consciousness in terms
  of dimensions
• Never settled the questions of what dimensions of
  consciousness were or how many there were
• He died before producing the great work on the
  subject that many of his students expected

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Boring and the Dimensions of Consciousness

• E.G. Boring published an account of what he
  considered to be Titcheners central views
• Singled out four dimensions for discussion
• Quality, intensity, extensity, and protensity
• These dimensions all refer to sensory experience
• Noted the phenomenological nature of the
  dimensional approach to experience

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Titcheners Influence

• Little left of the content of Titcheners system
  to influence subsequent generations of
  psychologists
• His method of introspection received less and
  less support
• Proposition that psychology was an experimental
  discipline continued to receive widespread
  support in academic psychology

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Functionalism

• Set out to violate the strictures that Titchener
  tried to place on psychology
• Open to methods other than introspection
• Attempts to select the method to fit the
  particular problem
• Interested in what function psychological
  processes serve
• Focus on how organisms adapt to their environment
• Attempts to be practical as well as scholarly

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John Dewey (18591952)

• Undergraduate at the University of Vermont
• 1884 PhD in philosophy at Johns Hopkins
• 1894 joined the University of Chicago
• Chair of the Department of Philosophy,
  Psychology, and Education
• 19041930 Teachers College at Columbia
  University

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Reflex Arc Concept

• Paper contains
• A criticism of the reflex concept as
  elementaristic and mechanistic
• A positive statement of a more organic approach
  to psychological phenomena
• Suggested that a stimulus is created by an
  organism through the act of paying attention to
  something

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Deweys Influence on Educational Practice

• Teachers influenced by the psychological
  assumptions they make about children and the
  educational process
• Children and adults are different
• Adult is already in possession of cognitive
  abilities that the child is only in the process
  of developing
• Argued against teaching the 3Rs
• Progressive education movement

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James R. Angell (18691949)

• Studied with both Dewey and James
• 1894 Professor of Psychology at Chicago
• Did not believe in restricting psychology to
  laboratory investigation

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Robert S. Woodworth (18691962)

• Background in mathematics and physiology
• 1903 Taught Psychology at Columbia
• 1942 Retirement
• Continued to be extremely productive
• Wrote an introductory text, Psychology
• Sold over 400,000 copies between 1922 and 1939
• 1938 wrote Experimental Psychology

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S-O-R Framework

• S-O-R
• S stimulus
• R response
• O organism (subject)
• W-O-W
• O organsim
• W world (environment)
• Set similar in meaning to the determining
  tendency of the Würzburgers
• Combination formula W-S-Ow-R-W
• Ow individuals adjustment to the environment,
  or set

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Intelligence Testing

• Functionalism created a climate in America within
  which applied psychology could flourish
• Ex. emergence of intelligence tests in the United
  States

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James McKeen Cattell (18601944)

• Trained with Wundt at Leipzig
• Year at Cambridge
• Became acquainted with Sir Francis Galtons
  methods
• Cattell spent much of his career at Columbia
  University to the further development of measures
  of individual differences
• 1890 first to introduce the term mental test

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Examples of Cattells Mental Tests
Test Description
Dynamometer pressure Strength of hand squeeze
Rate of movement How quickly the hand can be moved a distance of 50cm
Sensation of areas Two-point threshold How far apart on the skin must two stimuli be in order to be detected as two and not just as one
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Alfred Binet (18571911)

• Invented the most influential form of
  intelligence test
• In collaboration with Theophile Simon
• Test to discriminate between normal and
  subnormally intelligent children
• The Binet-Simon scale allows children to be
  compared in terms of their mental age
• Mental age determined by the age level of the
  items a child can pass

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Examples of Binet and Simons Items
Age Item
3 Give family name
4 Repeat three numbers
5 Compare two weights
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Evolution of Binet and Simons Test

• Lewis M. Terman
• Developed the most successful adaptation of the
  Binet-Simon scale in an American context
  Stanford-Binet
• Innovation of the intelligence quotient, or IQ
• William Stern
• IQ obtained by dividing the persons mental age
  (MA) by his or her chronological age (CA)

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Army Intelligence Testing

• 1917 Robert M. Yerkes appointed chair of a
  committee to investigate how psychology could
  contribute to the war effort
• The tests that Yerkes and his group developed
  were derived from many sources, including the
  Binet tests
• Army Alpha literate soldiers Army Beta
  illiterate soldiers
• Group test administration
• Problems
• Cultural bias
• National differences in intelligence
• Racial differences in intelligence

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What is Intelligence?

• Acquired? Innate?
• Binet intelligence as a collection of different
  skills
• Boring capacity to do well in an intelligence
  test

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Psychology in Business

• As the mental testing industry was beginning to
  develop, the application of psychology to
  problems of interest to business was also
  emerging as a discipline.

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Frederick W. Taylor (18561915)

• Lifetime focus on efficiency
• Scientific management
• Ex. Bethlehem Steel Company
• Methods developed further by Frank and Lillian
  Gilbreth
• Time and motion study

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Elton Mayo (18801949)

• 1926 National Research Council studied the
  effect of changes in the level of lighting in the
  Western Electric Plant in Hawthorne, Illinois on
  workers output
• Mayo became part of a group called in to
  investigate
• Hawthorne effect any change in work conditions
  increases output

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Taylor vs. Mayo

• Mayo
• Saw the individual as motivated by the interests
  of the group to which the person belonged
• Focused on behaviour as determined by the quality
  of ones interpersonal relationships

• Taylor
• Assumed that an individual is motivated by
  self-interest
• Focused on individual behaviour seen as a
  collection of bodily movements

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Comparative Psychology

• Comparative psychology understanding the
  evolution of behaviour through the comparison of
  different species
• George John Romanes
• Mind subject matter
• Anthropomorphic
• Continuity
• Criticism anecdotal
• C. Lloyd Morgan
• Experimental approach to study of animal
  behaviour
• Canon

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Edward L. Thorndike (18741949)

• Research animal intelligence
• Puzzle box apparatus assembled by Thorndike out
  of wood
• Procedure
• Cat placed in puzzle box with food outside
• Cat required to pull on a string push a latch
• Thorndike concluded that the cat did not use
  reason to escape
• Law of Effect