HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY The Rise & Fall of German Structuralism

(and a bit about Sir Francis Galton) 

 

Dr Richard Roche Dept of Psychology, NUI Maynooth.

Email: Richard.Roche@nuim.ie

Wündt’s Leipzig Lab

• Psychophysics;

• Time Sense;

• Mental Chronometry

Interested in the difference between perception and apperception

In apperception, the stimulus is perceived, recognised, interpreted, and “thought about”

Experiments on the Span of Apperception

Wündt and colleagues would present arrays of stimuli very briefly (~100ms) and test a participant’s recall of what was presented

Regardless of the nature of the stimuli (letters, numbers, words, shapes), usually between 4-6 objects could be correctly recalled

Concluded that 4-6 thoughts or ideas could be held in consciousness at any one moment

FHUSWJX

UGIQPZF

TNVKEOC

BDRMLTA

Wündt’s Leipzig Lab

The idea of Creative Synthesis:

Wündt argued that perceived ideas will be organised and combined in a way consistent with prior associations or experience

Apperceived ideas, however, could be combined in many different ways, including novel ways that have not been experienced before.

In this respect, Wündt was not really a reductionist

Wündt’s Leipzig LabThe Method of Introspection:

if Psychology is to study conscious experience, then the main tool for this study should be the observation & recording of one’s own subjective experience.

Sensations and Feelings

Sensations – Mode (visual, auditory etc.)

Quality (colour, pitch etc.)

Intensity

Duration

Wündt’s Leipzig Lab

Sensations and Feelings

Feelings – three basic dimensions

pleasantness – unpleasantness

tension – relaxation

activity – passivity

But Wündt himself expressed reservations about the use of introspection as an investigative tool for psychology

E.B. Titchener (1867-1927)

Born Chichester;Philosophy & Classics, and laterPhysiology at Oxford.

Spent 2 years at Wündt’s lab inLeipzig.

When experimental psychology was met with scepticism in England, he went to Cornell to teach and direct the lab.

He ran the lab for the rest of his life, becoming a cult figure in Cornell, being very popular with his students

While he maintained that he followed Wündt’s teachings, he actually differed significantly from his old mentor’s approach.

He termed his approach Structuralism – the subject matter of Psychology should be the study and analysis of the basic elements of conscious experience; atomistic view of consciousness not shared by Wündt

Structural Psychology was a “pure science” for Titchener – interested in generalisable aspects of human mind, not individual differences or case studies of abnormality.

The Methodology of Structuralism:

Titchener trained his students to become adept at trained introspection – to report only the sensations as they were experienced without reliance on “meaning words” – he called this stimulus error

Using this approach, Titchener’s students (“reagents”) meticulously reported various visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory etc. experiences:

In “An Outline of Psychology” (1896), he reported over 44,000 elements of sensation:

• 32,820 Visual,

• 11,600 Auditory,

• 4 Taste, etc.

Elements of Consciousness:Titchener proposed 3 elementary states of consciousness:

• Sensations: basic elements of perception – sights, sounds, tastes, smells etc. Evoked by physical objects present in the environment.

• Images: elements of ideas – reflects experiences not actually present at that time, e.g. memory of a sight.

• Affective States: feelings – the elements of emotion: love, hate, anger, sadness etc.

Characteristics of the Elements:Claimed that elements could be distinguished by:

Quality – “cold” or “red”: distinguishes each element from the others.

Intensity – how strong, loud, bright etc. the sensation is.

Duration – course of a sensation over time; how long it lasts

Clearness – role of attention in consciousness – clearer if attention is directed toward it

Later he identified dimensions as: quality, intensity, protensity (duration), attensity (clearness) & extensity

The Fate and Criticisms of Structuralism:Structuralism effectively died with Titchener in 1927.

The main criticisms of it were aimed at:Introspection as an investigative tool – Kant, Comte, Maudlsey

Lack of agreement across reagents – no consistency.

Objections to the extreme reductionist approach:

This objection was best captured by the Gestalt movement, which emerged in Germany from 1890 onwards…

Gestalt Psychology

1890 – Christian von Ehrenfels coined the term Gestalt (meaning “form” or “shape”) to describe the way certain qualities (gestaltqualitäten) could not be broken down into separate sensory elements

Gestalt Psychology

1910 – Max Wertheimer, former student of von Ehrenfels, founded the Gestalt movement with colleagues Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler

Gestalt Principles:Some qualities are emergent from the arrangement of elements, rather than from the elements themselves.

Human perceptual system must somehow impose attributes on stimuli over and above the mere elements that are perceived.

Perception is more than the addition of sensory elements – it imposes its own order on the elements of sensation, organising them into “wholes” or gestalts.

A: the Kanizsa triangle. B: Tse's volumetric worm.

C: Idesawa's spiky sphere. D: Tse's "sea monster".

Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Individual Differences

Born Birmingham;

Cousin of Darwin; estimated IQ of 200

Educated in medicine and mathematics, later became an explorer – Sudan, SW Africa – meteorology...

When his cousin published On the Origin of Species he became interested in the idea of the heritability of characteristics in humans.

Galton’s InfluenceGalton made several major contributions to psychology:

1869 – Hereditary Genius: proposed that greatness or genius occurred within families too often to be attributable to environmental factors. Often, the specific type of genius was inherited – music, science etc.

He founded the science of Eugenics: dedicated to improving the hereditary qualities of the human race. Wanted to encourage the birth of eminent people and discourage the birth of the unfit.

Suggested “breeding” the more talented, like livestock, to ensure that the offspring would be exceptional…

His work in this area led him to become interested in the areas of measurement and statistical methodsPreviously, Quetelet (a Belgian statistician) had been first to apply statistical methods and the normal distribution to human data.

Galton proposed that mental capacities may be similarly distributed, e.g. intelligence. He also arrived at an important tool in statistics – the correlation (he called it “co-relation”):

For example, he found a way to quantify the relationship between body size and head length

Later, his student Pearson went on to develop the mathematical formula for correlation which is still used today

Mental TestsGalton developed a number of mental tests, assuming that the measurement of sensory capacities could reveal intelligence (agreeing with Locke’s view).Invented apparatus to measure sound frequency discrimination, a photometer (colour matching), measures of reaction time, sensitivity to movement, olfactory discrimination…Founded his Anthropometric Laboratory in 1884 in London.

AssociationGalton was fascinated by the association of ideas, and the speed at which they took place. Famous “Pall Mall walk” – he would focus on an object until it suggested one or more associated ideas. He repeated the walk several days later and found high consistency for many of the associations.

From this, he developed a Word Association Test consisting of 75 words, each on a separate card – reaction time taken to generate 2 associations was measured with a stopwatch. Many associations originated in childhood…

This type of test is still used in some clinical contexts today, and Carl Jung was to use it heavily in his work

Mental ImageryAmong the other things to interest Galton were mental imagery, which led him to use a psychological questionnaire extensively as subjects tried to recall, and then generate an image of, what they had for breakfast.

He was horrified to discover that some people had little or no capacity for generating mental imagery at all!

Later he concluded that imagery is normally distributed in the population, with clarity and vividness varying normally. Further, he also reported data which suggested that it was also an hereditary capacity.

Also studied number forms, synaesthesia, paranoia etc.