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Lecture # 4

History & Systems

Hunt Chapter 5

Dr. Mark Berg

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Wilhelm Wundt

December 1879

  • Chronoscope
  • “Duration of apperception”
  • Birthday of Modern Psychology

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Wundt

  • Principal founder of modern psychology
  • Restored the study of conscious mental processes
  • Preceding study was ‘without a soul’
  • Mental processes can be studied by experiments p142
    • University of Leipzeg
  • Konvikt
    • Tachistoscopes
    • Chronoscopes
    • Pendulums
    • Timers
    • Electrical stimulators
    • Sensory mapping devices

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Wundt

Listening to Metronome

  • Reporting on conscious reactions and perceptions
    • Introspection
      • Precise, circumscribed and controlled
      • P 148
    • Perception vs Apperception
      • Seeing things without having time to recognize what you saw

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Wundt

  • Encyclopedist of the field
    • Defined psychology as a new domain of science
  • Personally trained many who later became leaders in psychology
  • Distinct method for experimental psychology
  • Textbooks influenced the field and the first 2 generations of American psychologists
    • Early 1900’s majority of students could trace their historical lineage back to Wundt

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Wundt

  • Wundt defined psychology as the science that investigates “the facts of consciousness.”
    • Psychology must discover the elements of consciousness.
      • Then psychology must discover possible combinations of elements.
    • An element, in Wundt’s psychology, was a simple sensation.
    • Wundt defined sensation as an element of consciousness and perception as a combination of outward sense impressions.
    • An idea referred to combinations that may arise from memory, early associations, and other sources.
    • He questioned the distinction of ideas and perceptions.