From the Early Physiology to the Birth

of PsychologyPSYC540

History and Systems of Psychology

Oops!• 1795 Astronomer Neville

Maskelyne saw that his assistant’s observations were different from his by 0.5s– Yelled at assistant– Only got worse– Fired him 5 months later,

when differences got up to 0.8s

• 1815 Friederich Wilhelm Bessel, another astonomer– Interested in measurement

errors– Found that they were

common, even in the most experienced astronomers

– “The personal equation”• Touched off a fascination with

individual differences that eventually led to modern physiology

Electric nerves

• Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) – suggests that neural

impulses are electrical.

• His nephew, Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834)– continues his work – animating the severed

heads of executed criminals

Something to Gall You

• Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828)• Organology

– The idea that distinct “Organs” comprise the mind

– Identified 27, got 2 of them right

• Language and word memory

• Cranioscopy (later Phrenology)– Personality theory

• All mental life can be traced to physiology– Emperor Francis I removed

him from Vienna for these anti-Christian ideas

– Separation of Church and Pate

The Father of Modern Physiology

• Johnannes Muller• Professor of A & P at U

of Berlin• Wrote the Handbook of

the Physiology of Mankind

• Published a paper every 7 weeks for 38 years

• Specific energies of nerves– Impetus to seek out loci

within CNS and find sensory receptors

• Suicide during a bout of depression

Marshall Hall(1790-1857)

• Extirpation– Caveman with a color TV

• Decapitated animals still move when nerve endings are stimulated

• Voluntary movements depend on the cerebrum

• Reflexive movement depends on spinal cord

• Respiration depends on the medulla

Pierre Flourens(1774-1867)

• Systematically destroyed bits of brain and spin in a variety of animals– Lots of pigeons

• Cerebrum controls higher brain functions

• Midbrain controls visual and auditory reflexes

• Medulla does heartbeat and respiration

Paul Broca(1824-1880)

• The “Clinical Method”

• Found individuals with difficulty speaking

• Posthumous examination indicated lesions in the third frontal convolution– Broca’s area

Gustav Fritsch (1837 or 1838-1927)

Eduard Hitzig (1838-1907)

• Stimulated areas of the cerebral cortex with weak currents

• Rabbits and dogs, mostly

• Recorded motor responses

• Opened door for more advanced methods

Hermann von Helmholtz

(1821-1894)• Many, many discoveries• Calculated the speed of

neural impulses– Varying legnths of frog

neurons– Blasted the mystical,

“instantaneous” idea of neurotransmission

• Developed trichromatic theory of color vision

• Developed theories of audition– Resonance– Harmony– Discord

Santiago Ramon y Cajal

(1852-1934)• Determiend direction of

travel for neural impulses

• No Spanish journals– Only German, English,

French

• His work was overlooked for a very long time– Had to go through others

• Frequently, others got the credit for his work

• Nobel prize in 1906

Why Germany?• Experimental physiology

– Not availabe in F or E• Description and

Classification in G– Mathematical deductive

approach in F and E• Science in F and E:

Chemistry and Physics– Germany: Everything from

History to Literary criticism• G had lots of schools

– F had 1– E had 2

• Cambridge president:– “[Psychology] would be an

insult to religion.”• Academic freedom in G

Ernst Weber(1795-1878)

• 2 pt threshold• JND ratio

– Weights: 1:40

• Demonstrated that there is no direct correspondence between physical stimulus and our perception of it

• Also revealed a way to research the relationship between body and mind

• ΔR/R = K

Gustav Fechner(1801-1887)

• Scientific training at med school

• Son of a minister– Day view vs. night view

• Dr. Mises is born• Depression

– Shock– Raw ham in spiced wine– Blindfolded– 777

• Chosen by god to solve all fo the world’s problems

Psychophysics:Psychology’s “First

Conquest”• The study of relations between mental

and physical processes (usually perception)

• S = KlogR• Absolute threshold

– Intensity at which the sensation first occurs• Differential threshold

– Least amount of change in a stimulus that will give rise to a change in sensation

– JND?

Techniques of Psychophysics

• Average Error– Subject adjusts a variable stimulus until it matches a

constant– Over a number of trials, an average of the difference

between constant and variable is taken• Constant Stimuli

– Give 2 constant stimuli and have S judge whether one is more, less, or equal than the other

• Limits– A stimulus is varied while an S observes it– How much change is required to give a correct judgment?

• It was thought that there could be no measurement of the mind (i.e., no “psychology”)– Such things could not be measured– Fechner is credited for doing just that

Wilhelm Wundt(1832-1920)

• Wundt takes hold of Fechner’s ideas and runs wild

• Wundt calls Fechner the “Father of Psychology”

• Why isn’t he credited for it, then?

Wundterkind• Actually, a pretty bad

student• Eventually caught on when

he moved to Berlin and decided to becme a physician

• Wanted to be a scientist, but also wanted to eat

• Hated it• Changed his major to

physiology and studied under Muller at U of Berlin

• Hated it

The Lab Opens

• Went to Heidelberg to study under Helmholtz

• Hated it…and quit• In 1875 emerges

again as a professor of Philosophy (?!?) at U of Leipzig

• Establishes the first ever psychology lab in 1876– Full swing in 1879

Experimental Philosophy?

• In 1881, started the Journal of Philosophical studies– Wanted Psychological

Studies, but it was taken by a parapsychological organization

– Renamed Psychological Studies in 1906

What Belongs in Wundt’s Lab?

• Simple mental functions, sensations and perceptions

• Higher-order stuff like learning and memory– Conditioned b language habits and cultural

training– Anthropology, not psychology– “Cultural Psychology”

• Study of the stages of human development as evident in laws, language, myth, art, customs and morals

• Provided a division between experimental and social psychology

Experiencing Wundt:Voluntarism as the

First Model of Psychology• Mediate(d)

– Information other than that is provided by the elements of the object being observed

– Interpretation of experience

• Immediate– The experience itself

• The mind actively and volitionally (with a will of its own) organizes immediate experiences into a mediate experience.– Not as a passive absorption (i.e., Titchner)– Volitional, therefore Voluntarism

The First Tool of Psychology: Introspection

• A means to study experiences, thoughts, and feelings

• Think inductive definition (Socrates), but controlled experimentally

• The Rules:– Must know when the process will begin– Strained attention– Repeat observation several times– Conditions must be capable of variation

• Usually dealt with size, intensity and duration of various physical stimuli

Wundt’s Plans for Psychology

• Analyze conscious processes into their basic elements– Reductionism– Mendelev’s periodic table

• Discover how elements are synthesized or organized– Apperception: the volitional organization

of elements into a greater whole• Determine the laws that govern this

organizati

The Standard Timetable of the

Mind• Studied mostly vision and hearing• Studying the time it takes for

someone to perceive, apperceive and react

• So much individual difference, he abandoned the whole thing

Wundt and Emotions

• Got started by viewing a metronome

• Found himself anticipating clicks– Tense at the silence, then

relaxed at the click• Excited at higher rates• Subdued (even depressed) at

lower rates• Feelings can be measured on

a continuum of 3 dimensions– Pleasure/Displeasure– Excitement/Depression– Tension/Relaxation

• Wundt clearly needed a hobby

Psychology Taking Germany by Storm

• More like a drizzle…it didn’t catch on• Scholarly resistance against splitting

psychology from philosophy• German government didn’t see any

profit, thus no funding• No real practical application

– Especially in the US, a rather pragmatic and struggling country

Wundtian Criticisms

• Introspection is subjective stuff• How were individual differences to

be settled?– Wundt: With more training, the

differences will be smoothed out

Questions? Thoughts?