PS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Edward B. Titchener, Attention Span, Scientific Method
Document Summary
Starts earliest pages of recorded history. Starts when people wondered about human nature and human behaviour. Belief that all experience could be reduced to basic. Could identify the structures (e. g. , chemistry water = Used introspection: no unique domain of psychology, philosophers were the ones arguing about what it was to be human , alive , and to experience things . Who is credited as the founder of psychology: founder of psychology, wilhelm wundt, 1879, leipzeg, germany. Conducted experiments, but not like today: questioned experience, belief that all experience could be reduced to basic. Goal: define/explain the structure of conscious experience. So what did they do in their experiments: reaction times, attention span, perception of visual stimuli, touch and hearing. Two schools of thought: structuralism (titchener student of wundt) own spin in. Problem: lots of criticism not objective, (stimulus stays the same but reported experience could chance, changes within and across people: functionalism:
