PSYCH 4150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mental Chronometry, Wilhelm Wundt, Chronometry
Document Summary
Psychology is composed of two different things: experimental psychology. Use of introspection to get at the contents of consciousness: studied visual perception, mental chronometry, etc, wanting to experimentally validate those of the british. Wundt thought it was akin to a natural science, like physiology. Not the same but of the same class. Experimental psychology studies immediate experience (conscious sensations and feelings) only. So psychophysics, s+p, rxn times, mental chronometry. Higher mental processes (language, memory, thinking, social interaction) cannot be studied experimentally, but rather are part of. Study of higher order mental processes (language, conceptual knowledge, myth, religion. The other issues in psychology have to be addressed using the methods of cognitive anthropology (ethnography, folklore, comparative linguistics, etc. ) Wundt called it v lkerpsychologie and published 10 volumes on it between 1900 and 1920. But this work was largely ignored, especially in america.
