SEJARAH PSIKOLOGI EKSPERIMENTAL

Week 3

Ernst Weber (1795-1878)

Weber presented an extensive experimental exploration of the sensory phenomenology of tactile experience Coining the phrase, just noticeable difference (JND) to refer to the smallest perceptible difference between two sensations that is detectable by a human being or other animal. Weber provided an existence proof for the possibility of establishing quantitative relationships between variations in physical and mental events

Gustav Fechner (1801-1887).

A pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics, the study of the relationship between stimulus intensity and subjective experience (detection) of the stimulus Psychophysicists usually employ experimental stimuli that can be objectively measured, such as pure tones varying in intensity, or lights varying in luminance. All the senses have been studied: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and the sense of time.

He popularized the Weber Law based on the study by Ernst Weber. The most common use of psychophysics is in producing scales of human experience of various aspects of physical stimuli. For example the physical stimulus of frequency of sound. Frequency of a sound is measured in hertz, cycles per second. But human experience of the frequencies of sound is not the same as the frequencies in hertz. Doubling the frequency of a sound (e.g., from 100 Hz to 200 Hz) does not lead to a doubling of experience. The perceptual experience of the frequency of sound is called pitch

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894)

He viewed perception as requiring an active, unconscious, automatic, logical process on the part of the perceiver which utilizes the information provided by sensation to infer the properties of external objects and events. Helmholtz anticipated much of later top-down cognitive psychology.

Helmholtz had also made another major contribution to physiology. Stimulating nerves at various distances from a muscle and measuring the time it took for muscular contraction, he estimated the rate of travel of the nervous impulse, and in the process incidentally introduced the technique of reaction-time into physiology and psychology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Generally acknowledged as a founder of experimental psychology and cognitive psychology, and a student of Helmholtz. Wrote Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874). The Principles advanced a system of psychology that sought to investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including sensations, feelings, volitions (is the study of will, choice, and decision) apperception (perceive new experience in relation to past experience) and ideas.

In 1879 he took up a position at the University of Leipzig, and almost immediately set up the first two psychological laboratories in the world. To Wundt psychology was the science of experience and studying psychological phenomenon therefore involved studying conscious experience. This research took place in a small classroom that had earlier been assigned to Wundt for use as a storage area.

Wundt introduced Introspection The researcher was to carefully observe some simple event -- one that could be measured as to quality, intensity, or duration -and record his responses to variations of those events Introspection is then a process that allows us to know our inner functioning through what we can gather about the functioning of the external world. His greatest contribution was to show that psychology could be a valid experimental science. His influence in promoting psychology as a science was enormous.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

Ebbinghauss systematic and careful approach to the study of memory changed this paradigm by demonstrating that higher cognitive processes could also be studied scientifically. The methodology he developed for doing this brought the study of memory out of philosophy and into the realm of empirical science. Like his peers who used introspective methodology, Ebbinghaus used his own experiences as a source of data. his approach to self-study was carefully controlled; the conditions of data collection followed procedures that were commonly used in research in the so-called hard sciences

To test his own memory, he first created 2300 nonsense syllables, each consisting of two consonants separated by a vowel (e.g. nog, baf). These syllables were necessary for a controlled experiment because they were presumably free of any previously learned associations. He learned lists of these syllables until he had reached a pre-established criterion (perfect recall), and then recorded how many he was able to retain after specific time intervals. He also noted how many trials were necessary for relearning after the syllables had been forgotten. His published the results in Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (1885)

His experiments demonstrated empirically that

Meaningless stimuli are more difficult to memorize than meaningful stimuli (i.e. it is harder to memorize material that does not have significance or relevance to the learner) His data revealed that increasing the amount of material to be learned usually dramatically increases the amount of time it takes to learn it. This is the learning curve. Relearning is easier than initial learning, and that it takes longer to forget material after each subsequent re-learning. Learning is more effective when it is spaced out over time rather than crammed into a single marathon study session. that forgetting happens most rapidly right after learning occurs and slows down over time