Deck 5: Wundt and the Establishment of Experimental Psychology

Question 1

James McKeen Cattell is known for which of the following?

A) He invented the "subtractive" method for reaction time research.
B) His disagreement with Wundt on the matter of spirituality caused him to leave Leipzig.
C) He wrote Principles of Physiological Psychology, one of the first experimental psychology textbooks.
D) He devised apparatus and techniques for measuring reaction times more accurately, and in a wider and more interesting variety of situations, than had ever been done before.

Answer 1

He devised apparatus and techniques for measuring reaction times more accurately, and in a wider and more interesting variety of situations, than had ever been done before.

Question 2

In Wundt's theory,a creative synthesis accompanies acts of:

A) perception.
B) apperception.
C) unconscious inference.
D) both a and b above

Answer 2

apperception.

Question 3

Which were the four basic dimensions of sensations in Wundt's scheme?

A) size, clarity, interest, direction
B) height, width, depth, time
C) mode, quality, intensity, duration
D) activity, tension, agreeableness, frequency

Answer 3

mode, quality, intensity, duration

Question 4

Wundtian introspective studies analyzed consciousness in terms of:

A) sensations and feelings.
B) sensations and perceptions.
C) sensations and judgments.
D) feelings and judgments.

Question 5

Wundt and his students found that it took a subject about one-tenth of a second longer to respond to a stimulus when concentrating attention on the expected stimulus,as opposed to when concentrating on the required response. To what process did they attribute the extra time?

A) perception
B) apperception
C) sensation
D) anticipation

Question 6

Wundt's "thought meter" experiment challenged which of the following?

A) the commonsense assumption that when ideas are "registered" in consciousness, they also become subject to focused attention and rational analysis in terms of underlying principles and laws
B) the commonsense assumption that when two different stimuli strike our senses at the same time, we become consciously aware of both of them at the same instant
C) the commonsense assumption that apperceived ideas may be combined and organized in many different ways
D) the commonsense assumption that response times can be used to make inferences about consciousness and other central processes

Question 7

According to Wundt,voluntaristic psychology was:

A) a non-experimental branch of psychology that focused on the communal and cultural products of human nature.
B) a type of experimental psychology that focused first on discovering the "structure" of the mental phenomena before looking at the "function."
C) an approach to psychology that described events working at the periphery of conscious experience; events such as apperception, creative synthesis, psychic causality, and will.
D) both a and b above

Question 8

Which of the following was not proposed in the Preface of Wundt's early textbook,Contributions to the Theory of Perception,where he described the program that would occupy him for the rest of his life?

A) an experimental psychology to study the facts of consciousness
B) a psychology based on historical, comparative, and ethnographic analyses, for studying the higher mental functions
C) a psychology of individual differences, applying facts of general psychology toward an understanding of single personalities
D) the systematic study of reaction times

Question 9

Why was Wundt's landmark book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874)important?

A) It was the first genuine "textbook" describing under one cover several recent developments in the area of experimental psychology.
B) It focused attention on the originality and variety of Wundt's own experiments.
C) It introduced the work of early female psychologists.
D) both a and b above

Question 10

Why was Wundtian psychology mistakenly characterized for many years in English-speaking countries as "structuralism"?

A) Most of Wundt's writings were never translated into English.
B) His student Titchener emphasized only those aspects of his theory that were consistent with structuralism.
C) Most of Wundt's students were American and they emphasized the "structural" as opposed to the "functional" aspects of his theories.
D) both a and b above

Question 11

Which of the following was not an essential aspect of Wundt's research on mental chronometry?

A) measurement of reaction times
B) the differentiation between perception and apperception
C) the subtractive procedure
D) introspection

Question 12

In recent years,Wundt's theories have been recognized for their relevance to which current psychological specialty?

A) Psycholinguistics
B) Cognitive psychology
C) Intelligence testing
D) both a and b above

Question 13

Who is often regarded as the "father" of modern academic and experimental psychology?

A) Edward Bradford Titchener
B) Wilhelm Wundt
C) Sigmund Freud
D) William James

Question 14

As indicated by studies in Wundt's laboratory,what wasthe maximum number of individual units that could be apperceived at once?

A) 1
B) 2 or 3
C) 4 to 6
D) 15 to 20

Question 15

Johann Zöllner,Wundt's older colleague and one-time supporter at Leipzig,came to bitterly oppose him because of Wundt's:

A) emphasis on a nonexperimental Völkerpsychologie.
B) skeptical analysis of "spiritualistic" phenomena.
C) highly restrictive introspection methods.
D) support for women in experimental psychology.

Question 16

One of the major topics covered in Wundt's Völkerpsychologie was:

A) language.
B) mental chronometry.
C) the tri-dimensional theory of feeling.
D) all of the above

Question 17

Wundt's introspective techniques called for:

A) restriction of the subject to relatively simple and immediately recallable stimulus situations.
B) a good deal of sensitivity and interest in their emotional life on the part of the subjects.
C) recall of many events from childhood.
D) both a and b above

Question 18

One of the Wundtian mental chronometry experiments had one condition in which the subject was required to make a different response to each of two different stimuli,and another in which two stimuli were randomly presented but only one had to be responded to. The mental process presumably required for the first task,but not for the second,was:

A) perception.
B) apperception.
C) cognition.
D) association.

Question 19

Wundt classified feelings according to what the three basic dimensions?

A) pleasantness?unpleasantness, tension?relaxation, and activity?passivity.
B) tension?relaxation, pleasantness?unpleasantness, and reaction-non-reaction
C) pleasantness?unpleasantness, tension?relaxation, and activity?passivity
D) action-non-action, tension-relaxation, and pleasant-unpleasantness

Question 20

For Wundt,the most basic unit of thought is:

A) any word which expresses a distinct concept.
B) a "general impression" capable of being expressed by many different combinations of words.
C) a "train" of associated ideas.
D) an unconscious sensation.

Question 21

Titchener strongly advocated an approach to psychology he called:

A) Functionalism.
B) Introspection.
C) Structuralism.
D) Empiricism.

Question 22

Ebbinghaus' innovative method for studying memory experimentally made use of:

A) directed association.
B) mental chronometry.
C) nonsense syllables.
D) structural introspection.

Question 23

Structuralism was an approach to experimental psychology that:

A) focused on the function of the mind rather than the biology of the brain.
B) focused on what the mind is rather than what the mind is for.
C) was completely in keeping with the Wundtian framework.
D) focused solely on physiology, omitting subjective introspection.

Question 24

Experimental psychologist Narziss Ach expanded introspective psychology by:

A) asking subjects to associate to stimulus words freely rather than in a highly specific manner .
B) asking subjects to associate numbers to letters rather than associating letters to numbers.
C) asking subjects to focus on associating to imageless thoughts rather than structured ideas.
D) performing directed-association studies that revealed the importance of determining tendencies or mental sets.

Question 25

Wundt's former student Oswald Külpe started his own laboratory,where research focused on which of the following subjects?

A) the forgetting curve and imageless thoughts
B) mental chronometry and psychic causality
C) imageless thought and directed association
D) association tests and the forgetting curve

Question 26

Introspective studies showing that prior instructions influence thought without entering into subjects' conscious associational processes were said to reveal:

A) determining tendencies.
B) mental sets.
C) restricted association.
D) both a and b above

Question 27

___________ was an accomplished American mathematician and vision researcher who challenged Titchener's policies on his invitation-only group of Experimentalists.

A) Christine Ladd-Franklin
B) Eleanor Gibson
C) Margaret Floy Washburn
D) Dorothea Jameson

Question 28

Titchener's group,known as "The Experimentalists," were notable for:

A) the unique experiments they carried out at Leipzig.
B) not allowing women to join their membership.
C) carrying out experimental tests of Wundt's Völkerpsychologie.
D) creating the "new" brand of experimental psychology in the United States.

Question 29

Ebbinghaus' finding that memory for a learned task drops off most steeply immediately after the learning and then declines more slowly exemplifies the:

A) forgetting curve.
B) method of savings.
C) Psychophysical law.
D) stimulus error.

Question 30

Titchener insisted that introspectors should avoid imposing "meaning" or "interpretation" on their subjects,thereby eliminating what he called:

A) the reaction time.
B) apperception.
C) the stimulus error.
D) the forgetting curve.