Deck 8: The Psychology of Consciousness

Question 1

The uniquely German concept of Bildung refers to:

A) constructing monumental architecture that is functional yet beautiful
B) the establishment of new scientific fields based on rigorous experimentation
C) cultivating self-formation through broad humanistic education
D) using the fruits of science to increase industrial production and income

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The products of the German concept of Bildung were the Bildungsburgers. The Bildungsburgers could be thought of as:

A) culturally educated citizens
B) leaders of industry, which today would be known as corporate CEOs.
C) lower class, uneducated people seeking to overthrow the government
D) a class of soldiers, similar to Spartan soldiers willing to die for the fatherland.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

One influence of Romanticism on German Universities was that professors were expected to get ahead by:

A) dining and befriending senior professors.
B) publishing novel and revolutionary work.
C) simply staying in their positions until advancing based solely on seniority.
D) none of these.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

According to Figure 8.2 that shows a Google Ngram image for the incidence of the word psychology, ________.

A) took off for the first time in the 1950's and was correlated with the cold war.
B) rose sharply but then declined being mentioned from 1500 to 1920.
C) was very much part of the second Industrial Revolution, matching the growth in wealth.
D) none of these

Question 5

According to the German sociologist Tonnies, the Bildungsburgers loved ______ and feared/hated _________.

A) money, education
B) politics, art
C) art, science
D) none of these

Question 6

According to the German sociologist Tonnies, the Bildungsburgers loved ____and feared/hated _________.

A) money, education
B) Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft
C) education, money
D) Gesellschaft, Gemeinschaft

Question 7

As educated people the German Bildungsburgers did not reject mind and reason as
Such, yet they tended to reject Newtonian science, the reason being:

A) it was the enemy of the Good, True and Beautiful.
B) it depicted the universe as a mere machine, thus lacked spirit or refinement.
C) it replaced organic connections to blood and soil, isolating people from societies leading to chaos.
D) All of these

Question 8

Wundt viewed Americans as the emblems of "Gesellschaft", for Wundt the point of life was _____________.

A) not happiness but the production of objects of intellectual value
B) happiness and not the production of objects of intellectual value
C) to find God, and not pursue a sense of community or culture.
D) to make psychology practical, using psychology to help industry and governments function more efficiently.

Question 9

Historian Fritz Ringer has drawn an analogy between German intellectuals of the nineteenth century and a similar class of ruling intellectuals, the:

A) classically educated bureaucrats of the British Empire
B) Mandarins of Confucian China
C) Brahmins of Hindu India
D) theocratic priesthood of ancient Egypt

Question 10

For German Mandarin - Bildungsburgers, ___________ represented Gesellschaft at its worst.

A) the USA
B) China
C) Pre-WW I Germany
D) France

Question 11

In creating psychology as an independent discipline, Wundt proclaimed a strategic "alliance" between psychology and:

A) physiology
B) sociology
C) anthropology
D) philosophy

Question 12

Which of the following characteristics of German universities was most important in making it more open than other nation's systems of higher education to creation of psychology as a new, recognized, discipline?

A) the high levels of tax revenues created by German industrialization
B) emphasis on innovative scientific research
C) local control by diverse religious and philanthropic groups rather than by the state
D) its unique system of progress by examination instead of taking classes

Question 13

One attitude of German psychologists themselves also inhibited the growth of psychology in Germany prior to WW II. This attitude was their belief that psychology:

A) should be a pure science unconcerned with practical applications
B) should be regarded as a branch of medicine, which caused psychiatrists to oppose creation of psychology departments
C) should be used to foment a socialist revolution in Germany
D) had reached a dead end as far as research was concerned

Question 14

In the text, it was suggested that many of the first psychologists, including Wundt, who first set foot on the path through physiology later abandoned it because:

A) ordinary people were offended by the idea that they were just animals
B) they feared that if psychology became too physiological, it might lose its autonomy and become simply a part of physiology
C) as they got older and nearer death, they found could not abandon their religious belief in a soul and the promise of immortality
D) they became enthusiastic for mental testing and applied psychology, which do not depend on physiological concepts

Question 15

Match research method criticized or used by Wundt to its description.
-armchair introspection

A) study of animals, children, the insane
B) bad method used by philosophers
C) studying consciousness in the laboratory
D) cross-cultural/historical study of the higher mental processes

Question 16

Match research method criticized or used by Wundt to its description.
-experimental introspection

A) study of animals, children, the insane
B) bad method used by philosophers
C) studying consciousness in the laboratory
D) cross-cultural/historical study of the higher mental processes

Question 17

Match research method criticized or used by Wundt to its description.
-comparative-psychological methods

A) study of animals, children, the insane
B) bad method used by philosophers
C) studying consciousness in the laboratory
D) cross-cultural/historical study of the higher mental processes

Question 18

Match research method criticized or used by Wundt to its description.
-Völkerpsychology

A) study of animals, children, the insane
B) bad method used by philosophers
C) studying consciousness in the laboratory
D) cross-cultural/historical study of the higher mental processes

Question 19

Although psychology got started as a science in Germany, it did not grow quickly, especially compared to psychology in America. Which of the following factors was MOST IMPORTANT in inhibiting the growth of psychology in Germany?

A) unwillingness of the new central government in Berlin to fund what it saw as dangerous right-wing psychologists
B) Nazi closure of all German universities in 1937
C) the difficulty of finding a place in the traditional examination system, which was based on the training of traditionally recognized professions
D) failure of psychologists like Wundt to support the German war effort in WW I

Question 20

As with Freud and James, Wundt's psychology changed over time by:

A) retreating from the goal of linking mental processes to brain processes
B) admitting that mental tests were as important as experimentation
C) emphasizing psychology's potential to solve social problems
D) linking psychology more closely to religious concerns

Question 21

The author of the text states that Wundt remade psychology from a fitful enterprise of solitary scholars into a genuine scientific community. He did this in part by:

A) creating the first academically recognized lab in psychology
B) founding the first journal in experimental psychology
C) creating many enduring innovating methods of research.
D) all of these

Question 22

The author of the text states that Wundt remade psychology from a fitful enterprise of solitary scholars into a genuine scientific community. Wundt did this in several ways, which of the following is NOT one of these ways:

A) creating the first academically recognized lab in psychology
B) founding the first journal in experimental psychology
C) creating many enduring innovating methods of research.
D) creating an enduring theory of psychology that was widely accepted by others.

Question 23

Wundt explained the results of his experiment on the span of apprehension by saying that subjects were able to report 3-4 items because:

A) these items fell within the focus of consciousness
B) these items fell within the fringe of consciousness
C) although all the items were initially perceived, subjects lost the memory of them due to decay while making their verbal report
D) these items fell within the fovea of the retina

Question 24

In 1960, George Sperling disagreed with Wundt's conclusion, proposing instead that:

A) these items fell within the focus of consciousness
B) these items fell within the fringe of consciousness
C) although all the items were initially perceived, subjects lost the memory of them due to decay while making verbal reports
D) these items fell outside the fovea of the retina and were easily forgotten

Question 25

According to Wundt, the speaker of a sentence begins speaking by:

A) constructing the grammar of the sentence to be spoken
B) analyzing a complex idea into constituent ideas
C) synthesizing spoken words into complete thoughts
D) none of these

Question 26

E. B. Titchener consistently rejected which of the following goals for psychology?

A) analyzing consciousness into its basic elements
B) applying psychology to personal and social problems
C) explaining psychological processes in terms of brain processes
D) discovering the laws of association (or "connection")

Question 27

E. B. Titchener had three experimental tasks for his psychology one of which was?

A) to understand how language is part of Volkerpsychologie.
B) to research and eventually understand the process of apperception
C) to determine how the elementary sensations are connected to form complex perceptions and ideas
D) to establish the first experimental journal of the mind

Question 28

Unlike Wundt, Titchener ________ the idea of apperception, according to Titchener attention was simply ________.

A) rejected, sensation
B) accepted, emotion
C) rejected, visual acuity
D) accepted, the Will deciding to look at a stimulus

Question 29

In general, Wundt's view of the mind was more Kantian and Titchener was closer to Hume and the associationists. However regardless of these differences the dominant approach to consciousness for both was that it should_____.

A) be analyzed as one complete Gestalt
B) should not be researched at all using experiments
C) be analyzed into its component parts
D) be studied only by looking at history and culture.

Question 30

Franz Brentano's Act psychology:

A) rejected the way of Ideas
B) viewed the mind as the means by which a person actively grasps the real external world.
C) both of these
D) none of these

Question 31

In some way, the Gestalt movement in psychology sprang from:

A) The Würzburger's concept of mental set
B) Franz Brentano's revival of realism and descriptive phenomenology
C) Sigmund Freud's explorations of the unconscious
D) Ebbinghaus' studies of memory

Question 32

Oswald Külpe at Würzburg used the Ausfragen method to do experimental research on:

A) memory
B) thinking
C) language
D) hysteria

Question 33

The Würzburg psychologists upset a longstanding idea about the mind-that all ideas are sensations or copies of sensations-with their apparent discovery of:

A) imageless thought
B) instrumental conditioning
C) subliminal perception
D) unconscious repression

Question 34

Wundt criticized the Würzburg experiments on the grounds that:

A) the results of their experiments were not stable and replicable
B) they had relapsed into philosophical armchair introspection
C) it was impossible to introspect the higher mental processes
D) all of the above

Question 35

In American, the most important consequence of the debate about imageless thought (Wurzburg School) was:

A) it resulted in revitalized interest and support for Aristotle's original theories.
B) it increased suspicion that introspection was a fragile, unreliable and prejudicial tool of research.
C) both of these
D) none of these

Question 36

The imageless thought findings of the Würzburg school generated controversy because:

A) they challenged the philosophical consensus about the contents of consciousness
B) their introspective technique deviated from Wundt's rules about experimental control
C) not all laboratories could reproduce the Würzburg results
D) all of the above

Question 37

The use of non-sense syllables to study memory by Ebbinghaus shows his desire to:

A) understand Wundt's ideas of apperception by using a reaction time measure.
B) return to the common sense ideas of the Scots.
C) isolate and study memory as the pure function of learning, abstracting away the effects of content.
D) all of these.

Question 38

Gestalt psychologists called the assumption by philosophers since Descartes that every sensory element in consciousness corresponds to a physical stimulus the ____________ hypothesis.

A) constancy
B) bundle
C) atomistic
D) stimulation

Question 39

Perception of the W shape in the figure at left illustrates the Gestalt law of perception:

A) similarity
B) closure
C) figure/ground
D) common fate

Question 40

You look at a photo of your mother standing in front of her house. It is easy to see that your mother is standing in front of her house with the house behind her. This illustrates the Gestalt law of:

A) similarity
B) closure
C) figure/ground
D) common fate

Question 41

The Gestalt view of perception was most influenced by the philosophical school of:

A) perceptual realism as advanced by Brentano
B) Kantian idealism
C) Descartes' and Locke's Way of Ideas
D) Berkeleyan idealism (immaterialism)

Question 42

The Gestalt movement began by rejecting the "bundle hypothesis," which is what they called:

A) Kantian idealism
B) Darwinian evolution
C) Romantic holism
D) associationism

Question 43

The research that started the Gestalt movement concerned apparent motion, which they called the _______ phenomenon.

A) phi
B) beta
C) kappa
D) illusory

Question 44

Of all the psychologists who fled Germany for America, the most successful was Kurt Lewin because only he:

A) was able to convert American students to the German way of thinking
B) remade his personality and psychology to fit the American way of life
C) remained faithful to the Gestalt vision
D) spoke English

Question 45

At a cocktail party, we can follow the speech of the person to whom we are talking, while the conversations around us become mere noise. Wundt would explain this phenomenon by saying that:

A) the brain naturally favors one ear over the other, and we aim that ear at the person we wish to hear
B) we hear most clearly the stimuli to which we are physically closest
C) we naturally listen to topics that interest us
D) the mental force of apperception clarifies the attended conversation

Question 46

One reason psychology was slow to grow in Germany was:

A) university professors were underpaid and very poor.
B) Wundt never gained much respect or influence in other countries.
C) The Bildung-Mandarin culture and philosophers opposed its growth as it became more experimental.
D) all of these

Question 47

Describe the beliefs of the German "Mandarin" Bildungsburger values and explain the influence these values had on German psychology.

Question 48

Describe the process of speaking and understanding sentences, as proposed by Wundt.

Question 49

How does Wundt's distinction between experimental psychology and Volkerpsychologie reflect the older German distinction between natural and social science?

Question 50

Discuss how Wundt's system of psychology changed from its first to its later form, including changes to Wundt's general conception of psychology, his methods, and the status of the Volkerpsychologie.

Question 51

How does Wundt's tachistoscope experiment arise out of philosophical question? What are its results? How does it show that Wundt's system was holistic?

Question 52

Describe the three tasks of Titchener's psychology and discuss the important differences between Titchener's British psychology with the German psychology of Wundt.

Question 53

Discuss the Wurzburg School and the impact the imageless thought debate had on psychology.

Question 54

Describe the meaning of 'Gestalt". Why did Gestalt psychology reject the Cartesian Framework and the Way of Ideas? Why did Gestalt psychology have only a limited influence in the United States?

Question 55

Discuss why psychology was slow to grow in Germany yet was soon to flourish in America.