The Psychology Book

by DK

  In 1873, James returned to Harvard, where he became a professor of both philosophy and psychology. He set up the first experimental psychology courses in the US, playing a key role in establishing psychology as a truly scientific discipline. He retired in 1907, and died peacefully at his home in New Hampshire in 1910.

  Key works

  1890 The Principles of Psychology

  1892 Psychology

  1897 The Will to Believe

  See also: René Descartes • Wilhelm Wundt • John B. Watson • Sigmund Freud • Fritz Perls • Wolfgang Köhler • Max Wertheimer

  IN CONTEXT

  APPROACH

  Human development

  BEFORE

  1905 Sigmund Freud, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, claims the teenage years are the “genital stage.”

  AFTER

  1928 American anthropologist Margaret Mead, in Coming of Age in Samoa, declares that adolescence is only recognized as a distinct stage of human development in Western society.

  1950 Erik Erikson, in Childhood and Society, describes adolescence as the stage of “Identity vs. Role Confusion,” coining the term “identity crisis.”

  1983 In Margaret Mead and Samoa, New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman disputes Mead’s claim that adolescence is merely a socially constructed concept.

  The word “adolescence” literally means “growing up” (from the Latin adolescere). In theory, it describes a distinct stage between childhood and adulthood, but in practice often simply defines the “teenage” years. In most Western societies, the idea of adolescence was not recognized until the 20th century; childhood ended and adulthood began at a certain age—typically at 18.

  Pioneering psychologist and educator, G. Stanley Hall, in his 1904 book Adolescence, was the first academic to explore the subject. Hall was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing that all childhoods, especially with regard to behavior and early physical development, reflect the course of evolutionary change, and that we each develop in accordance with our “ancestral record.”

  One key influence on Hall was the 18th-century Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) movement of German writers and musicians, which promoted total freedom of expression. Hall referred to adolescence as “Sturm und Drang;” he considered it a stage of emotional turmoil and rebellion, with behavior ranging from quiet moodiness to wild risk-taking. Adolescence, he stated, “craves strong feelings and new sensations… monotony, routine, and detail are intolerable.” Awareness of self and the environment greatly increases; everything is more keenly felt, and sensation is sought for its own sake.

  "Adolescence is when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for possession."

  G. Stanley Hall

  Modern echoes

  Many of Hall’s findings are echoed in research today. Hall believed that adolescents are highly susceptible to depression, and described a “curve of despondency” that starts at the age of 11, peaks at 15, then falls steadily until the age of 23. Modern research acknowledges a similar pattern. The causes of depression that Hall identified are startlingly familiar: suspicion of being disliked and having seemingly insuperable character faults, and “the fancy of hopeless love.” He believed the self-consciousness of adolescence leads to self-criticism and censoriousness of self and others. This view mirrors later studies, which argue that teenagers’ advanced reasoning skills allow them to “read between the lines,” while also magnifying their sensitivity to situations. Even Hall’s claim that criminal activity is more prevalent in the teenage years, peaking around 18, still holds true.

  But Hall was not totally negative about adolescence. As he wrote in Youth: Its Education, Regiment, and Hygiene, “Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.” So, for Hall, adolescence was in fact a necessary beginning of something much better.

  G. STANLEY HALL

  Born into a farming family in Ashfield, Massachusetts, Granville Stanley Hall graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts in 1867. His plans to travel were thwarted through lack of funds, so he followed his mother’s wish and studied theology for a year in New York, before moving to Germany. On Hall’s return to America in 1870, he studied with William James for four years at Harvard, gaining the first psychology PhD in the US. He then returned to Germany for two years to work with Wilhelm Wundt in his Leipzig laboratory.

  In 1882, Hall became a professor at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, where he set up the first US laboratory specifically for psychology. He also launched the American Journal of Psychology in 1887, and became the first president of the American Psychological Association in 1892.

  Key works

  1904 Adolescence

  1906 Youth: Its Education, Regiment, and Hygiene

  1911 Educational Problems

  1922 Senescence

  See also: Francis Galton • Wilhelm Wundt • Sigmund Freud • Erik Erikson

  IN CONTEXT

  APPROACH

  Memory studies

  BEFORE

  5th century BCE The ancient Greeks make use of “mnemonics”—techniques, such as key words or rhymes, that aid memory.

  1582 Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno in The Art of Memory gives methods for memorizing, using diagrams of knowledge and experience.

  AFTER

  1932 Frederick Bartlett says that every memory is a blend of knowledge and inference.

  1949 Donald Hebb, in The Organization of Behavior, describes how learning results from stimulated brain cells linking up into “assemblies.”

  1960 US psychologist Leo Postman finds that new learning can interfere with previous learning, causing “retroactive interference.”

  In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus became the first psychologist to systematically study learning and memory by carrying out a long, exhausting experiment on himself. Philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume had argued that remembering involves association—linking things or ideas by shared characteristics, such as time, place, cause, or effect. Ebbinghaus tested the effect of association on memory, recording the results mathematically to see if memory follows verifiable patterns.

  Memory experiments

  Ebbinghaus started by memorizing lists of words and testing how many he could recall. To avoid the use of association, he then created 2,300 “nonsense syllables,” all three letters long and using the standard word format of consonant—vowel—consonant: for example, “ZUC” and “QAX.” Grouping these into lists, he looked at each syllable for a fraction of a second, pausing for 15 seconds before going through a list again. He did this until he could recite a series correctly at speed. He tested different list lengths and different learning intervals, noting the speed of learning and forgetting.

  Ebbinghaus found that he could remember meaningful material, such as a poem, ten times more easily than his nonsense lists. He also noted that the more times the stimuli (the nonsense syllables) were repeated, the less time was needed to reproduce the memorized information. Also, the first few repetitions proved the most effective in memorizing a list.

  When looking at his results for evidence of forgetting, Ebbinghaus found, unsurprisingly, that he tended to forget less quickly the lists that he had spent the most time memorizing, and that recall is best performed immediately after learning. Ebbinghaus also uncovered an unexpected pattern in memory retention. He found that there is typically a very rapid loss of recall in the first hour, followed by a slightly slower loss, so that after nine hours, about 60 percent is forgotten. After 24 hours, about two-thirds of anything memorized
is forgotten. Plotted on a graph, this shows a distinct “forgetting curve” that starts with a sharp drop, followed by a shallow slope.

  Ebbinghaus’s research launched a new field of enquiry, and helped establish psychology as a scientific discipline. His meticulous methods remain the basis of all psychological experimentation to this day.

  Learning material and committing it to memory within an hour of hearing it, Ebbinghaus showed, will mean that we remember it for longer and can recall it more easily.

  HERMANN EBBINGHAUS

  Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in Barmen, Germany, to a family of Lutheran merchants. At 17, he began to study philosophy at Bonn University, but his academic career was disrupted in 1870 by the Franco-Prussian War. In 1873, he completed his studies and moved to Berlin, later traveling to France and England, where he carried out research on the power of his own memory, starting in 1879. He published Memory in 1885, detailing the “nonsense syllable” research, and in the same year became a professor at Berlin University, where he set up two psychology laboratories and founded an academic journal. Ebbinghaus later moved to Breslau University, where he also established a laboratory, and finally to Halle, where he taught until his death from pneumonia at the age of 59.

  Key works

  1885 Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology

  1897–1908 Fundamentals of Psychology (2 volumes)

  1908 Psychology: An Elementary Textbook

  See also: Donald Hebb • Bluma Zeigarnik • George Armitage Miller • Endel Tulving • Gordon H. Bower • Daniel Schacter • Frederic Bartlett

  IN CONTEXT

  APPROACH

  Intelligence theory

  BEFORE

  1859 English naturalist Charles Darwin proposes that intelligence is inherited in On the Origin of Species.

  From 1879 Wilhelm Wundt applies scientific methods to psychology, seeking objective ways of measuring mental abilities such as intelligence.

  1890 US psychologist James Cattell devises tests to measure differences in individual mental abilities.

  AFTER

  1920s English educational psychologist Cyril Burt claims intelligence is mainly genetic.

  1940s Raymond Cattell defines two types of intelligence: fluid (inborn) and crystallized (shaped by experience).

  In 1859, Charles Darwin set out his theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, providing a framework for the debate over whether intelligence was fixed by genetic inheritance, or could be modified by circumstances. His cousin, Francis Galton, carried out tests on the cognitive abilities of around 9,000 people in London in the early 1880s, and concluded that basic intelligence was fixed at birth. Around the same time, Wilhelm Wundt proposed the idea of an intelligence quotient (IQ), and made attempts to measure it. Wundt’s work inspired studies into the measurement of mental abilities by the American psychologist James Cattell, and were also to form the basis of Alfred Binet’s research into human intelligence.

  Fascination with learning

  Binet studied law and natural science before psychology captured his interest. He was largely self-taught, although working with Jean-Martin Charcot at Paris’s Salpêtrière Hospital for more than seven years gave him a firm grasp of experimental procedures, with their need for precision and careful planning. His desire to study human intelligence grew out of his fascination with the development of his own two daughters. He noted that the speed and ease with which his children absorbed new information varied according to how much they were paying attention. Context, and the child’s frame of mind, seemed to be critical to learning.

  On hearing of Francis Galton’s testing in London, Binet decided to carry out his own large-scale research on assessing differences in individual abilities between various special-interest groups, such as mathematicians, chess players, writers, and artists. At the same time, he continued his study of the functional intelligence of children, noting that they became capable of certain skills at specific ages. For example, very young children were not capable of abstract thought—this seemed to be a hallmark of an increased level of intelligence that was directly attributable to age.

  In 1899, Binet was invited to join a new organization dedicated to educational research, La Société Libre pour L’Etude Psychologique de l’Enfant (The Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child). Within a short time, he became the group’s leader, and began to publish articles and information useful to teachers and education officials. Around the same time, it became mandatory for all children in France to attend school between the ages of six and 12, and Binet was asked to consider how to develop a test that would identify children who might have learning disabilities, so that they could receive schooling that was appropriate to their needs. In 1904, this work led to Binet being asked to join a government commission to devise a method of assessing learning potential in infants, and he made it his mission to establish the differences between normal and intellectually challenged children, and to find a way of measuring these differences.

  "I have not sought to sketch a method of measuring… but only a method of classification of individuals."

  Alfred Binet

  Taking intelligence tests, which are still largely based on the Binet—Simon Scale, has become an almost standard way of predicting a child’s potential to be successful at school.

  The Binet—Simon Scale

  Binet was joined in his task by Théodore Simon, a research scientist at the Sorbonne’s Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, where Binet had been director since 1894. It was to be the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration between the two scientists.

  By 1905, Binet and Simon had created their first test, labeled “New Methods for Diagnosing Idiocy, Imbecility, and Moron Status.” Soon after, they introduced a revised version, for children aged three to 13, which was simply called the Binet—Simon Scale. It was revised once more in 1908, and then again in 1911.

  Based on their many years of observing children, Binet and Simon put together 30 tests of increasing difficulty, using a range of tasks that reflected the average abilities of children at different ages. The easiest tasks included following a beam of light, or engaging in basic conversation with the person who was testing them. Slightly more difficult tasks included pointing to various named body parts, repeating a series of two digits, repeating simple sentences, and defining basic words such as “house” or “fork.” In the more difficult tests, children were asked to describe the difference between pairs of similar objects, to reproduce drawings from memory, and to construct sentences around three given words. The very hardest tasks included repeating seven random digits, finding three rhymes for the French word “obéisance;” and answering questions such as “My neighbor has been receiving strange visitors. He has received in turn a doctor, a lawyer, and then a priest. What is taking place?”

  Binet and Simon tested their Scale on a sample of 50 children, divided equally between five age groups. These children had been selected by their school teachers as being average for their age, providing a baseline measure of normality against which children of all abilities could be measured.

  Binet and Simon’s 30 tasks, arranged in order of difficulty, were to be carried out under carefully controlled conditions. Binet had learned from observing his daughters that children are easily distracted, and that their level of attention plays a critical role in their ability to perform. He saw intelligence as a mixture of multifaceted mental faculties that operate within a real world of ever-changing circumstances, and are controlled by practical judgment.

  "Ther
e is in intelligence… a fundamental agency, the lack or alteration of which has the greatest importance for practical life: that is judgment."

  Alfred Binet

  Binet—Simon tests generate an IQ (intelligence quotient) number, representing an overall level of performance. This can be plotted on a graph to reveal IQ variations across groups or populations.

  Intelligence is not fixed

  Binet was always frank about the limitations of the Binet—Simon Scale. He was keen to point out that the scale simply ordered children from their performance of intellectual tasks in relation to other children of a similar age. The tests of 1908 and 1911 placed greater emphasis on tests for different age groups, and it was this that eventually led to the concept of “mental age.”

  Binet also stressed that mental development progressed at different rates and could be influenced by environmental factors. He preferred to think of his tests as a way of assessing mental level at a particular point in time, because this allowed for an individual’s level to change as their circumstances changed. This was in opposition to the views of the influential English psychologist Charles Spearman, who later proposed that intelligence was based on biological factors alone.