The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen
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Название: The Handy Psychology Answer Book
Автор: Lisa J. Cohen
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Общая психология
Серия: The Handy Answer Book Series
isbn: 9781578595990
isbn:
Edward Chase Tolman introduced the concept of purposive behaviorism, which takes into account both a subject’s behavior and the goal of that behavior.
How were mental processes evident even in rats running mazes?
Tolman introduced the notions of expectancy, of mental maps, into behaviorism. Rats and other animals did not simply respond to the number of rewards for each behavior, automatically repeating the most frequently rewarded behavior. Some kind of thought process mediated between stimulus and response. More specifically, the rats appeared to develop a set of expectations about how events would play out based on their prior experiences. They then made decisions by matching their expectations against information from the new situation. This kind of mental map is essentially identical to Piaget’s concept of mental schemas and has become a critical concept in many areas of psychology, including cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychology.
What was the Cognitive Revolution?
In the 1950s and 1960s several lines of development converged to create the explosive shift in academic psychology known as the cognitive revolution. Research in various other fields of study, such as anthropology, linguistics, and computer science, had been moving toward the scientific study of mental processes. Within psychology, studies of memory, perception, personality traits, and other mental phenomena continued to gain ground.
Even orthodox behaviorists were stumbling onto mental processes. As these lines of development came together, the mind once again became a worthy object of study. The black box model of psychology was rejected and cognition, or thought processes per se, became the object of intense interest. Major contributors included Ulric Neisser, Howard Kendler, and George and Jean Mandler. With the renewed interested in cognitive processes, there was also a resurgence of an earlier movement that had started in Europe but migrated to the United States after World War II, namely Gestalt psychology.
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
What is the basic concept of Gestalt psychology?
Gestalt psychology, which started in the early twentieth century, provided an important counterpoint to the academic psychology of its time, specifically Watson’s behaviorism and Wundt’s structuralism. Its full impact, however, would not be felt until many decades after its birth. Gestalt psychology originated in 1910 with Max Wertheimer’s study of the perception of motion.
The core idea behind Gestalt psychology is that the mind actively organizes information into a coherent whole or a gestalt. In other words, the mind is not a passive recipient of sensory stimuli but an active organizer of information. Furthermore, knowledge does not come from a collection of isolated bits of information. Rather the mind creates a whole out of the relationships between separate parts. Gestalt psychology is a holistic theory.
What is a gestalt?
A gestalt refers to a perceptual whole. The gestalt is created out of the relationships between the parts. Our perceptual knowledge of the world is based on our recognition of these relationships. For example, let us consider what we recognize as a table. Although a table can be large or small, metal or wood, dark or light, we recognize an object as a table if it has a flat, horizontal plane with one or more supports underneath it. Its gestalt is determined by the relationship among its parts.
How do Gestalt ideas pertain to perception?
Gestalt psychology countered the assumption that perception is based solely on the stimulation hitting our sensory organs. As the sensory stimulation coming in differs depending upon the circumstance, we would not be able to recognize an object or person as the same across different situations if our mind did not actively organize our perceptions to recognize the gestalt. For example, we recognize our neighbor as the same person even if he loses weight, changes his clothes, or cuts his hair. Clearly the sensory information differs in each circumstance yet somehow we still recognize our neighbor as one person.
Who were the pioneers of Gestalt theory?
Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) is recognized as the father of Gestalt theory. His interest was first piqued when he noticed the illusion of motion while sitting on a train. Although the landscape outside the train was stationary, it seemed to be moving backwards as the train sped by. Most of us have had the same experience. To Wertheimer, however, this phenomenon offered a unique window into the workings of the mind. When he began his investigations at the University of Frankfurt in 1910, two slightly younger psychologists, Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) came to work with him. Together they studied the illusion of movement through various experiments. Their research into the phi effect, as Wertheimer named it, was the beginning of a lifelong, shared commitment to Gestalt research and theory. By the mid-1930s, all three men had relocated to the United States, Koffka before Hitler’s rise to power, and Wertheimer and Köhler in direct response to it.
Why is Gestalt theory important?
Arguably, Gestalt theory is important more for its profound philosophical implications than for the specifics of its research findings. For one thing, by demonstrating its principles with solid empirical research, Gestalt theory put the study of the mind back into academic psychology. Secondly, Gestalt theory introduced a holistic paradigm, which was in sharp contrast to the associationist approach found in both behaviorism and Wilhelm Wundt’s structuralism. In associationism, complex knowledge is seen to derive entirely from associations between simple memories. Gestalt theorists rejected this view as overly simplistic as they believed that complex knowledge also develops holistically, through recognition of patterns and identification of the whole.
What does Gestalt theory tell us about optical illusions?
The Gestalt theorists were fond of optical illusions as they illustrated how the mind actively organizes perceptual information. The fact that we can see something that is not really there shows that our perceptions are more than an exact copy of reality. In the graphic, a field of rounded dots can be seen as either convex (rows of buttons) or as concave (rows of holes). Notice that you can perceive either buttons or holes but you cannot perceive both at the same time. In order for your perception to switch, you have to look at something other than the dots, such as the flat area between the dots.
How did the holistic view of Gestalt theory go against the scientific worldview of the time?
In the the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when psychology was coming into its own as a science, there was tremendous admiration for the accomplishments of physical science. This was a time of extraordinary technological changes. The telephone, the motor car, the moving picture—all of these were relatively recent inventions and all of them radically changed society. Science was exploding across the industrialized world and there was a widely shared assumption that the only worthwhile way to understand reality was through the methods used in the physical sciences. And these methods largely reflected an analytic approach to reason.
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