a history of experimental psychology pdf

• DOI: 10.1126/SCIENCE.72.1873.529
• Corpus ID: 143485284

A History of Experimental Psychology

• E. S. Robinson
• Published 21 November 1930
• Psychology, History

628 Citations

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Green, C. D. (2009). The curious rise and fall of experimental psychology in Mind. History of the Human Sciences, 22, 37-57.

The journal Mind is now a wholly philosophical journal. At the time of its founding, in 1876, however, its mission was rather different in character. Its aim was to discover whether scientific psychology was a truly viable enterprise and, if so, what its boundaries with philosophy, with other scientific disciplines, and with the earlier generation of discredited attempts at ‘scientific’ studies of the mind (e.g. phrenology, mesmerism) might be. Although at first Mind published mostly philosophical pieces and literature reviews, by the mid-1880s it was publishing primary experimental research, mostly by American psychologists who as yet had few outlets of their own. For a time it was the leading journal of experimental psychology in the English-speaking world. As the international competition among scientific and scholarly journals intensified in the 1890s, however, Mind started to lose its share of experimental contributions, and with the editorial takeover of the journal of George Stout in 1892, the journal soon became one dedicated purely to philosophy.

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We should not forget the power of the laboratory itself to shape a discipline and perpetuate certain ways of knowing. Labs are assemblages of equipment and trained personnel, coordinated in specific ways to ask very particular questions of the world. They attract funding (to the lab and the university), if the lab produces reliable results; and this selective process in turn shapes the sorts of future questions that can be reliably asked and answered. In this way labs exercise both a catalytic and normalizing function over the field (Kuhn, 1996, 23-42). They garner funds and grow the profession but also direct research with increasing inertia in particular directions. They inherit their ways of working from other practitioners past and present (mentors, colleagues and competitors), and are moreover symbols of the growth and power of the discipline (Capshew, 1992, 132). And while laboratories seem on the one hand to be the pinnacle of objective science--highly controlled, hermetically closed spaces, magic-carpet-fact-generators that float above the din and disorder of culture—they in fact import whole worldviews and systems of assumptions that become a tacit part of their everyday functioning. Latour has remarked in this regard that “no one can say where the laboratory is and where the society is” (Latour, 1983, 154). For this reason--the porous boundaries between lab and society--we also should not fail to take note of how psychology’s rapid emergence as a laboratory science in the US coincided with a particularly volatile period of industrial growth and urbanization in US history known as the Progressive Era. Thus psychology was emerging as a laboratory science in the United States right when the cultural value of science and the scientific expert were dramatically on the rise. Psychologists felt they could offer powerful solutions to many of these social problems, but first they had to complete the reformation of psychology itself. Psychology had to be pried once and for all from the hands of philosophy and allowed to stand confidently alongside biology, chemistry and physics as a natural science in its own right. But making psychology amenable to laboratory study meant turning away from the more subjective, noetic qualities of mind, and instead focusing on the quantifiable, observable aspects of behavior.

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Abstract: The first section of this paper outlines the major theme, that “mind” is not the label of something unitary but of a collection of things that can only be revealed by research at three different levels. The first level of enquiry is the account of mind that can be gleaned from what is often referred to as our folk psychology . Even with its limitations, it is an indispensable part of our social interactions. The second section outlines how, with the rise of experimental psychology , our account of human minds has been extended because experimental psychology often reveals a level of factors in our mental life which is not open to ordinary observation. The third section explores how our account of human minds is extended even further by the modern instrument-aided researches at the level of neuropsychology . The fourth section argues that no one level of enquiry should be described as ultimate or dominant but that each level reveals different facts about our mental life. Th...

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Experimental Psychology: History, Method and Characteristics

The Experimental psychology Is a stream that studies the psychological phenomena using an experimental methodology based on observation.

It guarantees a scientific practice and involves the observation, manipulation and registration of the variables that affect a subject under study.

Experimental psychologists are interested in studying human behavior by manipulating variables in controllable situations and in unnatural environments that affect and influence behavior.

Gustav Theodor Fechner Was one of the pioneers in the use of the experimental when trying to prove the relation between physical and sensorial magnitudes, in 1860.

However, it was in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt , Considered one of the founders of this current, created the first laboratory of experimental psychology.

Definition of experimental psychology

This current of psychology defends the experimental method as the most suitable form for the study of human behavior.

Experimental psychology considers that psychological phenomena can be analyzed by experimental methods consisting in the observation, manipulation and recording of dependent, independent and extraneous variables that influence the object of study.

Many psychologists have used this method when carrying out their work to address multiple issues such as memory , Learning, sensation, perception, motivation and development processes, among others.

Professionals who adopt this method want to know the behavior of a subject by manipulating variables in controlled environments. The contexts in which they are carried out are the laboratories and instruments are used that guarantee a control and an exhaustive precision in their investigations.

The experiments can be performed in humans but mostly animals are used, because many times for ethical reasons people can not be used to perform such tests. In addition, animals provide greater availability and control to researchers.

The most scientific part of psychology is unified with experimental psychology, because the use of its methodology guarantees a scientific practice through observation and experimentation, removing the laws of behavior and mental processes.

With its emergence in the nineteenth century, psychology begins to focus and become interested in the study of observable phenomena, thus giving rise to an empirical science, that is, based on observation and experience of events.

Later, experimental psychology would use rigorous methods and instruments to carry out the measurements in its investigations.

Experimental psychology emerges in Germany as a modern discipline with Wundt, who created the first experimental laboratory in 1879 and introduced a mathematical and experimental approach to research.

Earlier in 1860 Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German psychologist, attempted to test and reason the link between physical and sensory magnitudes through experimental data in his work Elements of psychophysics .

Other authors who contributed to this growing science were Charles Bell , A British physiologist who investigated nerves; Ernst Heinrich Weber , A German physician and considered one of its founders and Oswald Külpe , The principal founder of the Würzburg School in Germany, among others.

The appearance of different schools was due to this tendency to the experimentation of the time, whose purpose was to try to observe the degree of relationship between the biological and the psychological.

Among these schools is the Russian who was interested in neurophysiology and was initiated by Pavlov Y Bechterev . Functionalism, which seeks to demonstrate the biological laws that delimit the behavior and behaviorism of Watson .

In the twentieth century behaviorism was the predominant school within psychology in general and especially in the United States. It is the branch of psychology that set aside mental phenomena within experimental psychology.

In Europe, however, this was not the case, since psychology was influenced by such authors as Craik, Hick and Broadbent who focused on subjects such as attention, thought and memory, thus laying the foundations of cognitive psychology.

In the last half of the century, psychologists used multiple methods, not only focused and limited to a strictly experimental approach.

In addition, the experimental method is used in many different fields within psychology such as social psychology and developmental psychology.

Experimental method

Experimental psychology considers that psychological phenomena can be studied through this method, thus constituting one of the bases of psychology as a science.

It involves the observation, manipulation and recording of dependent, independent and extraneous variables that are the object of study, in order to be able to describe and explain them in terms of their relation to human behavior.

This method aims to identify the causes and evaluate the consequences, the researcher tries to find a causality between different variables.

On the one hand, there is the medium variable that would act as an independent variable. The dependent would be that which is related to the behavior of the subject. Finally, all external factors influencing this would be weird variables.

The experiment is carried out in a controlled environment such as a laboratory, where the experimenter can manipulate variables and control those that can affect the others. In addition, it can thus form specific experimental groups of subjects according to their study interests.

The researcher is the one who creates the necessary conditions to be able to carry out the study and to apply the independent variable when he sees fit. In addition to this method can be repeated conditions to check the results as well as alter them to see the differences of behavior to study between different situations.

In this approach, the experimenter manipulates circumstances to control their increase or decrease as well as their effect on the observed behaviors, to be able to describe why that situation or change occurs.

Many times before carrying out an investigation one resorts to pilot experiments that are tests of the experiment to study some aspects of him. In addition the experiments have another positive part because being carried out in these controlled contexts can be replicated by other researchers in future situations.

Characteristics of experimental research

Some of the characteristics of experimental research are as follows:

• Subjects are randomly arranged into equivalent groups, giving rise to statistical equivalence so that the differences between the results are not due to initial differences between groups of subjects.
• Existence of two or more groups or conditions to be able to carry out the comparison between them. Experiments can not be performed with a single group or condition to be compared.
• Management of an independent variable, in the form of different values ​​or circumstances. This direct manipulation is done to be able to observe the changes that it produces in the dependent variables. In addition, the assignment of values ​​and conditions must be done by the researcher, because if this were not so, it would not be considered a real experiment.
• Measure each dependent variable by assigning numerical values ​​so that the result can be evaluated and thus speak of an experimental investigation.
• Have a design with which you can control to a greater extent the influence of the foreign variables and to avoid that the results are affected by them.
• Use inferential statistics to make generalizations of research to the population.

Phases of an experiment

1- approaching a knowledge problem.

Choosing the problem to be investigated depends on the experimenter and what you want to study, the research questions have to be able to be solved through an experimental process.

Depending on the problem, the methodological approach to be followed will be delimited.

2- Hypothesis Formulation

The hypotheses are statements that are formulated and that anticipate the results that could be obtained from the research, relate at least two variables and must be described in empirical terms, being able to be observed and measurable.

3- Making an appropriate design

With the design, the procedure or work plan of the researcher is plotted, indicating what is going to be done and how the study will be carried out, from the variables involved to the assignment of the subjects to the groups.

4- Collection and analysis of data

For the collection of data there are multiple instruments that are valid and reliable, and techniques that will be better or worse adapted and that will present advantages and disadvantages.

The analysis of the data is carried out by organizing the information so that it can be described, analyzed and explained.

5- Conclusions

In the conclusions, it is developed the fulfillment or not of the hypotheses raised, the limitations of the research work, the methodology that has been followed, implications for the practice, generalization at the population level, as well as future lines of research.

Objective and conditions of the experimental method

Its objective is to investigate the causal relationships between variables, that is, to analyze the changes that occurred in the dependent variable (behavior) as a consequence of the different values ​​presented by the independent variable (external factor).

The conditions to be able to conclude that there is a relationship between variables are:

• Temporal contingency between variables. The variable cause that would be the independent, has to precede the variable consequence, that would be the dependent one.
• Covariation between variables. In order for there to be a relationship between the two, a change in the values ​​of one would imply a proportional change in the values ​​of the second.
• The correlation between variables should not be attributable to the effect of foreign variables.

In short, the researcher must manipulate the independent variable, establish a temporal order among variables and have to eliminate the effect that is exerted as a consequence of extraneous variables.

• Experimental psychology. Recovered from ecured.cu.
• Experimental psychology. Retrieved from wikipedia.org.
• Definition of experimental psychology. Recovered from definicion.de.
• Definition, characteristics and objective of the experimental method. Retrieved from psikipedia.com.

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History of experimental psychology from an Estonian perspective

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Article Contents

Blood inflammation relates to neuroinflammation and survival in frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

John T. O’Brien and James B. Rowe contributed equally to this work.

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Maura Malpetti, Peter Swann, Kamen A Tsvetanov, Leonidas Chouliaras, Alexandra Strauss, Tanatswa Chikaura, Alexander G Murley, Nicholas J Ashton, Peter Barker, P Simon Jones, Tim D Fryer, Young T Hong, Thomas E Cope, George Savulich, Duncan Street, W Richard Bevan-Jones, Timothy Rittman, Kaj Blennow, Henrik Zetterberg, Franklin I Aigbirhio, John T O’Brien, James B Rowe, Blood inflammation relates to neuroinflammation and survival in frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Brain , 2024;, awae269, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae269

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Neuroinflammation is an important pathogenic mechanism in many neurodegenerative diseases, including those caused by frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Postmortem and in vivo imaging studies have shown brain inflammation early in these conditions, proportionate to symptom severity and rate of progression. However, evidence for corresponding blood markers of inflammation and their relationship with central inflammation and clinical outcome are limited. There is a pressing need for such scalable, accessible and mechanistically relevant blood markers as these will reduce the time, risk, and costs of experimental medicine trials. We therefore assessed inflammatory patterns of serum cytokines from 214 patients with clinical syndromes associated with FTLD as compared to healthy controls, including their correlation with brain regional microglial activation and disease progression.

Serum assays used the MesoScale Discovery V-Plex-Human Cytokine 36 plex panel plus five additional cytokine assays. A sub-group of patients underwent 11 C-PK11195 TSPO PET imaging, as an index of microglial activation. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to reduce the dimensionality of cytokine data, excluding cytokines that were undetectable in >50% of participants. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses were performed on the principal components, to compare each patient cohort to controls, and test for associations with central inflammation, neurodegeneration-related plasma markers and survival.

The first component identified by the PCA (explaining 21.5% variance) was strongly loaded by pro-inflammatory cytokines, including TNF-α, TNF-R1, M-CSF, IL-17A, IL-12, IP-10 and IL-6. Individual scores of the component showed significant differences between each patient cohort and controls. The degree to which a patient expressed this peripheral inflammatory profile at baseline correlated negatively with survival (higher inflammation, shorter survival), even when correcting for baseline clinical severity. Higher pro-inflammatory profile scores were associated with higher microglial activation in frontal and brainstem regions, as quantified with 11 C-PK11195 TSPO PET. A permutation-based Canonical Correlation Analysis confirmed the association between the same cytokine-derived pattern and central inflammation across brain regions in a fully data-based manner.

This data-driven approach identified a pro-inflammatory profile across the FTLD clinical spectrum, which is associated with central neuroinflammation and worse clinical outcome. Blood-based markers of inflammation could increase the scalability and access to neuroinflammatory assessment of people with dementia, to facilitate clinical trials and experimental medicine studies.

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Title: mutual reasoning makes smaller llms stronger problem-solvers.

Abstract: This paper introduces rStar, a self-play mutual reasoning approach that significantly improves reasoning capabilities of small language models (SLMs) without fine-tuning or superior models. rStar decouples reasoning into a self-play mutual generation-discrimination process. First, a target SLM augments the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with a rich set of human-like reasoning actions to construct higher quality reasoning trajectories. Next, another SLM, with capabilities similar to the target SLM, acts as a discriminator to verify each trajectory generated by the target SLM. The mutually agreed reasoning trajectories are considered mutual consistent, thus are more likely to be correct. Extensive experiments across five SLMs demonstrate rStar can effectively solve diverse reasoning problems, including GSM8K, GSM-Hard, MATH, SVAMP, and StrategyQA. Remarkably, rStar boosts GSM8K accuracy from 12.51% to 63.91% for LLaMA2-7B, from 36.46% to 81.88% for Mistral-7B, from 74.53% to 91.13% for LLaMA3-8B-Instruct. Code will be available at this https URL .

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