Psy 525 - Wundt's Laboratory
Essay by Maxi • September 2, 2012 • Term Paper • 960 Words (4 Pages) • 1,929 Views
Running head: WUNDT'S LABORATORY 1
Wundt's Laboratory
Psych/525
August 4, 2012
WUNDT'S LABORATORY 2
Wundt's Laboratory
This paper will discuss the development of psychological
testing concerning Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory. Wundt and his
ideas had a huge impact on the development of psychological
testing as we see it today. This paper will also explore the
historical roots of Wundt's laboratory and its significance.
In Germany, 1879, at the University of Leipzig, Wundt
founded the first formal laboratory for psychological research.
Wundt is known as the "father of experimental psychology." He
is known today as one of the founding figures of modern
psychology.
"Wundt's design of the psychology laboratory had a
reputation of being one of the world's largest and best equipped
laboratories. His laboratory has become the standard for
scientific psychology laboratories throughout the world." (Alan
Kim, 2008) Most people believe that because of Wundt's
laboratory we have been able to learn and use modern aspects of
psychology.
"The initial goal of psychology was to understand the
nature of human consciousness. To understand this, Wundt used
the method of introspection, in which a person experiences
something and then describes the personal nature of the
experience. This technique can be used quite rigorously when
WUNDT'S LABORATORY 3
stimulus presentation is controlled, so that introspective
accounts can be compared across many experiences. Researchers
were to repeat their experiences in terms of specific sensations
and feelings, which were then developed into the basic building
blocks of the conscious mind. The main goal of Wundt's
psychology was to first discover these building blocks, and then
discover how they combined to form the more complex elements of
mental processes." (History of Psychology, 1997)
Wundt separated psychology from philosophy which made him
important. He did this by examining the way the mind works in a
structured way. He put emphasis on control and objective
measurement.
"The research in Wundt's lab consisted of studies in the
fields of sensation and perception: investigating color vision
and the passage of time, as well as research into other mental
processes such as emotion. One famous study in Wundt's lab was
the field of reaction time. Wundt hypothesized that by
measuring the difference between the speed of a simple mental
event and a complex mental event, it was possible to calculate
the amount of time mental processing required." (History of
Psychology, 1997)
There were other types of things that were explored in
Wundt's laboratory. Research in the laboratory consisted of all
WUNDT'S LABORATORY 5
kinds of different types of disorders, the process of abnormal
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