Experimental Psychology Laboratory Research Articles

Students’ assessment of learning gains with a POGIL-based Experimental Psychology Laboratory curriculum.

Students’ assessment of learning gains with a POGIL-based Experimental Psychology Laboratory curriculum.

Carl Stumpf and the Curious Incident of Music in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract This essay explores Wittgenstein’s encounter with Stumpf’s work in Tone Psychology during a rarely studied period in Wittgenstein’s early career when he worked as a researcher in Myers’s laboratory for experimental psychology in Cambridge. I argue that Stumpf’s emphasis on the notion of musicality as the ability to characterize what is ‘musical’ about music troubled Wittgenstein’s initial formulation of his career-long adherence to the comparison between language and music. In the Tractatus the importance of internal projective relations far exceeds that of arbitrariness in language. This results in the curious elision of musicality in the Tractatus, as shown in his gramophone analogy. The acknowledgment of the enormous complexity pertaining to the facts of human life remained underdeveloped in Wittgenstein’s philosophy until the anthropological turn in his middle-period. Only then do we see the blooming of the language-as-music simile and its eventual impact on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

The Relation Between Attention and Memory.

The relation between attention and memory has long been deemed important for understanding cognition, and it was heavily researched even in the first experimental psychology laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt and his colleagues. Since then, the importance of the relation between attention and memory has been explored in myriad subdisciplines of psychology, and we incorporate a wide range of these diverse fields. Here, we examine some of the practical consequences of this relation and summarize work with various methodologies relating attention to memory in the fields of working memory, long-term memory, individual differences, life-span development, typical brain function, and neuropsychological conditions. We point out strengths and unanswered questions for our own embedded processes view of information processing, which is used to organize a large body of evidence. Last, we briefly consider the relation of the evidence to a range of other theoretical views before drawing conclusions about the state of the field.

Psychological experiments on student self-government: The early impact of Wilhelm Mann's work in Chile and the German Empire.

One of the most important successes in the history of psychology in Chile was the foundation in 1908 of the first experimental psychology laboratory in Santiago by the German psychologist Wilhelm Mann (1974-1943). Four years later, Mann give a shift to his classical experimental psychology research to intervene in the discussions about German School Reform (1900-1920). Mann used Chile as a "testing ground" for explore the viability of student self-government published in three papers. The method used to verify the early impact of Mann's papers was the quantitative analysis of citations with Publish or Perish software using a Google Books database and Scripta Paedagogica. The reception of Mann's texts was analyzed using the context of citation and the functions and use of those citations. The three unknow Mann's papers about Student Self-Government published in 1913 and his citations. The results shows that Mann's critics and recommendations published in one of his papers was the fourth more citated in a database of 16 foundational German works of to self-student government. Finally, this Mann's article was cited and used in an ideological way to argue in favor of reactionary and conservative opinions of school democratization in German Empire teacher circles. Mann's diagnosis and critical suggestions was recognized by prominent German philosophers and pedagogues. Precisely Mann criticized the Student Republics as the only way to stimulate the student self-government for their artificial character and especially for the loss of students' psychological individuality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The degree course in psychology in Rome in the history of Italian psychology.

Italian academic psychology found its first location in the Anthropological Museum of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Rome, where in 1890 a Laboratory of Experimental Psychology was established. In 1905, the first three Chairs of Experimental Psychology at the Universities of Turin, Rome, and Naples were created. These were followed in the subsequent years by others, until 1930, in other academic institutions. After many years and a long period of crisis linked to the fascist regime, only after the World War II (WWII), with the rebirth of the country, did psychology gradually rebuild its status as a scientific discipline. Within this framework of the renewal of society and university studies, in 1971, two degree courses were instituted in Rome and Padua. Based on research in central and local academic archives and on an analysis of the secondary literature, the gestation phase of the 4-year degree course in Psychology, the progressive establishment of the Psychology Departments, and the 5-year reform of the courses up to the birth of the first Faculty of Psychology at an Italian university are reconstructed. The aim of this article is to propose a well-founded discontinuist historiographical reading of the process of sedimentation of psychological experimentation that, after being born in the Faculty of Sciences and later transferring to the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, also led to important developments in the Faculty of Education, with the recognition of an autonomous academic space of scientific discipline with a degree course, departments and finally the Faculty of Psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Introspection as a Research Method in Experimental Psychology. Wilhelm Wundt and the Beginnings of Psychology as a Science

The meeting of the existential challenges, specific to every generation, and the positioning of precedent constructs, insufficient and limited in the transmission of information, is regarded as an important progress factor. In the second half of the XIX century, the existence and pragmatism of inclinations, trends and orientations in Philosophy, Metaphysics and Natural Science would have given a decisive contribution to the formation of the necessary conditions so that the intuitions and experimental research of Wilhelm Wundt conducted to remarkable progress in Psychology. The creation of the first laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the University of Lipsia, in 1879, highlighted the incontrovertible contribution of the introspection method, and, consequently, the history of Psychology registered the birth of Experimental Psychology as a Science.

The phoneme: A conceptual heritage from alphabetic literacy

In contemporaneous cognitive psychology and cognitive science, literacy is not a central concept. In this paper, on the contrary, it is argued that both cognition and cognitive science are deeply influenced by literacy. Before addressing the experimental work on the structure of speech and spoken language, one of the major themes of Jacques Mehler's work, I recall his links with the Brussels Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and the important influence he had on the discipline and on our work. Most of the present paper is a discussion of the concept of the phoneme, its dependence on literacy, its role in language, and of the constant interactions between orthography and phonology in spoken language recognition. I argue that the phoneme is not a unit of perception, but a literate cognitive concept. In this way, I hope that cognitive science will overtly recognize the literacy heritage, the building of which it greatly contributes to.

Κατοπτρικοί νευρώνες και Γλώσσα

Mirror neurons were discovered in 1992 by Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the University of Parma, Italy. This discovery has triggered a debate about the origins of human language by describing an evolutionary transition from gestures to vocal language. This paper presents a brief introduction to the discovery of the mirror neurons, while focusing on their contribution to human action understanding and to the emergence of the human language. It also presents a discussion regarding the existence of mirror neuronsand their functions. Under this scope, a brief criticism to mirror neuron theory and their contribution in human communication is also presented.

A Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL)-Based Curriculum for the Experimental Psychology Laboratory

We implemented NSF-funded computerized Experimental Psychology Laboratories at Touro College and incorporated process-oriented guided-inquiry learning (POGIL). We designed POGIL modules for the labs and conducted workshops for faculty on the implementation of the guided-inquiry approach, including learning teams. Data were collected from students who took experimental psychology with and without using POGIL, to assess the impact of the curriculum materials. Achievement was measured with (a) selected items from the Major Field Achievement Tests (MFAT) and (b) our own assessment instrument. Results indicated that students using the POGIL materials performed significantly better on both achievement tests than students not using them. This is the first demonstration that POGIL led to higher achievement than non-POGIL instruction for experimental psychology. These results are consistent with previous POGIL findings in the field of chemistry.

Confusion about confusion: Édouard Toulouse’s dementia test, 1905–20

Psychiatrist Édouard Toulouse (1865-1947) is known today for his 1896 psychometric study of the novelist Émile Zola, and his contributions to mental hygiene, sexology, eugenics, and labour efficiency in inter-war France. This paper examines research undertaken in Toulouse's Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Villejuif asylum near Paris. In 1905, Toulouse created a test that could differentiate between dementia and mental confusion, a test that could aid in the classification of patients at the overcrowded Villejuif facility. By 1920, however, the test's early promise was undercut by unforeseen, 'machinic' resistance that emerged in the experimental process. This case study demonstrates the non-linear nature of scientific practice and limits of even the most innovative asylum reforms in this period.

Ghost in the Shell - Collection of Old Scientific Instruments of Laboratory for Experimental Psychology

Creating of Collection of old scientific instruments of Laboratory for experimental psychology, Faculty of philosophy, University of Belgrade is an attempt to preserve a part of history of science in Serbia. There are around 100 instruments in Collection, which mostly came to Belgrade within German war reparations to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, after the World War I. Most of the instruments were made in workshop of E. Zimmermann, precise mechanic of the first psychology laboratory in the world, founded in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. They can be grouped on those aimed for examining visual and auditory perception, memory and learning, kimography and ergography and those designed for investigating emotions. Together with books and journals from 19th and beginning of 20th century, instruments create an ensemble based on which it is possible to reconstruct one psychological laboratory from the very beginning of development this scientific discipline.

Merging with the path not taken: Wilhelm Wundt's work as a precursor to the embedded-processes approach to memory, attention, and consciousness.

Early research on memory was dominated by two researchers forging different paths: Hermann Ebbinghaus, interested in principles of learning and recall, and Wilhelm Wundt, founder of the first formal laboratory of experimental psychology, who was interested in empirical evidence to interpret conscious experience. Whereas the work of Ebbinghaus is a much-heralded precursor of modern research on long-term memory, the work of Wundt appears to be a mostly-forgotten precursor to research on working memory. We show how his scientific perspective is germane to more recent investigations, with emphasis on the embedded-processes approaches of Nelson Cowan and Klaus Oberauer, and how it is in contrast with most other recent theoretical approaches. This investigation is important because the embedded-process theorists, apparently like most modern researchers, have recognized few of Wundt's specific contributions. We explore commonalities between the approaches and suggest that an appreciation of these commonalities might enrich the field going forward.

José Ingenieros y las amusias, sobre los orígenes de la neuropsicología argentina

The Argentine neuropsychological school is born of the hand of the European school and is part of the beginning of the Experimental Psychology. In 1896 Horacio Pinero creates the first Department of Psychology at the University of Buenos Aires and in 1898 the first laboratory of Experimental Psychology is annexed. Jose Ingeniero, psychiatrist, neurologist, politician and above all sociologist publishes in France his work about the musical aphasia, the first neuropsychological work with international significance. In the same redeems to Charcot instead of to Knoblauch like the first one to describe the amusias, it speaks of an intelligence instead of a musical language and proposes a new classification and a methodology of assessment with a neurological-psychiatric integrative perspective. This article gave rise to this book in French on the musical language and its hysterical alterations awarded by the Academy of Medicine of Paris.

The Effects of Bayan Tabla Timbre on Stimulus Discrimination and Perception of Music Emotion in a Dangdut Music Fans, Neutral, and Haters Group

Background: A theoretical issue about the control factors of the subject response on musical timbre between acoustic factors (including attack-decay) and type of music (genre) still unclear. Objective: Examine the effects of bayan tabla timbre and its attack-decay changes on stimulus discrimination and perception of music emotion in a dangdut music fans group, neutral group, and haters group. Method: A randomized experiment between-within subjects design was used in the research method. Research conducted in an Experimental Psychology laboratory at Gadjah Mada University of Indonesia. The research was supported by the participation of undergraduate and graduate students from Social-Humanities and Veterinary Medicine Sciences at Gadjah Mada University. All subjects aged 17-32 years. A dangdut music fans group/KE (N=18), neutral group/KK1 (N=18), and haters group/ KK2 (N=18). Each subject in KE, KK1, KK2 receive a random series treatment of three music: M1 (a music which has natural bayan tabla timbre [in G#1 pitch and its tone's attack was 0.403 seconds per stroke]), M2 (a music without bayan tabla timbre as the control/placebo), and M3 (a music which has synthetic bayan tabla timbre [in G#1 pitch and its tone's attack was 0.085 seconds per stroke]). Main outcome measures. The subject response was measured by StimoV1.0 software which consists of stimulus discrimination scale (similarity scaling), emotional perception scale (semantic differential scale): strong-not strong, happy-not happy, fun-not fun, erotic-not erotic, and the reaction time measurement in seconds. Results and Conclusion: In general, the results shown that the effects of musical timbre on stimulus discrimination is more controlled by acoustic factors (including attack-decay) and is not controlled by preference factors to type of music (genre). But however, the effects of musical timbre on perception of music emotion can be controlled by preference factors to type of music (genre).

The discontinuity in scientific psychology at the University of Rome, 1907-1947: From general psychology to psychotechnics.

This article examines the areas of research conducted at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of the University of Rome from 1907 to 1947, directed first by Sante De Sanctis (1862-1935), and then, from 1931 on, by Mario Ponzo (1882-1960). The method used to distinguish the topics and areas of research that characterized the Roman School during this period is the textual analysis of the titles of the journal in which studies completed at the laboratory were published, namely, Contributi del Laboratorio di Psicologia sperimentale [Psychological Contributions of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology]. This empirical analysis, which complements and supports the historiographical interpretation, demonstrates the disciplines that emerged under a system managed by the directors over 2 periods of time in the pursuit of scientific psychology in Rome and in Italy. This analysis highlights the process of adjustment from a traditional, general approach to a more theoretical-technical application. This article is a new contribution to the Italian debate on the periodization of the "crisis" in Italian psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record

International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus15).

The 8th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus15) took place from the 17th to 19th of September, 2015, in Leipzig, Germany, a city with a strong academic and musical heritage. Leipzig was home to famous musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert and Clara Schumann, and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. It was where Wilhelm Wundt opened the first laboratory for experimental psychology in 1879 (Rieber & Robinson, 2001, p. 206), and where Hugo Riemann founded one of the first institutes for Musicology in 1914 (Gollin & Rehding, 2011, p. 140). Against this background was held a conference highlighting the interdisciplinarity of modern Musicology.Musicology itself is a broad field. The discipline in its modern shape has grown out of Historical and Systematic Musicology, and Ethnomusicology as a younger field. The most prominent segregation thereby lies between Historical and Systematic Musicology; exactly where the line falls is up for debate, however, the two differ slightly in their aims. Whereas Historical Musicology may be largely descriptive, cataloguing how music has been written and performed in the past, Systematic Musicology asks why music is the way it is (Parncutt, 2007). Musicology as a whole is considered basic research in a widely spread area, as it draws upon knowledge from a vast range of disciplines and applies it to the study of music. This is, perhaps, more so the case with Systematic Musicology, because wide perspectives must be drawn upon to address these fundamental questions. Consequently, Systematic Musicology borrows methods from Psychology, Mathematics, Computer Science, Sociology, Neuroscience, Anthropology, Biology, and even History, in its search for answers. As a conference for young researchers, SysMus15 embodied these interdisciplinary ideals, so that attendees could be exposed to a wide range of perspectives on music.The Idea of SysMusThe idea behind the SysMus conference series is to give earlystage researchers the possibility to become familiar with scientific conference procedures in an environment of peers. Due to the internationality of the presentations, all sessions are held in English. Critical feedback can be offered by members of an audience with differing backgrounds because of the openness of conference toward researchers either from within Musicology or from other disciplines with an interest in music research. Furthermore, renowned researchers are invited to present their research in keynotes, or to give workshops. The conference is held in a different country every year, which further increases its internationality; the previous conference (SysMus14) was held at the University of London (Bauer & Neumann, 2014). At present, over five different countries across Europe and North America have hosted SysMus since it started in Austria in 2008, where it was founded by Dr Manuela Marin (who was a Doctoral candidate at the time) and Professor Richard Parncutt. All SysMus conferences are organized by a local committee composed entirely of Doctoral and Masters students, under the supervision of a member of staff at the host university. The annual cycle may seem intense compared with biennial or triennial conferences that have sometimes become a norm (e.g., ICMPC is biennial, Neuromusic is triennial) but, given that SysMus only accepts student presenters (with the exception of the invited keynote speakers), this maximizes the opportunity for young researchers to participate. Ultimately it aims to provide a practice ground for students, and an ideal first conference in which to speak and share their ideas with their peers.SysMus15SysMus15 hosted >30 early-stage researchers from various universities with a focus on music. It was organized by a team led by Laura Neumann (University of Leipzig) under the supervision of Professor Sebastian Klotz (formerly of the University of Leipzig, now Humboldt University of Berlin). …

The Belo Horizonte Teacher’s College laboratory: Circulating Psychology in Brazil

The circulation and indigenization of psychological objects is a trending topic in the history of psychology. One of the elements debated is the psychology laboratory and its influences in shaping psychology worldwide. In this direction, our paper aims to describe the experimental psychology laboratory at the Belo Horizonte Teacher’s College and to analyze its role in the history of Brazilian psychology. Particularly, we present its installation in the late 1920s, its apparatuses and the use of mental testing in this context. Our results pointed out two main aspects about this laboratory: (1) it was a place for teaching scientific psychology to future primary teachers, and (2) it conducted different studies about anthropometric and mental aspects of childhood in the context of urban and industrial change in the first decades of the 20 th century in Brazil. As envisioned, the laboratory was seen as an agent of social change that would promote modernization in Brazilian education and society. The laboratory also contributed to the circulation of psychological knowledge in Brazil and is, at the same time, an important chapter in the local history and part of the global history of psychology.

Angel de Blas, O.P. and the Development of Experimental Psychology in the Philippines

Fr. Angel de Blas, OP was a philosopher, an administrator and a pioneer in psychology in the Philippines. As a philosopher, his tenacious search for metaphysical truths and affinity to logic enabled him to engage in discourses in a wide range of topics. His tenure as Rector of Colegio de San Juan de Letran and University of Santo Tomas was marked by expansions in both physical and curricular structures. Fr. de Blas was a pioneer in Philippine psychology, established the first experimental psychology laboratory in the Philippines, published the textbook in experimental psychology in the country, and initiated to offer the first Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology degree at the University of Santo Tomas. An enlightened educator and psychologist, Fr. de Blas’ teachings and writings reflect his philosophical maturity resulting from a constant life of introspection and extensive reading of great authors. He was a restless pioneer constantly looking for new vistas without forgetting the old.

The role of a laboratory of experimental psychology in the Brazilian education renewal of the 1930s.

In this article, we present the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Belo Horizonte Teachers College (Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Professores de Belo Horizonte) during its early years (1929-1932). The Laboratory is examined in the context of the prevailing public discourse on primary education and its renewal in Brazil. To achieve our goal, we describe the Belo Horizonte Teachers College and its Laboratory's director, tools, and functions. In presenting these aspects, we highlight the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology as an important place that promoted contact with psychological instruments, techniques, and theories. It contributed to the training of teachers and produced psychological knowledge for elementary education in Brazil.

A French description of the Psychology Laboratory of G. S. Hall at Clark University in 1893.

There is a rich tradition of writings about the foundation of psychology laboratories, particularly in the United States and in France. Like their German counterparts, American laboratories of psychology were described by several scholars in French journals. These descriptions stimulated the establishment of laboratories in France and provided templates for laboratory designs. We introduce here an article written by Marcel Baudouin (1860-1941), who visited and subsequently described the psychology laboratory of Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924) at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. The English translation of Baudouin's paper, provided here, constitutes an interesting new document on Hall's laboratory at Clark University as it stood in 1893. From the French perspective, the Clark laboratory provided an ideal model for the experimental psychology laboratory.