Historical roots 2

-4-BEHAVIORISM

Behaviorism has dominated American psychology for a long period, since it was formulated by John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University in 1913.

John B. Watson

Watson was greatly influenced by the work of the Russian Ivan Pavlov, who had conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Behaviour, Watson said, was a succession of conditioned responses to environmental stimuli. Such stimuli are objectively observable and measurable unlike subjective mental processes.

The behavioural approach is often called the S-R psychology (S=stimulus, R=response). Behaviour is viewed as a series of learned responses. The mind is called the black box. What goes on inside the black box (inputs) cannot be objectively observed and measured; only what comes out (the behavioural response/outcomes) can be observed and measured.

The black box metaphor:

INPUTS OUTCOMES

INPUTS OUTCOMESLearning

-5-GESTALT SCHOOL OF

PSYCHOLOGY

Gestalt psychology was founded by German thinkers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka and focused on how people interpreted the world visually.

Wolfgang Kohler

Max Wertheimer

Kurt Koffka

The Gestalt perspective was formed partially as a response to the structuralism of Wilhelm Wundt, who focused on breaking down mental events and experiences to the smallest elements.

According to Gestalt psychology: “The whole is different than the sum of its parts”. Based upon this belief, Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles to explain perceptual organisation, or how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones.

These principles are often referred to as the laws of perceptual organisation:

1-Law of closure;2-Law of continuity;3-Law of Pragnanz;4-Law of proximity;5-Law of similarity.

-6-GENEVA SCHOOL OF

PSYCHOLOGY

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9th, 1896. He began publishing effectively in high school on his favourite subject, molluscs.

Jean Piaget

After high school, he went on to the University of Neuchâtel.

In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate in Science from the University of Neuchâtel and he worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich.

In 1921 he accepted a position at the Institut J. J. Rousseau in Geneva.

Here he began to research the reasoning of elementary school children. This research was to become his first of five books on child psychology.

In 1929, Piaget began working as the director of the International Bureau of Education, a post he would hold until 1967.

He also began large scale research with A. Szeminska, E. Meyer, and especially B. Inhelder, who would become his major collaborator.

In 1940, He became Chair of Experimental Psychology, the Director of the psychology laboratory, and the President of the Swiss Society of Psychology.

In 1949 and 1950, he published his synthesis: Introduction to Genetic Epistemology.

In 1952, he became a professor at the Sorbonne.

In 1955, he created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology, of which he served as director the rest of his life.

In 1956, he founded the School of Sciences at the University of Geneva.

He continued working on a general theory of structure of the mind. By the end of his career, he had written over 60 books and many hundreds of articles.He died in Geneva, on September 16th, 1980, one of the most significant psychologists of the twentieth century.

During many years of research, Piaget developed the idea of stages of cognitive development which constitute a lasting contribution to psychology.

These stages are: -Sensorimotor stage;-Preoperational stage;-Concrete operations stage;-Formal operations stage.

It is hard to say, of Piaget's many works, which are the most significant or interesting, but here goes:

-The Moral Judgement of the Child;-The Psychology of Intelligence;-The Construction of Reality in the Child; -The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence.