Timeline of Psychology - link & response for this week

As I was searching for resources for my paper on J.B. Watson, I came across this synopsis of psychology as a discipline. What is interesting is that it goes MUCH farther back than we were able to study this semester. I find it intriguing to think about psychology as simply a way of thinking rather than a science. When I think this way, I realize that some of the things I have learned in my undergrad career could be considered common sense. What I like about the field of psychology, however, is the way we scientific-ize (I made that word up) the topics that seem to be common sense. Like a study on conditioned emotional responses (you'll learn about that in my presentation!)...we had figured that it's a possibility; before studying psychology we thought that this is possible. But a psychologist made the effort to back up a claim with empirical research. This is what makes our discipline more than "common sense."

Finally, I'll end with another link. I really like this series of podcasts (if you can get past the Australian accents!) and though not many of the episodes related DIRECTLY to the history of psychology, they are all integrated with information from many fields and schools of study. Let me know if you find one in particular that you like!

Your Future and Our Future - link & response for last week

I also enjoyed reading Larry's book. It really put my own education into perspective. How wonderful that many of us will be making history as well! Maybe if Larry writes a sequel later on down the line, some of us (besides Megan Brown of course, who is already in the book) will be included.

Funny to think that all of the trends in the field we've been reading about for the entire semester also translated to our own tiny campus. I think that Beloit's psychology department, for the most part, has always reflected the ideals of the greater field. We may not be big on a map but we sure do know what's popular!

I was really interested in the discussion on the scientific aspect of psychology. I was wondering exactly what Sara was wondering: did Larry think that the move to the Science Center improved other fields' views of ours? Did it improve our own views of ourselves? Are we a more legitimate science because we were invited to be housed in our new state-of-the-art building? I've felt that way; I also feel lucky that as a senior, I was able to experience the psychology major in both ways.

Anyway, since a lot of us are seniors, I looked around for a few sites that could help us potentially make history. If you're still looking for something to do after May 17th (or after you graduate next year, juniors)...here are some helpful websites. I can't take credit for this, though, because I found them on the FACS site. :)

Careers for Psych Majors
Entry Level Jobs for Psych Majors
What to do with your psych degree

Post and Link for last week...my apologies

I so enjoyed reading Larry's book last week and I thought we were able to have some great conversations because of the enthusiasm from everyone in the class that day. (I'm also glad everyone survived the heated trivia game :) I mostly enjoyed learning about how the Psychology Department at Beloit College has survived through so much. I just showed some prospies around ysterday and was proud to say that we were the only social science department housed in the science center. We should be so very proud of this!

To read about the long line of impressive faculty members that have served our psychology department was a pleasure. I wonder how even way back then we attrachted such amazing professors. I was especially impressed with Professor Farris and The de Weerdts. All of these people were focused on their students and the legacy of this focus is so important. Megan mentioned how furtunate we are to be at a student-centered college and she couldn't be more right.

I have attached a '98 Psychobabble. Seems random, but I think it's good to look at just our recent successes. For those of us who are graduating I recommend looking down at "Alumni News" to see all the different jobs alums have pursued from the class of '32 through '97!

http://www.beloit.edu/psychology/archives/Babble/psychobabble98.html

Week 12: Reflection

I really enjoyed Larry's book on the history of psychology at Beloit, as well as the discussion he held in class on Thursday. I think that as students of the department we are really lucky to have something like this and that this will become more meaningful when we're older and are reflecting back on our time at Beloit. Not only have we witnessed the move of the department from South College/random buildings on campus, we're also psychology students during the time of publication of Professor Tawney's Chronoscope. I think both of these events are really important for the presence of psychology as a discipline and major here at Beloit. I agree with earlier posts and with Larry's question of whether we feel more connected to our department after having read this book. Is there any other department on campus whose first professor was a student of the nakesame of their field? One of my favorite parts of the book was Larry's disucssion of being a professor at a small, liberal arts college versus a large, research-1 institution. This seems especially important for me as I am considering being a professor in the long run, and would want to teach at a school like Beloit. It seems that studying psychology here is such a different experience than at a state university. Having professors whose focus is on teaching your class and hearing your ideas is strikingly opposite from those who are focused on their personal research. I definitely don't think I'd feel as confident about my impending graduation if I'd gone to a large university - especially with respect to the current economy. Being student-centered is one of my favorite things about Beloit, and one of my favorite things about being part of a department in which every professor knows my name. How do you guys feel? What are you planning to do with your psychology major when you graduate?

History of Psych at Beloit College Post and Reflection

Larry's book allowed me to feel more connected to Beloit College because I was able to learn about the school and the psychology and major and the historical contexts in which they developed. I was surprised to learn about the department's progressive start and close ties to the very roots of psychology, with Professor Tawney having earned his PhD with Wundt. However, despite the head start, it seems that the dept stalled or lagged behind the interest in psychology nation wide, being carried by only one professor for so many years. I wonder if there was anything that the administration of the school could have done to increase the attraction of the position and retain faculty for longer than a couple years. It's interesting to think about what the dept could have been had it been stronger from the beginning. The history of the dept reinforces what I've learned in several classes, especially social psychology. No individual or institution is an island; they are influenced by the social influences all around. This is evident in the dept's shift to behaviorism during that school's heyday, and eventual conversion to cognitive psych. It is regrettable that during these times one school of thought dominated in the dept to the exclusion of other valuable viewpoints. Presently, I think the dept is doing a wonderful job of including a broad sampling of perspective and I am confident that it will continue to do so. We even continue to do original research, which is difficult to do at a small liberal arts school, because professors' time is taken up by teaching several classes, spending more time with students, etc. Here is a link to the study Greg conducted with one of the founders or positive psychology, Martin Seligman:

http://ft.csa.com/ids70/resolver.php?sessid=4j409lb1lcn4lbddam19lamtk6&server=csaweb106v.csa.com&check=45085fb0d70009bcf60ae0c74fb5811b&db=psycarticles-set-c&key=PRE%2F2%2Fpre_2_1_10a&mode=pdf

Freud's grandson has died

He was successful in many fields. His obituary.

Beloit's Rich Psychological History

I really have enjoyed reading about our long history of psychology right here in Beloit!
It is strange to think that this place has gone through so many changes. I found it interesting that, from the comments made by students at the time (through the Round Table, etc.), it seems like the overall atmosphere of Beloit College hasn't changed much. The professors are still extremely knowledgeable and eccentric, the students still enjoy working closely with faculty members...

Plus, I am so impressed that we have had psychology professors that come from all over the US and some that grew up in distant countries. I think it is amazing that out of the handful of lucky US psychology students that were able to work under Wundt, that one of them came here to work! (if only for a shorter period of time)
I guess this just makes me think that we really should look harder at the old things we throw away!

The Mind as a Computer - link & response for last week

While browsing the web, I found this blog which directly relates to our topic of last week's discussion. More specifically, this post detailed an interesting study that showed, through sensory imaging tests, that the mind-computer metaphor doesn't always work so well.

I find this metaphor interesting. I wonder if von Neumann thought he had hit the theoretical jackpot when he came up with this metaphor. All along, psychologists had been trying to answer the question of, "what is going on in the mind and why?" As Larry White put it in chapter 1 of his book, structuralism was a question of "what is mind?" and functionalism was a question of "what is mind for?" In my opinion, behaviorism was looking at "what can we do to control the mind?" and psychoanalysis was "how can we extract what is happening in the mind?" To answer this with a metaphor that explains the mind as a mass of connections that all have a specific purpose and specific applications seems to be the end point of wondering "what is going on in the mind?"

It doesn't answer the question of "why" though. And even though, at the time, not as much was known about computers as is now, doesn't it impersonalize our existence? If we can be programmed to perform in a certain way (which, I guess was the aim of behaviorism...) what is the point? And the computer metaphor does nothing for explaining emotion and other affectual things about the mind. However I think it was probably a breakthrough metaphor that also influenced the development of technology (which, as we all know, was extremely important and significant - without it we wouldn't be able to blog for class!).

Darnell Wilson

Debra A. Poole and Larry T. White began some research studies after the death of a young boy named Darnell Wilson in Beloit, Wisconsin in the 80's.

Hint: What did they decide to study and why?


Here's a link on some of the background information about the case. It's a little heavy, but you can get the idea...
openjurist.org/942/f2d/1143/dsa-v-circuit-court-branch

Professor Tawney's Chronoscope Book

So, tomorrow Larry White will lead the class in discussion regarding his book and his findings...

After that, we have a fun game for you all, so be sure to come prepared!!!

Cognitive Psych blog

Doing a quick review of last week's readings I noticed something that I hadn't before. In Ch 11 of the blue book, Ludy T. Benjamin Jr. talks a great deal about Gestalt Psychology, Bartlett, and the Computer metaphor, however he only briefly mentions Chomsky, Miller, and Brown. The reason this struck me as strange was because last semester in my Human Learning and Cognition class (in Florida) most of what we learned was coined and developed by Chomsky, Miller, and Brown. So I guess my question is, why did Benjamin not dive deeper into a discussion of those three, when seemingly their concepts are the most well-known or best understood of all that was discussed in Ch 11.

The most interesting part of Ch 11 to me though was the discussion of Bartlett and the mind as actively constructing information. I think it makes perfect sense that when we learn new information our mind doesn't just place it anywhere, but instead finds, I guess, it's common relatives, and places it in that area of your memory. This would explain why sometimes people don't seem to make sense, when in reality the associations being made are directly related to where information is stored in their head. Bartlett's concept of memory as subject to error I believe also makes perfect sense. How many times can I recall holding my daddy's hand in the gas station and looking up and realizing it wasn't my daddy, but according to Bartlett the question becomes, is that really my memory, did my mind fill in the blanks or make part of it up based on what my parents have told me? Hmmmm....

Cognitive Psych Link

http://www.gestalttherapy.net/welcome/index.html

This link is to a website that has blogs for discussion between gestalt therapists, trainees, etc as well as projects that are going on. An interesting aspect of the website is "The Writer's Page" it is a link to the life and work of many gestalt therapists, written by them, discussing their practice, theory, and methods.

Week 11: Reflection and Link

I decided to do some additional exploration of the zeigarnik effect after our wrap-up discussion of cognitive psychology and this phenomenon in particular this past week. As you'll recall from the reading, this effect was coined by the Russian psychologist B. Zeigarnik, who claimed that the recall ratio for tasks interrupted in the middle or toward the end is higher than those interrupted early on. Additional research since this time has shown that this effect is more likely to appear if the subject is ego-involved in the task in some way. In addition, studies have shown that individuals with a genuine level of aspiration to complete the task are also more likely to show the zeigarnik effect than other participants.

Apparently musicians like to utilize this phenomenon when composing "hooks," or for the conclusion of pieces. Being rather non-musically inclined, I'm not entirely sure I understand how this works, but in essence, it involes a suspended chord that created initial dissonance and is then resolved by the final note. Check it out here: http://elearningcurve.blogspot.com/2008/07/learning-zeigarnik-effect.html. This article claims the effect can be heard at the end of the Beatles' She's Leaving Home.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a dearth of information on Bluma Zeigarnik beyond short descriptions of her work under Kurt Lewin and subsequent discovery of the phenomenon later named after her. The only other credit I could find to her was her presence in helping to establish experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline. Also, am I the only one that didn't realize Zeigarnik was a woman? Is this due to the tendency to just call scientists by their first intitial/last name, or does it say something more about our tendency to assume important, noted discoveries were made by men? It's interesting to think about the number of men we've studied in this course versus the number of women...

Link and Reflection

The topic that interested me the most this week was the debate about language acquisition during the cognitive revolution. While we were learning about Noam Chomsky's language acquisition device theory and how it opposes Skinner, I was fascinated with the differences between the two. Chomsky's theory makes perfect sense, and I wonder how Skinner completely overlooked these ideas. In my opinion, behaviorism was simply too narrow of a scope to view psychology and it limited research far too much. Skinner MUST have considered the ideas that Chomsky presented because it is so obvious and true. However, Skinner's ideas are clearly lacking important elements that Chomsky discovered. I've discussed my 3 year old cousin on a previous blog post, and I'll refer to him again here. I got him a mini-guitar for Christmas and when he opened the gift he screamed, "How did you know I wanted a buitar? I seeed one of these at the store!" It was funny at the moment because of the words he mispronounced, but it's a great example of Chomsky's theory. There's no way that my cousin was reinforced in the words he said in that sentence. A buitar? Seeed? Sorry Skinner, but I just can't see you point of view. I am very happy that we've moved beyond behaviorism so that research doesn't have to be limited and narrow. Below is a link that provides a pretty cool flow-chart of Chomsky's language/grammar acquisition device, and it has some quotes from Chomsky about his views on bheaviorism.

http://academics.tjhsst.edu/psych/oldPsych/language/chomsky.html

Seth

Cognititve Psych Reflection and Post

In class this week, we talked briefly about the connection between Gestalt Psychology and Cognitive Psych in general, and if cognitive psych today is Gestalt at all. We said that it is not, or at least not very much. However, that does not mean that Gestalt is dead or that it is still not engaging interest and producing research. Here is a link to a society for the promotion of Gestalt. There are a lot of interesting links: http://www.gestalttheory.net/. But just as cognitive psych experienced a rebirth, I think that Gestalt psychology, or at least aspects of Gestalt theory, are experiencing a resurgence in contemporary society. There is great interest in holisting care and alternative medicine among the public, and growing acceptance of it in the medical community. There is also a growing body of research on spirituality, etc in psychological journals and how these various aspects influence health. There is more emphasis on lifestyle change (e.x. diet and exercise) in the prevention and treatment of obesity, heart disease, etc. There is a growing awareness that the whole person must be treated, not simply one part of their body or the disease.


I was surprised to learn that behaviorism had only been dominant in the United States and it hadn't experiences much influence abroad. A part of it was probably some unique American fascination with facts over theory, but I wonder if even this is a valid statement. Ideas come to America: Wundt, Binet, the Gestaltists, Bartlett, etc. But why is it that American ideas don't seem to be spread widely abroad. Perhaps this is a narrow view that I'm talking and that American ideas have spread, but our readings simply didn't focus on that. I also found Mandler's assertion that John B. Watson implanted the seeds of behaviorism's death even its birth surprising as well. It makes a lot of sense. These was such an emphasis on animal research and equating humans with animals that our higher mental process that do exist were necessarily left out. While behaviorism did generate a lot of good research, it was only so long before its shortcomings would be realized and psychologists would have recourse to more cognitive explanations of human behavior and experience.

Freud's apartment - Vienna

Hi all,
I thought I'd post a link to my personal pictures from when I visited Freud's apartment in Vienna, Austria.
Here is a link to the first photo in the series of 23 photos from his house. You're welcome to look at the rest of the photos in that album but those 23 are of course the most relevant to this class!
To scroll through the pictures, use the right-pointing arrow above the photo.

Follow up on Noam

Sorry, I also ran across (totally by accident) an article on the NYT webpage that leads to an entire list of articles by Noam Chomsky if you are interested in what he is up to these days besides talking in Madison.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/noam_chomsky/index.html?inline=nyt-per

Noam Chomsky

Hey,
So I found a link to Noam Chomsky at Madison's Edgewood college.
http://www.uppitywis.org/noam-chomsky-edgewood-last-night

Evidently he has become quite the political theorist and commentator. There are some links on youtube to comments he has on Obama. That (foreign policy) is also what he is presenting about tonight at the Orpheum theater in Madison.
(Just search Noam Chomsky on Obama)

Racial Profiling - link & response for last week

I thought the video we watched last Thursday was really interesting (despite the design and presentation flaws we discussed in class). It led me to think more about the depiction of certain problems in the media, and how psychologists can influence those issues.

In our book, we learned about the alleged racial differences in intelligence and how those research prospects still influence our thinking today. As mentioned in our book, the differences in race (not just in intelligence, but in any aspect of life) tend to be an "American obsesssion."

And as we saw with the Dateline, 20/20, or 60 minutes spot we watched in class, people still tend to "prefer" one race over another, and this leads me to believe that people still see differences between people of different races. Lots of people will claim, "I don't see color," but the research presented in the video we watched tells otherwise. Will this ever go away?

An every day scenario where racial prejudice might come into play is in the phenomenon of racial profiling by police. I found this Time feature article pretty relevant and the interesting part is that it gives multiple viewpoints on this issue. It's kind of long, but I think you'll also find it interesting. (Here also is the photo essay on this subject.)

Last Week's Reflection and Link

We spent a lot of time talking about gender differences last week in class. We discussed what is present in the current research and what we thought should be. Most of the things we mentioned were things that we would have to test and could not look at physiologically. I think it is important to note both sides of this.

It is not important to understand the differences in sexes to answer the ultimate question of which sex is more superior---rather it is best for both sexes involved to learn as much as possible about both sides. I was searching on-line and found the following link that talks about physiological differences that have been found between sexes that I was not aware of. I found the information in "Psychology Today", so its interesting to note who might be reading this type of material. Is it useful? Do we need to understand these differences or does it just polarize the respective genders?

Some of the interesting findings in the article are that women have numerous back-up genes that men don't. The authors speculate that this is the reason why women are less susceptible to mental illnesses (i.e. autism and schizophrenia). We know that women have more gray matter in our brains and really drive home that point, but who knew that men had more white matter and cerebrospinal fluid? The reasoning for this is that it gives men's brains more cushion and protection from the elements when tooling around or battling. Just some food for thought...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20030624-000003.xml