Read the text once again and for questions 1 -5, choose the answer (A, B or C) which you think is correct according to the text
The formal psychological laboratory was founded in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt, a psychologist and philosopher at the University of Leipzig in Germany. His goal was to develop techniques for uncovering the natural laws of the human mind. At the outset, Wundt did not attract much attention; only four students attended his first lecture. By the mid-1890s, however, his classes were filled to capacity.
Wundt’s primary interest was perception. When we looked at a banana, for example, we immediately think, “here is a fruit, something to peel and eat”. But these are associations based on past experience. All we really see is a long, yellow object. Wundt and his students set out to strip perception of all its associations to find the most fundamental elements, or “atoms”, of thought. They trained themselves in the art of objective introspection, recording in minute detail their thoughts, feelings, their heartbeat, and respiration rates when listening to a metronome, for example. This may sound crude today, but Wundt’s insistence on measurement and experimentation marked psychology as a science from the beginning.
Perhaps the most important of the Leipzig lab was its students, who carried the new science to universities around the world. Among them was Edward Bradford Titchener. British by birth, Titchener was appointed professor of psychology at Cornell University, a post that he held until his death in 1927.
Psychology, Titchener wrote, is the science of consciousness – “physics with the observer kept in”. In physics, an hour or a mile is an exact measure. To the observer, however, an hour may seem to pass in seconds, whereas a mile may seem endless. Titchener broke consciousness down into three basic elements: physical sensations (what we see), feelings (such as liking or disliking bananas), and images (memories of other bananas). Even the most complex thoughts can be reduced to these simple elements. Titchener saw psychology’s role as identifying these elements and showing how they can be combined and integrated. Because it stresses the basic units of experience and the combinations in which they occur, this school of psychology is called ___________.
1. By the mid-1890s Wundt
a) didn’t have many students
b) had a lot of students
c) had a few students
2. To find the most fundamental elements of thought Wundt
a) relied on associations
b) tried to rid perception of associations
c) based on past experience
3. Objective introspection is:
a) self-examination
b) studying other people’s thoughts, feelings, etc.
c) studying nature
4. Edward Titchener is known for that
a) he was one of Wilhelm Wundt’s brightest students
b) he was professor of psychology at Cornell University for a long time
c) he specified the basic elements of consciousness
5. Titchener defined psychology as
a) physics
b) an exact measure of reality
c) the study of mental processes