Abstract
In my Historical Figure paper, I am writing about Hermann Ebbinghaus and how amazing of a German Philosopher he truly is. While doing research about Ebbinghaus, I learned some interesting things about him, he is a very intelligent man and fount the process of memory was very significant to many. In my first paragraph of my paper, I talked about where Ebbinghaus received his education and about his experiments. In the second paragraph, I talked about Ebbinghaus’s “nonsense syllabus”. Ebbinghaus experimented and was curious about how much effort it would take to learn something for the first time. In the third paragraph, I discussed Ebbinghaus’s first invention which is the “forgetting curve”. In the fourth paragraph of this paper,
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Ebbinghaus is a very well-known German philosopher and psychologist. He studied memory and was the first to describe the learning curve, forgetting curve and the space effect. He explored the experimental study of memory. He was born in 1850 in Germany, where he also studied philology and history there. In 1885, Hermann published 169- page monograph studies in experimental psychology. Ebbinghaus received his education and studied psychology in Bonn, Halle and Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1873. (William Levelt pg 144) Ebbinghaus published a highly successful textbook of psychology in 1897. He died in 1950. He was very known in psychology where he was the first to convince a new way to measure mental processes such a memory. Ebbinghaus has done many experiments on the brain. In one of his experiments, he concluded that the human brain can overlearn and over learning helps you remember things better. However, you can also over learn too much and forget the things you taught the human brain to learn (Douglas Mook pg …show more content…
The “nonsense syllabus” is when he would put a syllabus in his hand an arrange it in a list. Then, he would read over and over the syllabus until he remembered it, he would countinue this process until he would not make any mistake. Then he would write down and record how many times it took him until he got it right without any mistakes. Then he would go do something else, maybe other experiments or something new to take his thinking away from the experiment he was working on. After that he would then come back to see if he was able to rememorize the syllabus. It took him some trails before he could successfully complete it without any mistakes. By doing the invention, Ebbinghaus was trying to see what his memory strength would have been from the first time he learned them to the second time and if studying them the second time was effective or not. With all this data, he could show the strength of memory and if it decays with time. Ebbinghaus first investigated the forgetting curve his self in the late 1800’s. With some research on his own and on his self, he learned by his famous “nonsense syllables”. With this he used the methods of saving, which is the strength of memory. It involves the differences between number of his trails that it takes to learn the items listed and then how many times it takes to re learn them again. I do not feel like scientists today would use the “nonsense
Foer recounted of how “training one’s memory was not to become a living book but rather a living concordance” (165). He goes on to list various beings throughout history that have tried to obtain this goal. Peter of Ravenna authored a book, Phoenix, which was about memory training. Now in the fifteenth century, Peter’s book was a hit as Peter himself “bragged of having memorized twenty thousand legal points, a thousand texts by Ovid, seven thousand texts from scripture, along with a host of other classical works” (166). Peter placed reading in a different way in which it is today. He reread and dwelled upon each work he read, this emphasizes the work staying and settling in his mind. Whereas, reading is superficial with a “premium on doing it quickly” (166). Or Camillo who was paid by King Francis I to build a memory palace for him and him alone. Camillo promised that one “can hold in the mind and master all human concepts and all things that are in the entire world” (168). He believed that there was a magical system where memorizing images, one could understand the connections of everything. Now in the case of Schulz, she talks about a famous philosopher Descartes. He brings up the argument that “error does not rise from believing something that isn’t true, but believing on insufficient evidence” (362). Descartes wanted to be an ideal thinker and take in every bit of evidence he possibly could
Ebbinghaus began travelling the continent both lecturing and studying. During his travels he stumbled upon a copy of Psychophysics by Gustav Theodor Fechner. This sparked an interest in "higher mental processes" and the problem that Wilhelm Wundt failed to solve experimentally. Wundt was the first to establish a laboratory for psychological experimentation. This left Ebbinghaus to study the error Wundt made regarding these higher mental processes. He began doing so using himself as the subject of the experiments. This would eventually result in his well known work translated as On Memory in 1885.
Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An introduction to the history of psychology (6th ed., p. 224,
...n looking at the results, they found out that the learning curve was exponential. The researchers assumed that learning occurs while people study and encode material into the brain.
Rieber, R. W. (2001). Wilhelm Wundt in history: the making of a scientific psychology. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Buchanan, R. D. (2011). Research report: Doing a biography of Hans J. Eysenck. History Of Psychology, 14(2), 210-213. doi:10.1037/a0023481b
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
...pporting details. At the conclusion of the article, the authors share their thoughts on how it might be virtually impossible to determine when a memory is true or false. I also like their willingness to continue the investigations despite how difficult it might be to obtain concrete answers.
It was in Germany was where Lewin began his formal education, but like most people he was unsure of what he really wanted to study at first. In 1909 Lewin began attending the University of Frieberg where he started to study medicine. This did not interest him so he transferred to the University of Munich where he tried to study Biology. Again Lewin decided that this was not for him so he transferred for the last time, this time to the University of Berlin where his study of Philosophy and Psychology began (Frostburg). Lewin was said to have "found many of (the school's) department's courses in the grand tradition of Wundtian psychology irreverant and dull (Greathouse)." He would eventually receive his Ph.D. in the "experimental study of associative learning" at the University of Berlin in 1916 (Jones).
Learning and memory are fascinating. The world could not function without either. They both are used in many different fashions in a wide variety of places. Learning and Memory have been carefully studied by professionals but are also well known and used by the common people on a daily basis. I am one of those common people, a student who is constantly learning and making the most of my memory. Since enrolling in The Psychology of Learning and Memory class I have come to the realization that I encounter situations in my life that exemplify the very concepts I have studied. I have also learned that it is beneficial to apply the lessons learned in class to my everyday life. Positive reinforcement, learned helplessness and serial recall are a few among many of the learning and memory models that have come to action in my life and in my final reflections surrounding the course.
Psychology started, and had a long history, as a topic within the fields of philosophy and physiology. It then became an independent field of its own through the work of the German Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology and structuralism. Wundt stressed the use of scientific methods in psychology, particularly through the use of introspection. In 1875, a room was set-aside for Wundt for demonstrations in what we now call sensation and perception. This is the same year that William James set up a similar lab at Harvard. Wilhelm Wundt and William James are usually thought of as the fathers of psychology, as well as the founders of psychology?s first two great ?schools? Structuralism and Functionalism. Psychologist Edward B Titchner said; ?to study the brain and the unconscious we should break it into its structural elements, after that we can construct it into a whole and understand what it does.? (psicafe.com)
· 1894, worked as head of philosophy and psychology departments at University of Chicago (1894 - 1904)
Schultz, D. P. & Schultz, S. E. (2012). A History of Modern Psychology, (10th Ed.). Wadsworth,
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) officially opened an institution and laboratory for Psychology, in Leipzig, Germany. Many students were also taught here on experimental psychology. Wundt was touted as a great lecturer, and some of those taught, emulated Wundt's work and made a significant contribution to psychology; for example Edward Titchner (1867-1927), who introduced 'Structuralism' to the United States of America. This facility was renowned through out the world as the premise on which psychology became a science, because, it was there Wundt carried out extensive research on several hypotheses.