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History Psychology:8. Experimental PsychologyA special department of physiological psychology which has recently risen rapidly into favor in some countries is experimental psychology, alluded to above in our historical sketch. It is at times styled the "New Psychology" by its more enthusiastic supporters. It seeks to secure precision and an objective standard in the description of mental states by controlling their conditions by skilful devices and ingenious apparatus. Its chief success so far has been in its efforts to measure the varying intensity of sensations, the delicacy of sense-organs and "reaction-time" or the rapidity of a faculty's response to stimulation. Certain properties of memory have also been made the subject of measuring experiments and more recently considerable industry has been devoted, especially by Külpe and the Würzburg school, to bring some aspects of the higher activities of intellect and will within the range of the laboratory apparatus. Opinions still differ much as to both the present value and future prospects of experimental psychology. Whilst Wundt, the leader of the new movement for the past fifty years, places the only hope of psychological progress in the experimental method, William James's judgment on the entire literature of the subject since Fechner (1840) was that "its proper psychological outcome is just nothing at all" ("Principles", I, 534). Apart, however from the very modest positive results, especially in the higher forms of mental life, which the experimental method has achieved or may achieve in the future, its exercise may nevertheless prove a valuable agency in the training of the psychological specialist, both in increasing his appreciation of the value of the most minute accuracy in descriptions of mental states, and also by fostering in him habits of precision and skill in systematic introspection. |
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