A Look At Experimental Psychology

Experimental psychology is more of a methodological approach rather than a subject and covers a wide range of topics within the psychological field. Over the years, experimental psychologists have conducted research, published articles, and taught classes on neuroscience, sensation, perception, memory, language, among others. In order to conduct their research, experimental psychologists utilize experimental methods. The aim of this field is to discover the processes involved in behavior and cognition.
As a modern academic discipline, experimental psychology was introduced in the 19th century when Wilhelm Wundt used a mathematical and experimental approach in the field in establishing the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany as well as structuralism. Herman Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener, who utilized introspection among their experimental methods, were very influential in the field of experimental psychology as well.
George Trumbull Ladd is credited for being the first to bring experimental psychology into the United States in 1879 as well as for his establishment of the Yale University psychological laboratory. In 1887, he published the first American textbook entitled Elements of Physiological Psychology, which included huge amount of information on the new experimental method of discipline.
In the first half of the 20th century, behaviorism was the dominant school within the field, especially in the United States. This resulted to the neglect of the mental phenomena within experimental psychology. This was not the situation in Europe as psychologists like Sir Frederic Bartlett, Kenneth Craik, W.E. Hick, and Donald Broadbent, influenced the industry with their works on thinking, attention, and memory. This laid the groundwork for the development of cognitive psychology.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, experimental psychology shifted its focus as a result of the expansion of the field as a discipline as well as the growth in the size and number of sub-disciplines. Experimental psychologists utilized a wide array of methods and did not confine themselves to a strictly experimental approach. This is due to the developments in the philosophy of science which had an effect on the prestige of experimentation.
Experimental method is now being used in other disciplines within the field such as social psychology, which was not previously included in experimental psychology. The method was used in several titles of well-renowned highly prestigious learned societies and scientific journals as well as university courses in psychology.
Due to the complicated nature of human behavior and mental processes as well as the ambiguity of interpretation and the unconscious process to which they are subject to requires emphasis on sound methods within experimental psychology.
Experimental psychology requires control of extraneous variables, reduction of the need for experimenter bias, counterbalancing the sequence of experimental tasks, sufficient size of sample, and utilization of operational definitions that needs reliability and validity, and proper analysis of data.
Psychology Fitness provides in-depth information about experimental methods used within the discipline as well as psychology online.

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