Methods Of Psychology

Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology approaches psychology as one of the natural sciences, and therefore assumes that it is susceptible to the experimental method. Many experimental psychologists have gone further, and have assumed that all methods of investigation other than experimentation are suspect. In particular, experimental psychologists have been inclined to discount the case study and interview methods as they have been used in clinical and developmental psychology.


Ibn al-Haytham is considered by some to have been a forerunner of experimental psychology, for his experimental approach to the psychology of visual perception and optical illusions in his Book of Optics.A Persian psychologist who discovered the concept of reaction time.Further progress was not made until the 19Th century when Wilhelm Wundt, considered the father of experimental psychology, founded experimental psychology as a discipline and introduced a mathematical and quantitative approach to experimental psychology. Other early experimental psychologists, including Hermann Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener, included introspection among their experimental methods.

However, in the first half of the twentieth century, experimental psychology became closely allied with behaviourism, especially in the United States, and this led to some neglect of mental phenomena.

Introspection

Introspection is the mental self-observation reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul. It can also be called contemplation of one's self, and is contrasted with Extro spection, the observation of things external to one's self.


Introspection may be used synonymously with self-reflection and used in a similar way. Cognitive psychology accepts the use of the scientific method, but rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation for this reason. It should be noted that Herbert Simon and Allen Ne well identified the 'thinking-aloud' protocol, in which investigators view a subject engaged in introspection, and who speaks his thoughts aloud, thus allowing study of his introspection.

ARTICLE SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection