Kohler

Kohler

In the Beginning…

Born: 1887, in Reval, Estonia

Family: -Father was the headmaster of the local school set up by the community

-Wilhelm (older brother) was a distinguished academician

-sisters were nurses and teachers

*education was very important in the family

Interests in science: -Kohler had a scientific background in physics, chemistry, and biology

-It was because of his interest in science he met the great Max Planck,

a physics professor at the University of Berlin

Other Interests: - a love for classical music

- a love for the piano

- a zest for the outdoors

*Many colleagues have often remarked over the years that Kohler was thought more like a physicist than a psychologist

KOHLER'S BOOKS

1917 - "The Mentality of Apes"

*see other page for more information

1920 - "Physical Gestalten"

Kohler expanded Wertheimer's idea that to perceive actual and apparent movement as the same, brain processes is themselves must show properties of patterning or be Gestalten

1921 - "Psychologische Forschung"

a journal that published a considerable amount of Gestalt Theory literature during the years

Kohler lived in Berlin

1929 - "Gestalt Psychology"

an exposition of Gestalt Theory for Americans

a critique of the atomistic psychologies dominant at that time (structuralism and behaviorism)

1938 - "The Place of Value in a World of Facts"

a reworking of the William James lecturer which Kohler had delivered at Harvard University during 1934-1935

1940 - "Dynamics in Psychology"

takes up theme of the relationship between field physics and the findings of Gestalt psychology

1969 - "The Task of Gestalt Psychology"

an overview of the accomplishments of, and challenges to, Gestalt Psychology written near the end of his life

1971 - "Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler"

a collection that spans more than fifty years of his scientific writing

Gestalt Psychology

Founders: Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka

One of the six main schools of psychology:

Structuralism

Functionalism

Associationism

Behaviorism

Psychoanalysis

Gestalt

Gestalt is defined as:

The German word for "form", meaning configuration, pattern, or organized whole

Key argument:

-The nature of the parts is determined by, and secondary to, the whole

-The whole is different from the sum of its parts

-One must examine the whole to discover what its natural parts are, and not proceed from

supposed elements into large entities

Gestalt psychologists developed five laws that govern human perception:

Law of Proximity

Elements that are closer together will be perceived as a coherent object

Law of Similarity

Elements that look similar will be perceived as part of the same form

Law of Good Continuation
-Humans tend to continue contours whenever the elements of the pattern establish an implied direction

Law of Closure
-Humans tend to enclose a space by completing a contour and ignoring gaps in the figure

Law of Pragnanz
-A stimulus will be organized into as good (symmetrical, simple, and regular) as figure as possible

Law of Figure/Ground

-A stimulus will be perceived as separate from it's ground

When and Why did it begin?

The study began in 1910 to study phi-phenomenon

-The phi phenomenon is the illusion of movement created by presenting visual stimuli in rapid succession

It emerged as part of a reaction against structuralism

The Gestalt movement was a reaction against Wundt and behaviorism

They saw that the behaviorists attempt to analyze behavior into stimulus response bonds as an ill-fated effort to carve the whole into its parts

2) They felt that psychology should continue to study conscious experience rather than shift

its focus to observable behavior

Kohler was primarily a defender of the principles of the Gestalt movement

Gestalt Theory influenced:

Philosophy
Aesthetics
Art

In The End……

Gestalt Psychology was responsible for some major advances in the study of perception, problem solving, and social behaviors

Gestalt Movement soon faded because it was unable to attract a large amount of loyalists

However, Gestalt Theory contributed to two contemporary theoretical perspectives in psychology:

Humanism

Cognitive psychology

Kohler wrote many years later:

"We all had great respect for the exact methods by which certain sensory data and facts of memory were being investigated, but we also felt quite strongly that work of so little scope could never give us an adequate psychology of real human beings."

"The Mentality of Apes"

During 1913-1920, Kohler was director of the Prussian Academy of Sciences station at

Tenerife in the Canary Islands

During those years, Kohler performed naturalistic observations on apes

Naturalistic observation - recording subjects' naturally occurring behavior while they are in their natural environment

These observations demonstrated that in apes both perceptions and cognitions are organized

Gestalten

1) Perceptions - apes learned relationships among stimuli, rather than a: simple

response to an isolated stimulus (transposition)

2) Cognitions - the solution of a problem required not just the gradual accumulation

of new facts, but the reorganization of existing facts into a new,

coherent structure

These findings were summarized on Kohler's book, "The Mentality of Apes" in 1917
- establishes the applicability of the Gestalt to animal behavior
- focuses on insightful solutions to problems

- Kohler observed apes named Sulton, Grande, Konsul, and Chica

Simplest case: a desired object of food was placed on the other side of the fence at the

end of the alley - if the ape conceptualized the Gestalt, it turned back down the alley, went around the other side of the fence, and obtained the goal

Case on Sultan: Sultan was one of the brighter Chimpanzees, and is known for surviving the two and three stick problems. Kohler placed the fruit on the outside of the cage so the apes could not reach it. Sulton realized he had to insert the smaller bamboo rod into the larger one to reach the fruit because the smaller one was not long enough. When the shorter stick was long enough to reach the fruit, Sultan dropped the longer stick.

Case: Bananas hung from the ceiling - there were two boxes - one large and one small - neither alone could help the ape reach the bananas - the ape solved the problem by stacking the smaller on top of the larger box and stepped on both of them to reach the bananas. The ape learned to solve the problem quickly with further trials.

-These naturalistic observations of the apes led Kohler to define insight learning

-Insight learning: the appearance of a complete solution with reference to the whole lay

out of the perceptual or cognitive field

-"The Mentality of Apes" gave ground to science fiction writer Pierre Boule

Planet of the Apes 2) 2001: Space Odyssey