Experimental psychology

Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, including (among others) sensation & perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; developmental processes, social psychology, and the neural substrates of all of these. Psychophysics Wilhelm Wundt Experimental psychology emerged as a modern academic discipline in the 19th century when Wilhelm Wundt introduced a mathematical and experimental approach to the field. Wundt founded the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. Other experimental psychologists, including Hermann Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener, included introspection in their experimental methods. Charles Bell Charles Bell was a British physiologist whose main contribution to the medical and scientific community was his research on the nervous system. He wrote a pamphlet summarizing his research on rabbits. His research concluded that sensory nerves enter at the posterior (dorsal) roots of the spinal cord, and motor nerves emerge from the anterior (ventral) roots of the spinal cord. Eleven years later, a French physiologist, Francois Magendie, published the same findings without being aware of Bell's research. As a result of Bell not publishing his research, this discovery was called the Bell–Magendie law to honor both individuals. Bell's discovery disproved the belief that nerves transmitted either vibrations or spirits. Ernst Heinrich Weber Ernst Heinrich Weber, a German physician, is credited as one of experimental psychology's founders. Weber's main interests were the sense of touch and kinesthesis. His most memorable contribution to the field of experimental psychology is the suggestion that judgments of sensory differences are relative and not absolute. This relativity is expressed in "Weber's Law," which suggests that the just-noticeable difference or jnd is a constant proportion of the ongoing stimulus level.