Tag Archives: Washburn

New Articles: Washburn’s Cognitivism and Boring in the AJP

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The Summer 2017 issue of The American Journal of Psychology is now available and includes two articles that may interest AHP readers. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Margaret F. Washburn in The American Journal of Psychology: A Cognitive Precursor?,” by José T. Boyano. The abstract reads,

In the early 20th century, Margaret F. Washburn (1871–1939) produced numerous studies on perception, affective value of stimulus, memory, emotions, and consciousness. This experimental work was published in The American Journal of Psychology. The purpose of this article is to analyze the temporal evolution of these kinds of experiments and relate them to Washburn’s theoretical production. Contrary to other views, Washburn’s experimental evolution follows a logical sequence and has a strong inner coherence. Among other reasons, the lack of a scientific and social framework to the study of the mind has tended to overshadow large areas of Washburn’s thought. However, both the work published in AJP and the methods used in experiments provide reasons to consider Washburn one of the precursors of contemporary cognitive psychology.

“Edwin G. Boring: The Historian’s Path in the Pages of The American Journal of Psychology,” by Shawn P. Gallagher. The abstract reads, Continue reading New Articles: Washburn’s Cognitivism and Boring in the AJP →

Washburn as Animal Psychologist

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The Time Capsule section of the September 2010 issue of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology includes a piece on early psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn. Authored by Elizabeth Scarborough the article highlights Washburn’s important work as a comparative psychologist.

Trained by E.B. Titchener in the use of introspection, Washburn believed that access to the minds of other humans came by way of carefully controlled self-reports. While she acknowledged the temptation of anthropomorphism and controlled for it as a possible source of error, she maintained that the minds of non-human animals could be inferred from their behavior, based on the analogy of human conscious experience.