Herman Ebbinghaus Memory Quiz and Flashcards

Study Notes

Herman Ebbinghaus

Studied classical languages, history, and philosophy, and received a doctorate from Bonn University.
Inspired by Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics, which led him to conduct research on memory and psychology.
Became a lecturer on philosophy at the University of Berlin and published "On Memory: an Investigation in Experimental Psychology", a groundbreaking work that marked a turning point in psychology.
Established psychology's second experimental journal: Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs.
Published an article on the testing of school children's intelligence, introducing the sentence completion task later used in the Binet-Simon scale of intelligence.
His student, William Stern, is credited with developing the concept of IQ.
Many modern topics in psychology can be traced back to Ebbinghaus' work.

Ebbinghaus' Research on Memory

Created 2,300 nonsense syllables to study learning as it occurred, and recorded the number of exposures needed to relearn the material.
Developed the concept of "Savings", the difference between the number of times it took to initially learn the material and the number of times it took to relearn it.
Created psychology's first retention curve, showing that forgetting is most rapid in the first few hours after learning, and that overlearning reduces the rate of forgetting.
Found that meaningfulness affects memory, making it harder to learn meaningless material.
Showed that spaced repetition is more effective than a single, long exposure to material.

George Elias Muller

Also studied memory and found that people spontaneously organize materials to be remembered into meaningful patterns.
Researched retroactive inhibition, the phenomenon where new learning can cause the forgetting of old material.
Preferred physiological explanations over philosophical theories.
Taught many women and one of the first African American's to teach psychology in the US, Gilbert Haven Jones.

Muller's Contributions

Became a leading researcher in psychophysics after Fechner's death.
Supported Hering's views on color vision over those of Helmholtz.
Created novel instruments, such as the memory drum.

Hans Vaihinger and the Philosophy of "As If"

Published a book on the philosophy of "As If", which posits that all we can be certain of are sensations and the relationships among them.
Argued that social living requires us to give meaning to these sensations, and that we invent terms, concepts, and theories and act "as if" they were true.
Believed that inventing meaning is a part of human nature.
Suggested that fiction is not a derogatory term, and that ideas can be useful even if they are not true.
Proposed similarities between his philosophy and pragmatism, evaluating ideas based on their usefulness.

Description

Test your knowledge on Herman Ebbinghaus, his background, academic achievements, and contributions to the field of psychology. Learn about his life, education, and research work on memory and unconscious philosophy.