What is modern psychology and how did it get here? How and why did psychology come to be the world's most popular science? A Conceptual History of Psychology charts the development of psychology from its foundations in ancient philosophy to the dynamic scientific field it is today. Emphasizing psychology's diverse global heritage, the book explains how, across centuries, human beings came to use reason, empiricism, and science to explore each other's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. The book skilfully interweaves conceptual and historical issues to illustrate the contemporary relevance of history to the discipline. It shows how changing historical and cultural contexts have shaped the way in which modern psychology conceptualizes individuals, brains, personality, gender, cognition, consciousness, health, childhood, and relationships. This comprehensive textbook: - Helps students understand psychology through its origins, evolution and cultural contexts - Moves beyond a 'great persons and events' narrative to emphasize the development of the theoretical and practical concepts that comprise psychology - Highlights the work of minority and non-Western figures whose influential work is often overlooked in traditional accounts, providing a fuller picture of the field's development - Includes a range of engaging and innovative learning features to help students build and deepen a critical understanding of the subject - Draws on examples from contemporary politics, society and culture that bring key debates and historical milestones to life - Meets the requirements for the Conceptual and Historical Issues component of BPS-accredited Psychology degrees. This textbook will provide students with invaluable insight into the past, present and future of this exciting and vitally important field. Read more from Brian Hughes on his blog at thesciencebit.net

A comprehensive treatment of the skills and techniques needed for visual psychophysics, from basic tools to sophisticated data analysis. Vision is one of the most active areas in biomedical research, and visual psychophysical techniques are a foundational methodology for this research enterprise. Visual psychophysics, which studies the relationship between the physical world and human behavior, is a classical field of study that has widespread applications in modern vision science. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this textbook provides a comprehensive treatment of visual psychophysics, teaching not only basic techniques but also sophisticated data analysis methodologies and theoretical approaches. It begins with practical information about setting up a vision lab and goes on to discuss the creation, manipulation, and display of visual images; timing and integration of displays with measurements of brain activities and other relevant techniques; experimental designs; estimation of behavioral functions; and examples of psychophysics in applied and clinical settings. The book's treatment of experimental designs presents the most commonly used psychophysical paradigms, theory-driven psychophysical experiments, and the analysis of these procedures in a signal-detection theory framework. The book discusses the theoretical underpinnings of data analysis and scientific interpretation, presenting data analysis techniques that include model fitting, model comparison, and a general framework for optimized adaptive testing methods. It includes many sample programs in Matlab with functions from Psychtoolbox, a free toolbox for real-time experimental control. Once students and researchers have mastered the material in this book, they will have the skills to apply visual psychophysics to cutting-edge vision science.

A Brief History of Modern Psychology offers a concise account of the evolution of this dynamic field—from early pioneers of psychological theory to cutting-edge contemporary applications. In this revised third edition, leading scholar Ludy Benjamin surveys the significant figures, concepts, and schools of thought that have shaped modern psychology. Engaging and accessible narrative provides readers historical and disciplinary context to modern psychology and encourages further investigation of the topics and individuals presented. This book provides a solid foundational knowledge of psychology’s past, covering essential areas including prescientific psychology, physiology and psychophysics, early schools of German and American psychology, and the origins of applied psychology, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis. Exploration of 20th century and contemporary developments, including the emergence of clinical and cognitive psychology, ensures a complete overview of the field. The author integrates biographical information on widely recognized innovators such as Carl Jung, Wilhelm Wundt, and B.F. Skinner with lesser known figures including E.B. Titchener, Mary Calkins, and Leta Hollingworth. This personalistic approach to history allows readers to understand the theories, research, and practices of the individuals who laid the foundation to modern psychology.

Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Measurement in the Human Sciences explores the assessment and measurement of nonphysical attributes that define human beings: abilities, personalities, attitudes, dispositions, and values. The proposition that human attributes are measurable remains controversial, as do the ideas and innovations of the six historical figures—Gustav Fechner, Francis Galton, Alfred Binet, Charles Spearman, Louis Thurstone, and S. S. Stevens—at the heart of this book. Across 10 rich, elaborative chapters, readers are introduced to the origins of educational and psychological scaling, mental testing, classical test theory, factor analysis, and diagnostic classification and to controversies spanning the quantity objection, the role of measurement in promoting eugenics, theories of intelligence, the measurement of attitudes, and beyond. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals in educational measurement and psychometrics will emerge with a deeper appreciation for both the challenges and the affordances of measurement in quantitative research.

For students of the history of psychology, this textbook connects the big ideas and key thinkers of psychology and philosophy in a cohesive theoretical narrative. Students are led to understand the relations between different schools of thought, and to connect the various thinkers, theories and facts in psychology's history.

Psychophysics is a lively account by one of experimental psychology's seminal figures of his lifelong scientific quest for general laws governing human behavior. It is a landmark work that captures the fundamental themes of Stevens's experimental research and his vision of what psycho-physics and psychology are and can be. The context of this modern classic is detailed by Lawrence Marks's pungent and highly revealing introduction. The search for a general psychophysical law—a mathematical equation relating sensation to stimulus—pervades this work, first published in 1975. Stevens covers methods of measuring human psychophysical behavior: magnitude estimation, magnitude production, and cross-modality matching are used to examine sensory mechanisms, perceptual processes, and social consensus. The wisdom in this volume lies in its exposition of an approach that can apply generally to the study of human behavior

This book chronicles the conceptual and methodological facets of psychiatry and medical psychology throughout history. There are no recent books covering so wide a time span. Many of the facets covered are pertinent to issues in general medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences today. The divergent emphases and interpretations among some of the contributors point to the necessity for further exploration and analysis.

Erica Fretwell examines how psychophysics--a nineteenth-century scientific movement originating in Germany dedicated to the empirical study of sensory experience--became central to the process of creating human difference along the lines of race, gender, and ability in nineteenth-century America.

Two experimental procedures prompted the empirical development of psychophysical models: those that measure response frequency, often referred to as response probability; and those that measure response time, sometimes referred to as reaction time. The history of psychophysics is filled with theories that predict one or the other of these two responses. Yet the persistent reappearance of empirical relationships between these two measures of performance makes clear the need for a theory that both predicts and relates these two measures. Most likely, both response measures are the result of a single process that generates empirical laws relating response time and response probability. It is this process — its theory, description, and application — that is the topic of The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity. Originally published in 1992, the author of this book has set out to provide a theoretical foundation for formulating new theories that systematize earlier results and to stimulate new concepts and introduce new tools for exploring mental phenomena and improving mental measurement.