Gestalt psychology was founded in Germany in the early 20th century by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka. They focused on how people interpret the visual world and believed the whole is different than the sum of its parts. Based on this, Gestalt psychologists developed principles of perceptual organization to explain how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones, such as closure, continuity, proximity, and similarity.

1. Historical roots 2
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BEHAVIORISM

2. Behaviorism has dominated American
psychology for a long period, since it
was formulated by John B. Watson of
Johns Hopkins University in 1913.

3. John B. Watson

4. Watson was greatly influenced by the
work of the Russian Ivan Pavlov, who
had conditioned dogs to salivate at the
sound of a bell. Behaviour, Watson
said, was a succession of conditioned
responses to environmental stimuli.
Such stimuli are objectively observable
and measurable unlike subjective
mental processes.

5. The behavioural approach is often
called the S-R psychology (S=stimulus,
R=response). Behaviour is viewed as a
series of learned responses. The mind is
called the black box. What goes on
inside the black box (inputs) cannot be
objectively observed and measured;
only what comes out (the behavioural
response/outcomes) can be observed
and measured.

6. The black box metaphor:
INPUTS OUTCOMES
INPUTS OUTCOMESLearning

7. -5-
GESTALT SCHOOL OF
PSYCHOLOGY

8. Gestalt psychology was founded by
German thinkers Max Wertheimer,
Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka and
focused on how people interpreted the
world visually.

9. Wolfgang Kohler

10. Max Wertheimer

11. Kurt Koffka

12. The Gestalt perspective was formed
partially as a response to the
structuralism of Wilhelm Wundt, who
focused on breaking down mental
events and experiences to the smallest
elements.

13. According to Gestalt psychology: “The
whole is different than the sum of its
parts”. Based upon this belief, Gestalt
psychologists developed a set of
principles to explain perceptual
organisation, or how smaller objects are
grouped to form larger ones.

14. These principles are often referred to as
the laws of perceptual organisation:
1-Law of closure;
2-Law of continuity;
3-Law of Pragnanz;
4-Law of proximity;
5-Law of similarity.

20. -6-
GENEVA SCHOOL OF
PSYCHOLOGY

21. Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland, on August 9th, 1896.
He began publishing effectively in high
school on his favourite subject,
molluscs.

22. Jean Piaget

23. After high school, he went on to the
University of Neuchâtel.
In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate
in Science from the University of
Neuchâtel and he worked for a year at
psychology labs in Zurich.

24. In 1921 he accepted a position at the
Institut J. J. Rousseau in Geneva.
Here he began to research the reasoning
of elementary school children. This
research was to become his first of five
books on child psychology.

25. In 1929, Piaget began working as the
director of the International Bureau of
Education, a post he would hold until
1967.
He also began large scale research with
A. Szeminska, E. Meyer, and especially
B. Inhelder, who would become his
major collaborator.

26. In 1940, He became Chair of
Experimental Psychology, the Director
of the psychology laboratory, and the
President of the Swiss Society of
Psychology.
In 1949 and 1950, he published his
synthesis: Introduction to Genetic
Epistemology.

27. In 1952, he became a professor at the
Sorbonne.
In 1955, he created the International
Centre for Genetic Epistemology, of
which he served as director the rest of
his life.
In 1956, he founded the School of
Sciences at the University of Geneva.

28. He continued working on a general
theory of structure of the mind. By the
end of his career, he had written over
60 books and many hundreds of
articles.
He died in Geneva, on September 16th,
1980, one of the most significant
psychologists of the twentieth century.

29. During many years of research, Piaget
developed the idea of stages of
cognitive development which constitute
a lasting contribution to psychology.
These stages are:
-Sensorimotor stage;
-Preoperational stage;
-Concrete operations stage;
-Formal operations stage.

31. It is hard to say, of Piaget's many
works, which are the most significant
or interesting, but here goes:
-The Moral Judgement of the Child;
-The Psychology of Intelligence;
-The Construction of Reality in the
Child;
-The Growth of Logical Thinking
from Childhood to Adolescence.