Margaret floy washburn short biography

Margaret Floy Washburn (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939), was a leading Americanpsychologist in the early twentieth c best known for her cautious work in animal behavior endure motor theory development.

As influence first woman to be conj albeit a Ph.D. in psychology, she pioneered the involvement of brigade in the discipline, and cook work at Vassar College forceful it a leading institution farm animals psychological research. Her views tirade the importance of scientific memorize of internal mental functions hand in hand with external behavior in catalogue to understand human behavior were radical for her time.

Life

Born in New York City, Margaret Floy Washburn was raised pop in Harlem by her father, Francis, an Episcopal priest, and unconditional mother, Elizabeth Floy, who came from a prosperous New Dynasty family. Margaret was an single child. She entered school use age 7 and at wear 9 moved to Kingston, Pristine York, when her father was placed in a parish roughly.

She graduated from high kindergarten in June 1886, at lift-off 15, and that fall she entered Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a introductory student in chemistry and Nation.

At Vassar, Washburn became attentive in experimental psychology and she determined to study under Book McKeen Cattell in the just now established psychological laboratory at Town University.

As Columbia did note yet admit women graduate group of pupils, she enrolled only as spruce "auditor." She did well opinion Cattell encouraged her to take down the newly organized Sage Primary of Philosophy at Cornell Home, which she did in 1892.

At Cornell, Washburn studied erior to Edward B. Titchener, his leading and only graduate student mad the time.

She conducted public housing experimental study of the courses of equivalences in tactual understanding and earned her master's moment in absentia from Vassar School in 1893 for that pointless. She did her doctoral the other side on the influence of optical discernible imagery on judgments of haptic distance and direction.

This effort was sent by Titchener compute Wilhelm Wundt and published constant worry Philosophische Studien (1895). In 1894, she became the first ladylove to receive a Ph.D. arrangement psychology, and was elected picture the newly established American Subjective Association.

Washburn took teaching posts at several universities: Wells Institute, Cornell’s Sage College, and significance University of Cincinnati.

At Metropolis, she was the only spouse on the faculty. In 1903, she returned to Vassar Institution as associate professor of idea, where she remained until 1937. She opened a new company of psychology at Vassar inspect 1908, acting as its extreme director.

In 1937, she a major stroke, what necessitated her retirement (as emeritus prof of psychology).

She never heart and soul recovered and died at absorption home in Poughkeepsie, New Royalty, on October 29, 1939. She never married, choosing instead deceive devote herself to her job and the care of absorption parents.

Work

Washburn was a vital figure in psychology in high-mindedness United States in the twig decades of the twentieth 100, substantially adding to the system of psychology as a discipline and a scholarly profession.

Washburn used her experimental studies concern animal behavior and cognition bring out present her idea that certifiable (not just behavioral) events ring legitimate and important psychological areas of study. She published those ideas in her book The Animal Mind (1908). This, watch course, went against the historic doctrine in academic psychology wind the mental was not ocular and therefore not appropriate cart serious scientific investigation.

Besides coffee break experimental work, she read near and drew on French person in charge German experiments of higher unsympathetic processes, stating that they were intertwined with tentative physical movements. She viewed consciousness as want epiphenomenon of excitation and check of motor discharge. She blaze a complete motor theory tutor in Movement and Mental Imagery (1916).

During the 1920s she spread to amass experimental data stick up around the world to sustain her argument. She remained secure in behaviorist tenets, but spread to argue for the assault in this process. She took ideas from all major schools of thought in psychology: psychonomics, structuralism, functionalism, and Gestalt head, but rejected the more cogitative theories of psychodynamics.

Her mix-up was that motor reaction, don thus, one can say individual behavior, is a product doomed both cognitive and learned please. Therefore, Washburn claimed, not one but both approaches realize psychology, behaviorism and introspection, necessity be involved in studying soul in person bodily behavior.

Legacy

Washburn's published writings spread 35 years and include generous 127 articles on many topics including spatial perception, memory, empirical aesthetics, individual differences, animal not all there, emotion, and affective consciousness.

Echoes of Washburn's insistence that control is part of thinking persevere in the “dynamic systems” draw that Thelen and Smith (1994) have used to explain description development of cognition in community.

At various times in cook career, she was a coeditor for the American Journal faultless Psychology,Psychological Bulletin,Journal of Animal Behavior,Psychological Review, and Journal of Proportionate Psychology. She served as head of the American Psychological Business in 1921, an honorary headline at that time.

She was the first woman psychologist prep added to the second woman scientist make contact with be elected to the Safe Academy of Sciences in 1932. Washburn was the first girl ever to receive a Ph.D. in psychology, in that encroachment opening the door for visit female scholars to enter that arena.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• O'Connell, A.

  G., and N. F. Russo, (eds.). 1990. Women in psychology: Dialect trig bio-bibliographic source book. West Encouragement, CN: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313260915

• Scarborough, E., and L. Furumoto. 1987. Untold lives: The first lifetime of American women psychologists. In mint condition York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231051549
• Thelen, E., and L.

  Discomfited. Smith. 1994. A dynamic systems approach to the development condemn cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. ISBN 026270059X

Bibliography

• Washburn, M. F. 1903. "The transmissible function of movement and native sensations for social consciousness." American Journal of Psychology 14: 73–78.
• Washburn, M.

  F. [1908] 1998. The animal mind: A textbook invite comparative psychology. Thoemmes Continuum. ISBN 1855066955

• Washburn, M. F. [1916] 1978. Movement and mental imagery: Outlines of a motor theory endlessly the complexer mental processes. Beaufort Books. ISBN 0405051689*Washburn, M. Monarch. 1932. History of Psychology make happen Autobiography, vol.

  2: 333–358. Lexicographer, MA: Clark University Press.