Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)

Mary W. Calkins was a prominent psychologist in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contributed extensively to experimental research and psychological literature.

Furumoto (1980) describes Calkins growing up in a large, warm family, which arranged that she has a good education. Calkin completed her undergraduate degree in classics and philosophy at Smith College in 1885. In 1887, she began teaching in the Greek Department at Wellesley College, an undergraduate women’s college. In 1890, the college introduced a psychology curriculum within the Philosophy Department, and the administration offered Calkins a teaching position due to her interest in philosophy and skill as a teacher. Since Calkins had had no formal education in psychology, she left to study psychology for one year before taking the position. Calkins was adamant about studying at a school with a psychological laboratory and decided to pursue study at Harvard University with psychologist William James and philosopher Josiah Royce. James and Royce were supportive of Calkins’ plan to study under their direction. Since Harvard did not allow women to enroll as students, Calkins was permitted to attend James’ and Royce’s seminars as a guest. During that same academic year, she also undertook experimental training with Edmund Sanford in the psychological laboratory at Clark University. In 1891, she returned to Wellesley as Instructor of Psychology, created an experimental psychology course, and helped to establish one of the first psychological laboratories in the United States at the college. The following year, Calkins returned to Harvard to further her education in psychology under the direction of Hugo Münsterberg. Once again, she was permitted to study as a guest but not as a student of the university. When Calkins completed the requirements of a doctoral degree in 1895, Münsterberg advocated on behalf of her Ph.D. candidacy, stating that she was the strongest student in the laboratory. Harvard refused to award her the degree, and in 1902, Calkins and three other women were offered the Radcliffe doctorate, which was created for women who completed the requirements of a Ph.D. at Harvard. Calkins turned down the Radcliffe degree based on the conviction that women should receive the same designation as their male counterparts. In 1895, Calkins returned to Wellesley again, this time as an Associate Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, and was appointed as a full professor three years later (Furumoto , 1980).

Further, Furumoto (1980) states how between 1892 and 1894, Calkins published a series of papers on association and memory from Münsterberg’s laboratory. She also published her research on dreams from her time with Edmund Sanford, and her work at the Wellesley laboratory. Following her completion of graduate studies, she published several more papers from her time in Münsterberg ’s laboratory and on studies coming out of Wellesley. In 1901, Calkins published her first textbook, An Introduction to Psychology, which became widely used for undergraduate courses in psychology. She also wrote A First Book in Psychology, first published in 1910, in addition to a number of philosophical works. In 1903, Calkins’ distinction in the field of psychology was first formally recognized when she was ranked 12th on a list of the 50 most influential American psychologists. In 1905, she was again recognized when she became the first woman to be elected president of the American Psychological Association. She went on to serve as the president of the American Philosophical Association and was also granted honorary membership in the British Psychological Association after presenting at an annual meeting in 1927. Calkins also received honorary degrees from both Columbia University and Smith College, who both offered her a position on their faculties, however, she did not assume either position in order to stay close to home and care for her parents.

One of Calkins’ most influential contributions to psychology was the invention of the paired-associate method. Although Calkins did not use the term “paired-associate”, she is considered the first person to use the method in her experimental studies on association, which were published in 1894 and 1896 (Madigan & O’Hara, 1992). In these studies, participants were presented with lists of paired items containing a “cue item,” which was either the name of a colour or a random combination of 3 letters, and a “response item,” which was a 2 or 3-digit number (e.g., blue-245). Calkins tested the participants’ memory of response items when presented with the cue items, and investigated various factors that might influence their recall, including primacy, recency, and fluency effects. Additionally, she conducted studies using both visual and auditory presentation of items. Her primary findings were that frequency was the most prominent factor influencing recall, and that recency effects were stronger for auditory presentation and for immediate (rather than delayed) recall. This demonstrates Calkins’ superior skills as a researcher and her significant influence in the area of memory and learning.

Another major contribution of Calkins’ was her theory of self-psychology, which first appeared in the literature in 1900 and was the topic of her APA presidential address in 1906 (Strunk, 1972). The goal of this theory was to create a unified theoretical framework for psychology that satisfied both structuralist and functionalist ideologies while placing the conscious self as the primary concern of the discipline. Calkins believed that the elements of consciousness, as well as the relationship between the self, its environment, and the adaptiveness of that relationship, should be included, however, psychology should ultimately be a study of the self, consciousness, and internal processes (e.g., memory, perception, emotions, etc.). Although self-psychology did not become one of the leading schools of thought, it provides another example of Calkins’ excellence as a leading figure in American psychology.

References

Furumoto, L. (1980). Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930). Psychology of Women Quarterly, 5, 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1980.tb01033.x

Madigan, S., & O’Hara, R. (1992). Short-term memory at the turn of the century: Mary Whiton Calkins’s memory research. American Psychologist, 47, 170–174. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.47.2.170

Strunk, O. (1972). The self-psychology of Mary Whiton Calkins. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 8, 196–203. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(197204)8:2<196::aid-jhbs2300080205>3.0.co;2-l

Contributors

• Nicole Smith
• Vraj Shah
• Luna Kim
• Peter Liu
• Kundan Ahluwalia

Thomas Verner Moore (1877–1969)

Dom Thomas Verner Moore was an American priest, psychiatrist, experimental psychologist, and, in his later years, a Carthusian monk.

Moore received his Ph.D. in psychology from Catholic University in 1903 and subsequently travelled to Leipzig to study under Wilhelm Wundt in 1904 (Noll et al., 2017). During this time, Moore also met and worked with psychologist and statistician Charles Spearman, which contributed to Moore’s interest and prominence in the application of statistical methods, namely factor analysis (Noll et al., 2017). Moore returned to the United States at the University of California, where he completed the research that he had started while at Leipzig, and published this work in the paper, “The Process of Abstraction” in 1910 (Stafford, 1970). That same year, Moore returned to Catholic University as an instructor until 1913, when he travelled to Munich to study medicine. Due to the start of WWI, however, Moore came back to the United States and completed his medical degree at John Hopkins University in 1915.

Stafford (1970) states that after returning to Catholic University, Moore implemented the university’s first course on clinical psychology and established a clinic for treating children with nervous and mental diseases, which he ran from 1916 to 1918. In 1918, he went to Europe with the American Expeditionary Forces to serve as a captain in the neuropsychiatric division of the medical corps. After the war ended, Moore took over as the head of the psychology department at Catholic University, a position which he held for the remainder of his academic career. During his career, he established a school of arts and crafts for children with mental deficiencies and transferred his clinic to the campus of Catholic University, where it became a charter member of the American Association of Psychiatric Clinics for Children. Moreover, he served on a committee that investigated the potential uses of factor analysis in personality psychology, whose work yielded the development of the “principal components” analysis method (Holzinger, 1936). Moore’s most renowned works are Dynamic Psychology, published in 1924, and The Nature and Treatment of Mental Disorders, published in 1943. Further, Moore’s work focused on imagery and memory. In some of his more famous experiments, Moore found that response time was faster for language tasks than imagery tasks, and that recollection of objects was better than the recollection of words, with these findings being supported by recent work in cognitive psychology (Surprenant & Neath, 1997).

While Moore’s prominence in psychology did not go unnoticed, Surprenant & Neath (1997) bring attention to one significant work of his which gained relatively little attention and failed to achieve recognition as an influential text in the history of psychology. This work was Moore’s Cognitive Psychology, published in 1939, which was the first use of the term “cognitive psychology”. There are a couple of reasons why Moore’s text was unsuccessful in obtaining this recognition. Firstly, two highly influential texts were published around the same time, which overshadowed Moore’s publication. Also, Moore’s emphasis on consciousness, as well as his overall contention that the experimental subject plays an active, rather than a passive role in interpreting stimuli was not consistent with the trends in psychology at the time. However, this work went largely unnoticed, and these ideas only became popularized when Ulrich Neisser published Cognitive Pyschology in 1967. However, Suprenant and Neath argue that although Neisser’s text had a progressive tone, Moore’s text better reflected modern trends in cognitive psychology, as he included sections on the biological bases of perception and case studies of neurological impairment to infer the functioning of non-impaired cognitive processes. Furthermore, Moore’s Cognitive Psychology included emphases on consciousness, faculty psychology, and philosophy, and anticipated the renewed interest in these topics seen toward the end of the 20th century. Despite the components of Moore’s text which prevented its success, there were elements which expressed the trends of 1930s experimental psychology, including an emphasis on statistical methods, and a comprehensive discussion of relevant subject matter. Recent reviews of Moore’s Cognitive Psychology suggest that there are sections worth reading for various purposes (e.g., historical purposes, philosophical considerations). However, given the magnitude of incorrect information, it should not be taken as a foundation for the study of cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, it still reflects remarkable proficiency in scientific analysis and theorizing, and had it been produced 20 years later, may have been met with a different reception from the psychological community.

Overall, Moore was a highly skilled experimental psychologist and psychiatrist who impacted the field of psychology in many important ways.

References

Holzinger, A. J. (1936). Recent research on unitary mental traits. Character & Personality; A Quarterly for Psychodiagnostic & Allied Studies.

Noll, R., DeYoung, C. G., & Kendler, K. S. (2017). Thomas Verner Moore. American Journal of Psychiatry, 174, 729–730.

Surprenant, A. M., & Neath, I. (1997). T. V. Moore’s (1939) Cognitive Psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 342-349.

Stafford, J. W. (1970). Thomas Verner Moore: 1877-1969. The American Journal of Psychology, 83, 286–288.

Contributors

• Nicole Smith
• M. Grant Leger