Wundt's Reaction Time Studies (1880s)

A CLOCK FROM THE WATCH INDUSTRY

The method came from astronomers and a Dutch physiologist

Wundt opens his laboratory at Leipzig; reaction-time work becomes one of its two main programmes. His journal Philosophische Studien follows in 1881.Sources [1][3][10]

SIMPLE · DISCRIMINATION · CHOICE

Time yourself on the three Leipzig tasks, then subtract

Simple: react to any light. Discrimination: react only to the amber light. Choice: a different key for each colour. Eight trials each. Two extra runs repeat Lange's 1888 split of the simple reaction by where you put your attention. The differences estimate how long telling the lights apart, and then choosing a response, take you.

SIMPLE · READY

Click the lamp (or any key) as soon as any light appears.

Simple—

Discrimination—

Choice—

Sensorial—

Muscular—

SUBTRACTIONDiscrimination − simple = —Choice − discrimination = —Sensorial − muscular = —

Screen and mouse lag add tens of milliseconds, far coarser than a chronoscope. Compare the differences, not the raw times. Wundt's trained observers repeated each task many times.

1886–88 · LUDWIG LANGE

Even the simplest reaction split in two

Working in Wundt's institute in 1886–87, Lange found the simple reaction took noticeably different times depending on whether the observer attended to the sense impression or to the movement to be made. He called these the sensorial and the muscular reaction, and found that much practice was needed to produce either in its extreme form.

Wundt read the muscular reaction as reflex, and the sensorial one as including apperception and will. The muscular form came out about a tenth of a second faster, and that tenth was taken as the time apperception takes.

≈ 0.1 sMuscular faster than sensorial, read as apperception time.

Cattell disagreed on the reading. He reported the sensorial time as nearly twice the muscular. He argued that a reaction starts out voluntary and becomes reflex and quicker with practice, so the gap might measure practice, not a fixed mental stage.

By 1895 it was a controversy. Titchener reviewed ten studies of the two forms: six supported Lange's distinction and four more or less did not.

A RESEARCH PROGRAMME, NOT A TEST

The first coherent psychology research programme

The historian Kurt Danziger called the early Leipzig reaction-time studies the first historical example of a coherent programme of interlocking psychological studies. Wundt chose the topics himself, with two main fields: sensation and perception, and reaction times using the subtractive procedure. For Wundt reaction time was a method for studying attention and apperception; later American textbooks turned it into a topic of its own. Results were published in his own journal, Philosophische Studien, from 1881.

1883–86James McKeen CattellAmerican, Wundt's assistant; his Psychometrische Untersuchungen (1886–88) timed reactions, naming and association, and he later took the methods home to build mental tests.

1886–88Ludwig LangeSplit the simple reaction into sensorial and muscular forms (Philosophische Studien 4, 1888).

1880sJulius MerkelRan multiple-choice reaction experiments, extending the choice reaction to many alternatives.

1895E. B. TitchenerWundt's student, by then at Cornell, reviewed the sensorial–muscular controversy in Mind.

WHAT WUNDT CONCLUDED

Apperception takes measurable time

Discrimination and choice took longer than simple reactions, and the gap grew with the number of choices, though it was small in absolute terms. Wundt read this as evidence that apperception, the active grasping of a stimulus, is a real mental operation.

WHAT CRITICS SAID

Mental stages don't simply add up

By 1890 William James and Hugo Münsterberg had questioned the method. Wundt's former student Oswald Külpe argued that subtraction assumed additive stages, an oversimplified picture of thought. Outside noise was a practical problem too: street and building vibration disturbed the timing at Leipzig and elsewhere.

HOW PRECISE?

1/1000 or 1/500 of a second

Accounts disagree on the Hipp chronoscope's precision: one says a thousandth of a second, an instrument history says a five-hundredth. Either way, it was calibrated with a falling-hammer device, the Kontrollhammer, an old model of which Wundt kept in the lab.

REFERENCES

[1]Simply Psychology. Wilhelm Wundt: Father of Psychology.simplypsychology.org

[2]Schmidgen, H. (2003). Time and noise: the stable surroundings of reaction experiments, 1860–1890. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.unav.es (PDF)

[3]Nicolas, S., & Ferrand, L. The birth of experimental psychology in Germany between psychophysical methods and physiological theories.researchgate.net

[4]Schmidgen, H. Physics, ballistics, psychology: a history of the chronoscope in/as context.academia.edu

[5]Citing literature on reaction-time experiments in Wundt's institute (ResearchGate record).researchgate.net

[6]Donders, F. C. (1868/1969). On the speed of mental processes. Acta Psychologica, 30, 412–431.doi

[7]Lange, L. (1888). Neue Experimente über den Vorgang der einfachen Reaction auf Sinneseindrücke. Philosophische Studien, 4, 479–510 (English translation).psychclassics.yorku.ca (PDF)

[8]Titchener, E. B. (1895). Simple reactions. Mind.psychclassics.yorku.ca

[9]Cattell, J. McK. (1888). Psychology in America / the psychological laboratory at Leipsic. Mind.psychclassics.yorku.ca

[10]Encyclopedia.com. Wundt, Wilhelm (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences).encyclopedia.com

[11]Robinson, D. K. Reaction-time experiments in Wundt's institute and beyond (in Wilhelm Wundt in History, Springer).link.springer.com

[12]Modelling the history of the reaction key: concepts (apperception, reaction time).key2mind.omeka.net

Editorial record: new page in this project, built from instrument histories, Lange's 1888 paper (English translation), Cattell's 1888 and Titchener's 1895 accounts and secondary histories; Wundt's own Grundzüge was not read. No individual results are reproduced.

KEEP EXPLORING

1890 · Wundt's studentCattell's Mental TestsCattell trained at Leipzig and took reaction-time apparatus home to build the first 'mental tests' of individual differences.1935 · Timing interferenceStroop 1935Stroop timed whole sheets with a stopwatch where Wundt timed single reactions; both read mental processes from time.1895 · Another Wundt studentKraepelin Continuous ArithmeticKraepelin worked in Wundt's lab before building his work-curve test of sustained mental effort.1895 · Speed on paperBourdon 1895Bourdon's cancellation sheets measured attention by speed and accuracy without a chronoscope.

Part of the Historical IQ Tests Archive. Editorial content under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Wundt's chronoscope: timing a thought in thousandths of a second.

The method came from astronomers and a Dutch physiologist

Time yourself on the three Leipzig tasks, then subtract

Even the simplest reaction split in two

The first coherent psychology research programme

Speed is one signal. Reasoning is another.