Friday, December 28, 2007

All done with the semester and attending Keene State College. I learned a lot of helpful information but there is a lot more to learn such as how to work with clients one on one, which I think they will do more at a master degree level. I enjoyed alot of different classes at Keene State like clinical and the history of psychology. There was a lot more to the history of psychology then I thought there would be, which I studied last semester. I came upon many theorists in the history class that had a lot of influence in defining the science of psychology; such as Herman Ebbinghaus who conducted a series of classic experiments on memory and he used nonsense syllables to understand more about retention and forgetting. Their was also Lightner Witmer who in 1896, was the first to open a clinic that orignally was for the treatment of children with learning disorders. Witmer also founded the first journal and training program in the field that would be known today as clinical psychology. Alfred Binet was talked a lot about in the psychological testing class and the history class and Binet created the first major intelligence test to examine the abilities of school children in Paris France. Binets test was later then revised and tranlated by Lewis Terman who also comes up in the history and testing class and he studied at Stanford University and Termans revised test is currently known as the Stanford Binet test. Margaret Floyd Washburn was the second female president of the American Psychological Association and she was helpful in the field of psychology by writing a book in 1908, called The Animal Mind in which she synthesizes animal research being studied. So their were many important names in the field of psychology and I am sure their are still some I am not completely familiar with. I think it is interesting that psychology and it's theories sometimes seem to deal with simple ideas that summarize the nature of human beings that we don't always think about and it can also deal with complicated research that has to be studied alot to grasp such as the synapses of brain cells. Anyhow I am glad that I was able to learn more about psychology at Keene State and it will be interesting to see what I will learn in a masters degree program.
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