Donders And Ebbinghaus's Memory Experiments: Cognitive Psychology

1) What are two ways of defining the mind? (1)
The way the mind operates and function, and the mental processes are the two ways the mind is defined.

2) Why could we say that Donders and Ebbinghaus were cognitive psychologists, even though in the 19th century there was no field called cognitive psychology? Describe Donder’s experiment and rationale behind it, and Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments. What do Donders’s and Ebbinghaus’s experiments have in common?(2)

Although, there was no field called cognitive psychology during the 19th century, Donders and Ebbinghaus were referred to as cognitive psychologists because both of their experiments dealt with the studying of the mind. Donder’s experiment focuses on a person’s Reaction-time in order

for the person to make a decision about the stimulus that is presented within his or her environment. The two types of Reaction-time are Simple RT (the person signals by pushing a button when a red light appears) and Choice RT (the person signals distinguishing, when a red light either appears on the left or the right). Ebbinghaus’s experiment focuses on how the mind learns and picks up information and how it quickly forgets information as well over the period time. Both cognitive psychologists used quantitative methods to measure their outcomes, time.