Why is hermann ebbinghaus important to psychology

After obtaining his philosophy degree in , Ebbinghaus served in the Franco-Prussian War. For the next seven years following the war, he tutored and studied independently in Berlin, France, and England. In the late s, Ebbinghaus became interested in the workings of human memory. In spite of Wilhelm Wundt 's assertion in his newly published Physiological Psychology that memory could not be studied experimentally, Ebbinghaus decided to attempt such a study, applying to this new field the same sort of mathematical treatment that Gustav Fechner had described in Elements of Psychophysics in connection with his study of sensation and perception.

Using himself as both sole experimenter and subject, Ebbinghaus embarked on an arduous process that involved repeatedly testing his memorization of nonsense words devised to eliminate variables caused by prior familiarity with the material being memorized.

He created 2, one-syllable consonant-vowel-consonant combinations—such as taz , bok , and lef— to facilitate his study of learning independent of meaning. He divided syllables into a series of lists that he memorized under fixed conditions. Recording the average amount of time it took him to memorize these lists perfectly, he then varied the conditions to arrive at observations about the effects of such variables as speed, list length, and number of repetitions.

He also studied the factors involved in retention of the memorized material, comparing the initial memorization time with the time needed for a second memorization of the same material after a given period of time such as 24 hours and subsequent memorization attempts.

Herman Ebbinghaus made a profound impact on study of memory and intelligence testing. He used the experimentation to study higher mental processes. He also studied learning curve and analyzed that maintenance rehearsal and acoustic encoding should be applied for effective learning though he faced certain limitations in the process of conducting his ground-breaking research on memory.

The major limitation was that he was the only subject in the study. Naturally, this was an obstacle in studying the trends of the whole population. Also, this was a major shortcoming in proving the external validity of the study, despite, the fact that it was internally valid.

Ebbinghaus tried to restrict his personal significance to keep the experiment free from biases but failed to do so. This also proved that it is a tough job to be the researcher as well as the subject at the same time. It is next to impossible in experimentation to maintain neutrality in this situation. Hermann Ebbinghaus was born in German on January 24, In he went to the University of Bonn and somewhat later to Berlin and Halle.

Although his initial interest was in history and philology, he was gradually drawn to philosophy. In the spring of , however, he left the army to continue his philosophical studies at Bonn. He completed his dissertation, and received his PH. He was made a professor in the same year, probably in recognition of this publication. In , he established and opened an experimental psychology laboratory at the University of Berlin for purposes of psychological research and study.

In the years following, Ebbinghaus co-founded the Zeitschrift fur Psychology und Physiologie der Sinnersorgane Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs , a literary establishment often credited with the international advancement of psychological study. Ebbinghaus started by memorizing lists of words and testing how many he could recall. Grouping these into lists, he looked at each syllable for a fraction of a second, pausing for 15 seconds before going through a list again.