Cognitive Maps as a Way of Presenting the Dimensions of Comparison within the History of Psychology

As Benjamin (1981) notes ~n hls handbook for teachers of the history of psychology there IS relatively little published on the teach~ng of the history of psychology despite the fact that nearly all psychology departments offer such a course and many require it for majors (R~edel 1974) In this paper I shall descrlbe an actlvlty whlch I have developed for use in several courses, including history and systems that has st~mulated much valuable discuss~on by students and Increases test scores ~n general psychology (D~ekhoff & D~ekhoff In press) Students taking h~story and systems are typically capable of learning about the accomplishments of ~ndividuals through the usual lectureitext comb~nation However they frequently lack an appreciation for the d~mens~ons along which psycholog~sts from different schools theoretical persuasions and t~mes may be compared and found to be slmllar or different This failure undoubtedly results from the linear sequential way ~n which lectures and texts cover first one person then the next and the next w~thout ever systematlcally examining any but the most obvious relationsh~ps that exlst between the lndlv~duals To fac~litate in-class discussions about these structural interrelat~onships I have found the following actlvlty to be very useful Follow~ng completion of lectures covering one or more un~ts I select between 10 and 20 prom~nent persons andlor theories from the material to be reviewed I form all possible pairs of these st~mul~ and rate each pair on a 1 +o 9 scale so as to lndlcate the degree of slm~larity that exlsts between the stimuli in each parr (1 = llttle 9 = great) and the set of ratings 1s analyzed through principal components analysis as though the rat~ngs were the coeff~c~ents of a correlation matrlx The output from the pr~nc~pal components analysis includes a graphic summary (somet~mes called a "cogn~t~ve map ) of the ~nterrelatlonships between the stimuli judged for slmilar~ty These cognitive maps display stlmull arranged in space ~n wh~ch the prox~mity of each stimulus to the others IS isomorph~c to the amount of sim~lar~ty that was judged to exist between that stlmulus and the others Hlghly sim~lar or related stirnull thus form clusters In space Occasionally stimuli are observed to be arranged along identifiable b~polar d~mens~ons The cognit~ve maps generated in this fash~on may be displayed on a two-dimens~onal surface such as a blackboard or three-d~mens~onally by using a specially constructed framework to which objects representIng the stirnull are attached Class d~scussions of the structural lnterrelationsh~ps in the h~story of psychology are then gu~ded by the cognitive map Why are certain sttmuli together in a cluster? Why are certaln stlmuli so far apart7 What dimensions can be found w~thin the array and why do various st~mul~ occupy the posit~ons that they do along these dlmenslons7 An example of the process descr~bed is prov~ded in Figure 1 In this example a set of 10 key individuals from the early history of psychology has been selected judged for similarity and analyzed through prlnc~pal components analys~s The resulting cognitive map IS shown ~n two d~mensions In d~scussing thls map the following comments are ~ F R I T S C H & HlTZlG .GALL 2\ l DESCARTES