1. Wolfgang Kohler Presented by: Daria K. The Foundations of Gesaltism

2. Wolfgang Kohler -Childhood/Family/Adult Life -Professional Accomplishements -Contribution to Psychology -The Gesalt Theory

3. The Foundations of Gesaltism Introduction Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) -German educated American Psychologist ● -Co-founded a school of psychology known as Gestalt

4. Kohler's Life Family/Adult Life ● Academics were central his father was a schoolmaster ● Sisters were educators and nurses, and his older brother (Wilhelm) was a prominent scholar. ● He attended such universities as Tubingen (1905-1906), Bonn (1906-1907), and Berlin (1907-1909). While at Berlin he earned his Ph.D. under Karl Stumpf. ● At the latter he studied physics and psychology under the tutelage of Max Planck and Karl Stumpf respectively. ● His dissertation was on psycho-acoustics. Physics was an inspiration to Köhler, as can be seen in how he transferred many its ideas to psychological aspects.

5. Professional Accomplishments The trio used a loose translation of the German word “Gestalt,” meaning “whole,” to frame their ideas After earning his doctorate, Köhler worked at the Psychological institute in Frankfurt (1910-1913) with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, and this is where the they spawned Gestalt psychology

6. The Gestalt Theory In 1920s, Wolfgang was the first one to believe that chimpanzees were capable of intelligence,and even insight. To test his beliefs he did several experiments...

7. The Gestalt Theory From 1913-1917 he studied nine Chimpanzees. Back then, Apes were not typical subjects for psychological research. Psychology, a very young discipline at the time, had turned to dogs (Pavlov) and cats (Thorndike) and would later, when not looking at humans, become enamoured with pigeons and rats. Ethologists, while interested in apes, wanted to understand animals in their own right. Köhler was one of the pioneering psychologists (along with R. M. Yerkes) who took the ideas of Darwin – that humans are part of the continuity of life – and examined our closest living relative for clues to understand human – as well as animal – mental processes.

8. Chimp Experiments ● To get the bananas, the chimp would have to use an object as a tool, the objects in the play area included sticks of different lengths. ● He discovered that chimpanzees were very good at using tools. They used sticks as rakes to pull in bananas places out of reach. ● Kohler believed that these chimps showed insight acting as they “saw” the solution before carrying out the actions. However, not all scientics agreed with this idea.

9. Kohler's goals His two chief goals for this work on Chimpanzees was to find out in what ways humans and apes were similar and to find out how humans differed. Contrary to Thorndike and Pavlov who stated that learning by association (e.g., trial-and-error) was the only way animals could solve problems, Köhler believed that Chimpanzees could find solutions to problems that were “…complete whole which may, in a certain sense, be absolutely appropriate to the situation.”

10. Conclusion Köhler’s work on apes was published as "Intelligenzenprüfungen an Anthropoiden" in 1917. The English version, "The Mentality of Apes" was published in 1925. This work was revolutionary although it was ignored for decades under the behaviourist tradition. With the new cognitive revolution, the mental capabilities of animals and their relationship to those of humans are again being compared. His contribution to psychology – comparative psychology in particular – has not been forgotten.