Psychological Labs Test Human Actions In Overcrowded Mem Hall Facilities

Hidden beneath the Victorian splendor of Memorial Hall lies an intricate network of strikingly modern offices, research rooms, and passageways, which form the home of the Harvard Psychological Laboratories.

Here, with rats, pigeons, and vast quantities of electrical equipment at their disposal, members of the Psychology Department--as well as some undergraduate and graduate students in the field--carry on various research projects in general experimental psychology.

From a detailed study of the mechanical physiology of the inner ear to the construction of "teaching machines" for future education, these men investigate the still-unsolved problems of human and animal behavior, learning, and motivation. For laboratory work is as vital to the advanced study of psychology as it is to the study of any other of the natural sciences. Through the study of animals, as well as mental patients and normal people, psychologists hope to gain insight into the mental processes which govern human behavior and activity.

James Started Laboratory

Ever since its founding by William James 80 years ago, the Psychological Laboratory has undergone continual expansion, and the process continues today. New experimental projects have been turned away from Memorial Hall for want of space, and members of the Psychology Department are beginning to wonder whether a major relocation of laboratory facilities will not be necessary in the near future.

The Psychological Laboratory was officially established in 1891, but experimental psychology at the University dates back to about 1875, when James, then an instructor in Physiology, started introducing his students to informal psychological research. This was the first laboratory of psychology founded in the United States.

James' research was not confined to any single laboratory. He is said to have kept some equipment in the basement of Lawrence Hall--at that time the center of the Lawrence Scientific School. He also maintained a laboratory in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy, where he taught Natural History 3, a course in comparative anatomy and physiology. As one of his students, G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D. '78, recalled, "In a tiny room under the stairway of Agassiz Museum he had a metronome, a device for whirling a frog, a horopter chart, and one or two bits of apparatus."

When James became the University's first professor of Psychology in 1889, he began a fund drive to finance a more formal laboratory for psychological research. By 1891 he had secured $4300 for equipping the top floor of Dane Hall (since replaced by Lehman Hall) which the University had turned over to him for his work in Psychology.

The German Influence

Early in 1892 Dr. Hugo Munsterberg, a noted German psychologist, was appointed professor of Experimental Psychology and Director of the newly-founded Psychological Laboratory. Munsterberg added a considerable amount of German equipment to the laboratory and expanded its activities to include research on animals, making use of a supply of chickens which James kept in the basement of his house on Irving Place.

After Emerson Hall was constructed in 1906, Munsterberg moved his equipment from Dane to the third floor of Emerson where an animal research room and several darkrooms for visual experiments had been provided. This was the first laboratory in this country ever to be designed and built specifically for psychological research.

Emerson remained the headquarters of the Psychological Laboratory for 40 years, until 1946. During this time interest in psychological study at the University rose rapidly and forced a steady increase in the facilities for research. It also forced decentralization.

In 1927, for instance, Dr. Morton Prince founded the independent Psychological Clinic at 64 Plympton St. And when the chemistry laboratories were moved out of Boylston Hall in 1929, the Psychological Laboratory, outgrowing its facilities in Emerson, took over the fourth floor and attic for elementary instruction in experimental psychology and for work with animals.

By the time World War II broke out, psychological research at the University had become awkwardly decentralized in four separate locations: Emerson Hall, Boylston Hall, the Psychological Clinic, and the Biology Laboratories, where Professor Karl S. Lashley had established a laboratory of Physiology.

Searching for new laboratory space in 1940, Stanley S. Stevens, professor of Psychology, turned to the eastern part of the basement of Memorial Hall. After an arduous period or reconditioning--he had to drain a room filled with a foot and a half of oil--Stevens founded the Psycho-Acoustical Laboratory, designed for research in the psychological problems of hearing and communications.

During the war, the scientific resources of the University were to a large extent dedicated to military research for the government. Stevens' laboratory was commissioned to investigate the effect of noise on human working efficiency. The findings revealed, rather unexpectedly, that there is no marked drop in efficiency with a noise increase.

The laboratory was next contracted to study the problems of voice communications. It had to determine what are the qualities of a good "talker" and a good "listener" and what types of microphones, radio sending sets, and earphones produced the best results under all conditions.

When the Department of Social Relations was founded at the end of the war, the laboratory space for the behavioral sciences had to be drastically redistributed. The Psychological Laboratory gave up its space in Emerson and Boylston Halls and moved to the western end of the Memorial basement, displacing part of the Naval ROTC facilities. All Psychology Department experiments, if not all psychological experiments, were now centralized in one place.

Today, 80 years after their founding by James, the Psychological Laboratories continue their research into general experimental psychology under the directorship of Stevens, who took over in 1949 from the former director, Edwin G. Boring, professor of Psycology.

Though there is no official connection betweent the Laboratories and the Department of Psychology, almost all the members of the department carry on some experimental project in the laboratories. As Edwin B. Newman, Associate Director of the Psychological Laboratories and Chairman of the Psychology Department, puts it, "We are practically co-extensive."

The research carried on covers "the whole range of normal psychology of both human beings and animals," according to Newman. The experiments are devoted to studying both psycological behavior and the physiological characteristics that determine behavior and mental processes.

Philip Teitelbaum, assistant professor of Psychology, is currently attempting to determine the mechanism in the brain that causes the sensations of hunger and thirst. Since psychologists know what area of the brain controls these sensations, he has surgically removed various sections of this area in the brains of experimental rats.

This results in a radical modification of the eating habits of the animals. Some of the rats suddenly stop eating almost completely, wasting away into emaciated skeletons; others eat constantly and bloat themselves to twice their normal size.

Teitelbaum is trying to discover what part of the hunger process has been altered in each case and how the various sections of the brain coordinate to produce the sensation of hunger. He hopes to be able to use the knowledge gained from this study to explain other human sensations and appetites.

B. Fredrick Skinner, professor of Psychology, is developing in another project a "teaching machine" to help relieve the burden of elementary and secondary school teachers. His machine will probably be a device that will reveal printed questions to the student, provide a space for the student to record his answers, and then show the correct answer. The scoring will be done either automatically or by the student himself.

Such a machine could be used in any subject, such as languages, arithmetic, and elementary sciences, in which large amounts of factual material must be memorized.

Its great advantage would lie in the fact that it would enable each student to work at his own rate of speed. Able students, previously held back because teachers have to devote extra time to slower pupils, could, with one of Skinner's devices, progress independently of both the teacher and the rest of the class.

In the Psycho-Acoustic section of the Psychological Laboratories, Georg von Bekesy, research fellow in Psycho-physics, is carrying on a unique investigation of the mechanical physiology of the inner ear. His extremely delicate experiments include the measurement of the pressure changes and electrical effects within the interior structure of the ear.

These projects represent a scattered sampling of the wide range of research going on at present. Animals are used in almost all of these experiments, and about 90 per cent of the animals are rats and pigeons.

Both of these types of animals have been found to be unusually adaptable to changes in environment and both are reasonably fast learners. Pigeons are especially useful since their emotional responses can be easily and quickly measured by the frequency of their pecking.

Projects Farmed Out

Just as before the war, the main problem confronting the Psychological Laboratories today is one of decentralization. The facilities in the basement of Memorial Hall have graduall been outgrown, and various research projects have had to be farmed to the Physics Laboratory and to other diverse locales.

It also seems incongruous for the laboratories of the Psychology Department, of the Social Relations Department, and of the Psychological Clinic to be so completely separate. President Pusey's recent report to the Overseers mentioned that "no proper physical facilities have yet been provided for the Department of Social Relations," and Pusey has previously emphasized the need for a building for all the behavioral sciences.

Certainly such a consolidation of the three laboratories in one building, if it comes, will not be easy. Each has become attached to its present quarters, and will be reluctant to move. But, according to Newman, "It would be on the whole a good thing, and perhaps it's inevitable. It would reassemble the scattered pieces of psychological work at the University."

In its 80 years of existence, the Psychological Laboratory has experienced and endured continual relocation and change. President Pusey's Program for Harvard College may lead to the most far-reaching change of all sometime in the near future. It may not be an easy change, but it should be worth it.Professor HUGO von MUNSTERBERG, at the head of the table, leads his students in a psychological chain-reaction experiment at the Dane Hall laboratory during the fall of 1892. In the background can be seen some of the early equipment with which James and Munsterberg provided the laboratory.

It also seems incongruous for the laboratories of the Psychology Department, of the Social Relations Department, and of the Psychological Clinic to be so completely separate. President Pusey's recent report to the Overseers mentioned that "no proper physical facilities have yet been provided for the Department of Social Relations," and Pusey has previously emphasized the need for a building for all the behavioral sciences.

Certainly such a consolidation of the three laboratories in one building, if it comes, will not be easy. Each has become attached to its present quarters, and will be reluctant to move. But, according to Newman, "It would be on the whole a good thing, and perhaps it's inevitable. It would reassemble the scattered pieces of psychological work at the University."

In its 80 years of existence, the Psychological Laboratory has experienced and endured continual relocation and change. President Pusey's Program for Harvard College may lead to the most far-reaching change of all sometime in the near future. It may not be an easy change, but it should be worth it.Professor HUGO von MUNSTERBERG, at the head of the table, leads his students in a psychological chain-reaction experiment at the Dane Hall laboratory during the fall of 1892. In the background can be seen some of the early equipment with which James and Munsterberg provided the laboratory.