What was Washburn’s primary goal in studying animal behavior? In what way was her approach an improvement over those of Romanes and Morgan?
Margaret Floy Washburn was the first female doctorate in the field of psychology. He got his doctorate under Titchener. She wrote more than seventy articles about the psychology of the animals. American psychological association declared her as the second female president of their organization. Washburn criticized the behaviorism psychology given by the Watson. She was greatly influenced by the Gestalt psychology for the study of the consciousness.
She was interested in the study of the consciousness interference in the animals at the level of the phylogeny just like the Morgan. She has done hundreds of the experiments to catalogue the consciousness in the animals. She has conducted the experiments in the fields including space perception, learning ability and the sensory discrimination.
The primary concern of her research was the study of the consciousness in the animals. She used the technique of controlled behavior to catalogue the events of the mind. She used the technique similar to the approach of the contemporary cognitive psychologists. Functionalism flourished the comparative study of the animal psychology. She considered the behavior of the non-human animals equally important as the human behavior.