FROM COLOR WHEELS (1903) TO
IPADS (2010): THE IMPACT OF
TECHNOLOGY ON PSYCHOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
Charles Burdsal
Wichita State University

Psychologists have long been enamored with
equipment. This is an interesting but a bit strange
history.

The early psychophysics researchers need equipment.
Here’s a color wheel circa 1903.

Many devices were used in research, most of which
were a single function.

Here is a relatively early device aimed at measuring
reaction time under various conditions.

A few more contraptions we used.

The period from the late 1950’s thru about 1975
brought a wealth of new research aids, particularly with
the ascendency of operant conditioning research.
Here’s a real life “Skinner Box.”

For those of you who don’t quite remember, here’s how
they worked.

There was some other equipment during that period
(some still used today) that seems a bit odd:

There was a “grip strength” meter for rats:

There were a couple of other interesting pieces of
equipment from that period:

First, a pair of glasses with prisms, not the inverted images
that Pronko used. They allowed you to determine what the
participant saw:

You could point one side in one direction, the other side
in a different direction. Probably produced a substantial
amount of nausea.

Now my favorite of the lot. The “Rodent Toe Pincher.”
Yes you heard me correctly!:
 It
measures how much pressure it takes before
the rat “hollers.” Apparently this is actually useful
in the medical world to test local anesthetics.
 Finally,
in the late 60’s early 70’s we started
entering the digital age.
 We
had our equipment – relays, volume controls,
automatic feeders, all mounted on a “rack.”
 So
how did we initially tell all this equipment what
to do?

PATCH boards!

Here’s a blank one:
 Essentially,
each “hole” is connected to a
device. For example, you could “plug in” a
feeder to a timer such that by adjusting the
timer, a pellet of food would be given at a
specific interval.
 Yes,
this could get quite complicated and
generally did.
 If
you set one up as in the next picture and
found out it “didn’t work right,” imagine
debugging it!

Here’s one that has been programmed:

Patch boards are still used today, but primarily in
electronics.

Analyzing data collected has truly been an evolution.

I started in graduate school doing ANOVA’s on a Friden
Rotary Calculator:

It got much better with the all electronic Friden 130:

Overlapping the development of calculators was the
mainframe computer access particularly at Universities.

My first experience with a mainframe computer!

This is the first one I used was an IBM 1620:

We went through a series of mainframes each increasing
what we could do in terms of both the speed of
computing and the sophisticated analyses we could do.

One of the larger and last mainframes before the focus
changed was the IBM 390:

Or the Cray super computer of the period:

For a perspective, the development of large mainframes
occurred from about 1930 to 1975 (approximately). The
development of microcomputers was from about 1972
to date.

Not to long after I was awarded my Ph.D. came what
was going to be a game changer – the Apple II.

One of the real advantages to psychologists that the
microcomputer provides is both data analysis and
experimental control.

AND there have been many advances since the Apple II.

The most recent ones we use in our computer
classrooms are the Dell 990’s:

As you know, there are many choices of personal micros
all the way up to a gamer’s dream the 12 TFLOP Fastra
desktop size super computer:

To very fast sleek laptops:

And they have gotten even more portable:

Computers are not the only advance in tools we use.
The use of the fMRI has really expanded in cognitive
neuroscience:

Data collection devices such as clickers:

Are available. One company offers (for a fee of course)
to turn student cell phones into clickers.
Where
this is going is a good
question!
I
hope there is as much progress as
has occurred since I was in graduate
school.