Stories About People: March 2013

Wechsler Intelligence Scales

The Wechsler Intelligence Scales are divided into two sections: verbal and nonverbal (or “performance”), with separate scores for each. Verbal intelligence, the component most often associated with academic success, implies the ability to think in abstract terms using either words or mathematical symbols. Performance intelligence suggests the ability to perceive relationships and fit separate parts together logically into a whole.

The inclusion of the performance section in the Wechsler scales is especially helpful in assessing the cognitive ability of children with speech and language disorders or whose first language is not English. The test can be of particular value to school psychologists screening for specific learning disabilities because of the number of specific subtests that make up each section.

The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence (WPPSI) have traditionally been geared toward children ages four to six, although the 1989 version of the test (WPPSI-III, 1989) extends the age range down to three years and upward to seven years, three months.

Carl Wernicke

Carl Wernicke was an influential member of the nineteenth-century German school of neuropsychiatry, which viewed all mental illnesses as resulting from defects in brain physiology.

A practicing clinical neuropsychiatrist,Wernicke also made major discoveries in brain anatomy and pathology. He believed that abnormalities could be localized to specific regions of the cerebral cortex and thus could be used to determine the functions of these regions.

Wernicke was one of the first to conceive of brain function as dependent on neural pathways that connected different regions of the brain, with each region contributing a relatively simple sensory-motor activity. At the time, most scientists conceived of the brain as functioning as a single organ. Wernicke also helped demonstrate dominance by either the right or left hemispheres of the cerebrum.

Max Wertheimer

Max Wertheimer was born in Prague on April 15, 1880. At the University in Prague he first studied law and then philosophy; he continued his studies in Berlin and then in Würzburg, where he received his doctorate in 1904.

During the following years, his work included research on the psychology of testimony, deriving no doubt from his early interest in law and his abiding interest in the nature of truth; he also carried on research in music, another lifelong interest.

In 1910, Wertheimer performed his now famous experiments on apparent movement, that movement which we see when, under certain conditions, two stationary objects are presented in succession at different places (a phenomenon familiar in moving pictures). This was the beginning of Gestalt psychology—a major revolution in psychological thinking.

Joseph Wolpe

South African-born American psychiatrist who made significant contributions to behavior therapy.

Joseph Wolpe’s groundbreaking work as a behaviorist was grounded in his belief that behavior therapy was as much an applied science as any other aspect of medicine. He is probably best known for his work in the areas of desensitization and assertiveness training, both of which have become important elements of behavioral therapy.

He was born on April 20, 1915 in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Michael Salmon and Sarah Millner Wolpe. He grew up in South Africa and attended college there, obtaining his M.D. from the University of Witwatersrand. When the Second World War began, he joined the South African army as a medical officer. He worked in a military psychiatric hospital, and witnessed soldiers who were suffering from what would today be called post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Robert Yerkes

Robert Yerkes was born in Pennsylvania, and was educated at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in psychology in 1902. He served as professor of psychology at Harvard, the University of Minnesota, and Yale University, and as a member of the National Research Council.

In 1919,Yerkes founded the Yale Laboratories of Primate Biology and served as its director from 1929 to 1941, when the lab was moved to Orange Park, Florida. A year later, it was renamed the Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology. A pioneer in the field of comparative psychology,Yerkes studied the intelligence and behavior of many forms of animal life, from jellyfish to humans, but he focused most of his attention on primates.

Among his findings were the discovery that chimpanzees imitate both each other and human beings, and the observation that orangutans can pile boxes on top of one another to reach food after seeing this demonstrated, thus transferring this experience to other learning problems.

Wilhelm Max Wundt

Wilhelm Wundt was born on August 16, 1832, in Baden, in a suburb of Mannheim called Neckarau. As a child, he was tutored by Friedrich Müller. Wundt attended the Gymnasium at Bruschel and at Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen for a year, then Heidelberg for more than three years, receiving a medical degree in 1856.

He remained at Heidelberg as a lecturer in physiology from 1857 to 1864, then was appointed assistant professor in physiology. The great physiologist, physicist, and physiological psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz came there in 1858, and Wundt was his assistant for a period of time.

During the period from 1857 to 1874, Wundt evolved from a physiologist to a psychologist. In these years he also wrote Grundzüge der physiologischen psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology).

Edward F. Zigler

Edward Frank Zigler was born in 1930 to Louis Zigler and Gertrude (Gleitman) Zigler of Kansas, Missouri. His parents and two older sisters immigrated to the United States from Poland.

After attending a vocational high school in Kansas City, Zigler earned his B.S. at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1958.

He then taught for a year at the University of Missouri at Columbia before going to Yale in 1959, where he became director of the Yale University department of child development in 1961. Zigler married Bernice Gorelick in 1955 and has one son, Scott.