Psychology Atlas

How The Mind Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Psychologist

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Cognitive Psychology

German psychologist, one of the founders of experimental research on memory.

Facts
Birth Date
1850-01-24 1
Birth Year
1850 1
Death Date
1909-02-26 1
Death Year
1909 1
Birthplace
Barmen, Rhine Province, Kingdom of Prussia 1
Death Place
Halle, German Empire 1
Nationality / Culture
German 1
Defining Contribution
Testing his own memory for nonsense syllables between 1880 and 1885, plotted the forgetting curve describing how newly learned material is lost rapidly at first and then more slowly over time. 2
Notable Work
Uber das Gedachtnis (1885; translated as Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology) 1
Connections

Associated With

The size-contrast illusion is named for and credited to Hermann Ebbinghaus.

His pioneering forgetting-curve research quantified overlearning in terms of the extra repetitions needed to reach full recall accuracy.

First studied the serial-position effect, of which the primacy effect is one half.

First studied the serial-position effect, of which the recency effect is the other half.

The effect is named for Ebbinghaus's pioneering self-experimentation on memory.

Ebbinghaus's own memory experiments first demonstrated that learning distributed over time produces better retention than massed practice.

In Branch

Source Wikipedia: Hermann Ebbinghaus

Studies Conducted

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Hermann Ebbinghaus
Wikimedia Foundation
  • infobox
    Halle, German Empire
  • Introduction
    was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory
  • Career section
    In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Uber das Gedachtnis ("On Memory", later translated to English as Memory. A Contribution to Experimental Psychology)
View the Source
2. Wikipedia: Forgetting Curve
Wikimedia FoundationContribution to psychology section
Quote, Contribution to psychology section
Ebbinghaus's experiment has significantly contributed to experimental psychology. He was the first to carry out a series of well-designed experiments on the subject of forgetting.
View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.