Tracy Kendler

1
Tracy Kendler

• 1918-2001

2
Introduction

• Did it all
• Jewish Psychologist
• Researcher
• Professor
• Wife
• Mother of two sons

3
Family

• Parents never went beyond an elementary education
• They had to work
• Worked all of time throughout Tracys childhood
• Financial hardship
• Tracy took care of herself
• Said this caused her to develop an independent
  streak that later stood me in good stead
• Her father died when she was 8 years old
• Mother remarried and had her half-sister
• Tracy helped take care of her sister

4
Name Change

• Tracy born with the first name Sylvia
• She worked at a summer camp for preschoolers
• 4 out of the 5 counselors were named Sylvia
• Tracy had just seen The Philadelphia Story
• A romantic comedy movie
• The main characters name is Tracy
• Decided to change her name to Tracy
• Later it was changed legally

5
Developmental Psychologist

• Researched development within a neobehavioristic
  then cognitive orientation
• Researched and wrote many articles with her
  husband, Howard Kendler
• Howard was supportive of Tracy and treated her as
  an equal
• The unfair treatment of her angered him

6
Historical Antecedents

• To be born in interesting times is said to be a
  curse. Looking back now, I find the interest
  generated overshadowed the discord experienced.
• Tracy Kendler in her autobiography A Womans
  Struggle in Academic Psychology (1936-2001)

7
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Anti-Semitism
• Parents emigrated to U.S. from Eastern Europe
  (Hungary and Russia) to escape anti-Semitism
• Especially prevalent throughout Kendlers early
  years, adolescence, and college years
• WWI
• Tracy born during the end of it in New York City
  in 1918

8
Historical Antecedents cont.

• The Great Depression
• She was 11 years old when stock market crashed
• Italian Fascism and German Nazism on the rise
• Communist ideology becoming prevalent in NY
  intellectuals
• Political and social interest in her
  neighborhood, Coney Island (childhood), Brighton
  Beach (adolescence)
• Tracy became a student political activist in high
  school
• Everyone had financial problems including Tracys
  family

9
Historical Antecedents cont.

• WWII (1939)
• Tracy was
• 18 yrs. old when Hitler came to power in Germany
• 21 yrs. old when war started

10
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Status of Women in psychology leading up to
  Tracys time
• Very few compared to number of men
• Difficult (sometimes impossible) to get into
  graduate school for psychology
• No jobs in psychology for women (could not be
  professors)
• Most psychologists considered women inferior to
  men

11
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Developmental Psychology
• Began from academic interest for the betterment
  of children
• The use of scientific methods for social purposes
  
• The Iowa Child Welfare Research Station
• In 1906 a woman who had lost some of her children
  worked with the University of Iowa and
  legislators to start it (began in 1917)
• Devoted to research in child development (their
  physical and educational well-being)

12
Developmental Psychology cont.

• The Iowa Child Welfare Research Station cont.
• Bird Baldwin started the Preschool Laboratories
  part of it in 1925
• Began doing research in naturalistic settings in
  1930s (Stoddard, Skeels, Wellman, Updegraff) and
  found unstimulating environments can cause a loss
  of IQ in children (1938)
• Experimental Child Psychology 1950s and 1960s
• Using children as subjects to test general
  psychological theories for the purpose of
  extending scientific knowledge
• Charles Spiker established the first graduate
  program

13
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Gestalt Psychology
• Founder considered to be Max Wertheimer
  (1880-1943) in Germany
• Other important influences Koffka, Kohler
  (Wertheimers students), Lewin, Perls (founded
  Gestalt therapy)
• Emphasis on the whole
• Our consciousness and behavior occurs within a
  perceptual field
• Phenomenology A technique used by Gestaltists
  is the study of that which naturally appears in
  consciousness

14
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Solomon Asch
• Became a distinguished social psychologist
• Taught Tracys experimental psychology course
  during her undergraduate studies
• Taught Gestalt theory
• Convinced Tracy (and Howard Kendler, her future
  husband) to go to graduate school in psychology
  at the University of Iowa to study with
  Gestaltist Kurt Lewin

15
Historical Antecedents cont.

• Neobehaviorism
• Neobehaviorist that converted Tracy from Gestalt
  psychology to neobehaviorism Kenneth Spence
• Tested elaborate, associative theories about the
  learning process
• Mental processes can be inferred from behavior
  but they are not publicly observable
• Focus on S-R and everything besides the S that
  impacted the R
• Attempted to find lawful relationships to explain
  behavior

16
Zeitgeist

• Thomas Kuhn
• At the time, he was researching childrens
  discrimination learning and how it differed from
  animals.
• The Kendlers started researching behavior in
  rats, but when they saw other experimenters using
  children, they then veered more toward studying
  childrens behavior.
• Science was moving toward a more concrete
  pragmatic approach and concentrating less on
  theory

17
Zeitgeist cont.

• Role of women in science
• Most important social influence A Womans
  Struggle in Academic Psychology (257).
• Called herself an antediluvian feminista
  feminist before the feminist movement
• All of the male graduate students in psychology
  had research or teaching assistantships. Tracy
  never did.
• First woman Kenneth Spence sponsored.
• Shortly after marrying Howard, Spence told her to
  concentrate on being a good wife.
• Several years later, he changed his mind about
  women in science.

18
Zeitgeist cont.

• Kurt Lewin
• Sought to extend Gestalt theory to the fields of
  personality and social behavior
• Member of the Child Welfare Research Station
• Along with Spence, applied their theories
  (Gestalt and Neobehaviorism) in their research
  with children and this started basic, as opposed
  to applied, experimental child psychology.

19
Zeitgeist cont.

• Kurt Lewin
• His life space model interacting forces operate
  to determine the persons behavior, the
  person-environment interaction is a life space
  this model did not survive
• Much of his research was done on children, but
  the experiments were intended to test,
  articulate, and extend a general theory of
  behavior.

20
Zeitgeist cont.

• Kenneth Spence
• Neobehavioristsought to convert Gestaltists
• Early in career, produced an influential theory
  about discrimination learning in animals then
  tested it on children and found similar learning
  principles in children.
• Opened the door to graduate school for Tracy,
  converted her to neobehaviorism
• A step in achieving the goal of neobehaviorism
  was to make directly observable behavior the
  subject matter instead of the intangible mind.
  Mental processes can be inferred from behavior,
  but not publicly observableA Womans Struggle in
  Academic Psychology (256).

21
Zeitgeist cont.

• Kenneth Spence cont.
• Tracy was so intrigued by Spence that she chose
  to do her PhD thesis with him. This thesis
  involved his theory mentioned earlier.
• Doctoral research focused on discrimination-learni
  ng with white rats. Thesis was designed to test
  a set of predictions that would pit Spences
  mathematical model of discrimination-learning
  against Gestalt theory.
• Howard and Tracy admired Spence so much, they
  named their second child, Kenneth, after him.

22
Zeitgeist cont.

• WWII
• Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
  when Tracy was in her second year of graduate
  schoolthe US entered the war.

23
Professional struggles/obstacles

• Great Depression
• Tracy did not have enough money to go to college
  immediately after graduating high school because
  her family had financial problems.
• Family
• Mother opposed to her going to college. She
  thought she should find a wealthy husband
  insteadA Womans Struggle in Academic Psychology
  (256).

24
Professional struggles/obstacles cont.

• Anti-Semitism
• When going to register for classes, Tracy was
  told that the courses she wanted to take were
  closedpartly because she was a woman and partly
  because she was a Jew. When Kurt Lewin (a Jew
  himself) learned about the unfriendly welcome
  Tracy and Howard received he was furious.

25
Professional struggles/obstacles cont.

• Lack of respect for women in education
• When being interviewed by the head of the
  psychology department at the University of Iowa,
  John McGeoch, Tracy was told that there were no
  jobs for women.
• After obtaining her PhD, the only job Tracy could
  find was as a clinical psychologist at the
  Chicago State Hospitala hospital for the
  seriously disturbed and insane.
• Finally offered a graduate assistantship to teach
  experimental psychology at Barnard College 11
  years after obtaining her PhD.

26
Professional struggles/obstacles cont.

• Lack of respect for women in education cont.
• Applied for a faculty position in Child and
  Adolescent Development at Barnard College, but
  the Chairman of the Psychology Department told
  her that he had an application from a male
  psychologist whomwould be hired, not because he
  had a superior record but because he would not
  have the divided responsibilities of a married
  woman with children as she wouldA Womans
  Struggle in Academic Psychology (260).
• Tracy wanted to do graduate teaching at Columbia
  University, but at the time there were no women
  psychologists in the psychology department at
  Columbia.

27
Professional struggles/obstacles cont.

• Lack of respect of women in education cont.
• Finally obtained an assistant professor position
  at Barnard College 12 years after receiving her
  PhDthe man declined the position in Child and
  Adolescent Development that she had also applied
  for.
• Always offered lower level job positions and less
  salary than Howard despite the fact that both had
  same qualifications and concentrated their
  research on the same subject matter.
• The University Faculty Club at Columbia
  University (Barnard College is the partnering
  womens college) even excluded women, unless they
  were granted with the honor of being a guest of a
  male to the restaurant on the top floor.

28
Kendlers Work

• Discrimination learning
• Subject reinforced to respond to certain
  characteristics of stimuli (size, shape, etc.)
• Shifts
• Reversal shift
• Extradimensional shift

29
Shift Behavior by Developmental Level

• An Ontogeny of Optional Shift Behavior in the
  journal Child Development in 1970
• Studied differences in shift behavior among
  kindergarteners, second graders, sixth graders,
  and college students
• Found that the ease of making a reversal shift
  increases with age
• But the ease of making an extradimensional shift
  declines with age

30
Cognition

• Mediation theory
• A way of defining what goes on internally between
  stimulus and response
• Early cognitive revolution
• Originally an abstract Gestalt concept
• Through her work, Kendler tried to make it
  something observable (neobehaviorist)

31
Strengths/Weaknesses

• Beginning of cognition
• Mediation theory relied too much on external
  stimuli and didnt explain the consistency of
  cognition
• Was supplanted by a more cognitive,
  interactionist approach (Piaget)

32
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Many accomplishments in psychology despite being
  a minority and a woman and living through many
  struggles
• Published more than 60 articles and 1 book in
  the areas of learning and developmental
  psychology
• Levels of Cognitive Development (1995) Pointed
  to cognitive psychology and neuroscience as the
  future for understanding developmental changes in
  cognitive functioning
• Basic Psychology Brief Edition Textbook for
  general psychology classes she wrote with her
  husband

33
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship
• One of the 1st women members of the Society of
  Experimental Psychologists
• 1st woman member of the Governing Board of the
  Psychonomic Society
• President of the Western Psychological
  Association in 1977
• Consulting editor for Child Development
• Long-term member of the Society for Research in
  Child Development
• Received several National Science Foundation
  grants and a United States Public Health Service
  grant to fund her research

34
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Helped change the minds of male psychologists to
  be more favorable toward having women in the
  field especially Kenneth Spence
• PhD thesis judged to be excellent
• Received PhD in 1943
• Successful in research and became a professor
  despite obstacles
• Endured unfair treatment for being a Jew and
  being a woman in psychology

35
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Worked against prejudice not only for those who
  were Jewish but also for African Americans
• Worked for the Commission for Community
  Relations, a branch of the American Jewish
  Congress (AJC), which did research on social
  prejudice
• Worked with AJC in combination with the NAACP to
  collect and interpret evidence relevant to the
  problem of whether segregated schools can provide
  equally effective education

36
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Wrote Contributions of the Psychologist to
  Constitutional Law (1950)
• A report against the separate but equal
  principle based on her research findings
• May have contributed to the principle being
  overturned in Brown v. Board of Education of
  Topeka, Kansas (1954)
• Made significant contributions to understanding
  learning and development
• Vertical and horizontal processes in problem
  solving
• Identified as a Citation Classic by Current
  Contents
• Was cited over 337 times between 1963 and 1976

37
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Applied a cognitive-behavioral approach to the
  study of learning and problem solving
• Research on cognitive development helped progress
  developmental psychology
• Mentor to graduate students
• Very important to her
• She called it a peak experience to have
  graduate students help with her research

38
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Family and career
• Had a professional career
• Still put her husband and children first
• Son, Kenneth Kendler, recently awarded the
  distinguished Lieber Prize for outstanding
  research in human genetics, which he dedicated to
  his loving parents

39
Influence of Tracy Kendler

• Dedicated her book to her husband
• To...my husband Howard Kendler, I am indebted
  for putting up with me all these years without
  losing his sense of humor. He encouraged me to
  begin this line of research and we collaborated
  on all the early experiments as well as on the
  early theorizing. Although the scientific
  collaboration eventually ended, he remains my
  best friend and dearest companion, as well as my
  severest critic.

40
Tracy Kendler died of pulmonary fibrosis on July
28, 2001 with Howard at her side
41
Summary Who was listening???

• What type of psychology did Tracy Kendler focus
  on?
• Neobehaviorism
• Who were some of the well-known psychologists who
  influenced Tracy?
• Solomon Asch
• Abraham Maslow
• Kurt Lewin
• Kenneth Spence
• What were some of Tracys main areas of
  experimentation and research?
• Discrimination learning
• Mediation theory

42
Summary cont.

• What were some of the obstacles that Tracy had to
  overcome?
• Being a female in a time that women were not
  well-respected
• Being a Jew during WWII and the aftermath of WWII
• Mother not wanting her to go to collegeinstead
  look for a nice husband
• Great Depression did not have enough money to
  enter college upon graduation of high school
• Besides being an advocate for her own minority
  group, what other minority group did she fight
  for the rights of?
• African Americans

43
References

• Basden, B. H. (2002). Tracy Seedman Kendler
  (1918-2001). American Psychologist, 57, 364.
• Kendler, H. H. (2002). A personal encounter with
  psychology (1937-2002). History of
• Psychology, 5, 52-84.
• Kendler, H. H., Kendler, T. S. (1962). Vertical
  and horizontal processes in problem solving.
• Psychological Review, 69, 1-16.
• Kendler, H. H., Kendler, T. S. (1971). Basic
  psychology Brief edition. East Norwalk, CT
• Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Kendler, T. S. (1950). Contributions of the
  psychologist to constitutional law. American
• Psychologist, 5, 505-510.
• Kendler, T. S. (1991). The development of
  developmental psychology. In Joan H. (Ed.).
• Psychology at Iowa Centennial essays.
  Hillsdale, NJ Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
• Kendler, T. S. (1995). Levels of cognitive
  development. Hillsdale, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum
• Associates.
• Kendler, T. S., Kendler, H. H. (2003). A
  womans struggle in academic psychology (1936-
• 2001). History of Psychology, 6, 251-266.
• Suppes, P. (1975). From behaviorism to
  neobehaviorism. Theory and Decision, 6, 269-285.
• Woldt, A. L., Toman, S. M. (Eds.). (2005).
  Gestalt therapy History, theory, and practice.
• Thousand Oaks, CA Sage.