Margaret Floy Washburn[1] (July 25, 1871 – October 29, 1939), was a leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development.

[2] A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S.

In 1886, she graduated from high school at the age of fifteen, and that fall, she entered Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, as a preparatory student.

During her undergraduate years at Vassar, Washburn developed a strong interest in philosophy through poetry and other literary works.

After she graduated from Vassar in 1891, Washburn became determined to study under James McKeen Cattell in the newly established psychological laboratory at Columbia University.

Despite the derogatory feelings toward women gaining education at the time, Cattell treated her as a normal student and became her first mentor.

[4] As a graduate student, she conducted an experimental study of the methods of equivalences in tactual perception, as was suggested by Titchener.

After two semesters of experimental study, she subsequently earned her Master's degree in absentia from Vassar College in the late spring of 1893 for that work.

During her work on the method of equivalents, Washburn had simultaneously developed the topic for her master’s thesis, which was done on the influence of visual imagery on judgments of tactual distance and direction.

Following her graduation, Washburn was offered the chair of psychology, philosophy, and ethics at Wells College, in Aurora, New York.

In the spring of 1900, Washburn received a telegram proposing her the warden's position at the Sage College of Cornell University.

In the spring of 1903, she gladly returned to Vassar College as Associate Professor of Philosophy, where she remained the rest of her life.

Reporting her observations in The Animal Mind, she noted "A cat with which the writer is acquainted stands on his hind legs and touches a door handle with his paw when he wishes to be let out".

[7] In 1921, Washburn gave her APA presidential address in which she discussed the importance of introspection as a legitimate method of inquisition.

She believed that the rising of behaviorism in psychology was overshadowing the legitimacy of mental processes like consciousness and introspection.

Besides her experimental work, she read widely and drew on French and German experiments of higher mental processes stating they were intertwined with tentative physical movements (period).

In current psychology research, echoes of Washburn's insistence that behavior is part of thinking can be seen in dynamic systems approach that Thelen and Smith (1994) use to explain the development of cognition in humans.

In 1927, she was elected vice president and chairman of Section 1 (Psychology) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Animal Mind covered a range of mental activities, beginning with the senses and perception, including hearing, vision, kinesthetic, and tactual sensation.

In an era when animal research was dominated by rats, Washburn references, "not fewer than 100 species, including ants, bees, caterpillars, cats, chickens, chubs, clams, cockroaches, cows, crabs, crayfish, dogs, dragonflies, earthworms, elephants, flies, frogs, goldfish, grasshoppers, guinea pigs, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, lancelets, leeches, mice, minnows, monkeys, pigeons, pike, planarians, potato beetles, raccoons, salamanders, sea anemones, sea-urchins, shrimps, silkworms, snails, spiders, tortoises, wasps, water beetles, and (yes) rats.

The greater the similarity in neuroanatomical structure and behavior between animals and humans, the more consciousness could be inferred.

We know where it surely resides—in ourselves; we know where it exists beyond a reasonable doubt—in those animals of structure resembling ours which rapidly adapt themselves to the lessons of experience.

[14] Washburn's motor theory attempted to find common ground between the structuralist tradition of her mentor, Titchener.

Washburn's motor theory argued that all thought can be traced back to bodily movements.

Thinking becomes a derivative of movements of the hands, eyes, vocal cords, and trunk muscles (the thinker's pose).

[15] Washburn presented this theory in several of her major works, consisting of early papers and in chapters she contributed to several collections, including Feelings and Emotions: The Wittenberg Symposium and Psychologies of 1930.

[17] ^ Margaret Floy Washburn is not a partner in the famed Cannon-Washburn experiment (where a balloon is swallowed and then inflated to determine the effect of stomach size on the hunger drive).

"Cannonical [sic] confusions, an illusory allusion, and more: a critique of Haggbloom, et al.'s list of eminent psychologists".