UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences
[4] The Division offers teaching and training and undertakes research in psychology and communication and allied clinical and basic science.
[7] Notable members of its academic staff have included Oliver Braddick, Cyril Burt, Francis Galton, John Morton, W. H. R. Rivers, Tim Shallice and James Sully.
In 1837 Professor John Elliotson pioneered the use of mesmerism (hypnotism) during surgical operations at University College Hospital:[9] Charles Dickens was among those who attended some of his demonstrations.
He provided evidence that such traits might be largely inherited in man, and he was the first to employ the statistical technique of correlation to assess the relationship between measured qualities.
In 1877 James Ward proposed that a laboratory should be established in Cambridge to study psychophysics[15] (the relation between the physical properties of stimuli and experienced sensations).
[16] Psychology of a philosophic type in the tradition of British Empiricism has been taught at UCL since the appointment of George Croom Robertson[17] to the Grote Chair of Mind and Logic in 1866.
In the July 1897 issue of Mind the following notice appeared: A laboratory for experimental psychology will be opened in University College, London, in October next.
The committee have secured a considerable part of the apparatus collected by Prof. Hugo Münsterberg of Freiburg, who is about to migrate permanently to Harvard College.
[20] Of this period Dr May Smith writes: `During this time he used to hold informal discussions in his laboratory and gathered there a small group of people interested in psychology’.
With the appointment in 1907 of Charles Spearman as Reader,[22] and later as the first occupant of the newly established Chair, the Department of Psychology at University College started to grow.
[23] Much of its work involved the study of individual differences in ability, and of the development of the mathematical and statistical techniques of measurement and analysis, which remain a current interest.
[24] During the twenty years he occupied the Chair, he made the Department a focus for teaching and research in the measurement and understanding of individual differences.
[25] The expansion of the teaching staff also enabled him to develop work on human learning, perception and other areas of experimental psychology.
[30] In the same year Professors Jan Atkinson and Oliver Braddick joined the Department, bringing with them the Visual Development Unit.
Impact cases covered diverse research applications such as programmes for helping people to stop smoking, a new drug treatment for multiple sclerosis, computer software for analysing brain imaging data, and stem-cell based transplants for deafness.
