Editing Wilhelm Wundt (section)

===Apperception theory===
Wundt rejected the widespread [[Association (psychology)|association theory]], according to which mental connections ([[learning]]) are mainly formed through the frequency and intensity of particular processes. His term ''apperception psychology'' means that he considered the ''creative'' conscious activity to be more important than elementary association. Apperception is an emergent activity that is both arbitrary and selective as well as imaginative and comparative. In this process, feelings and ideas are images apperceptively connected with typical tones of feeling, selected in a variety of ways, analysed, associated and combined, as well as linked with motor and autonomic functions – not simply ''processed'' but also ''creatively synthesised'' (see below on the Principle of creative synthesis). In the integrative process of conscious activity, Wundt sees an elementary activity of the subject, i.e. an act of volition, to deliberately move content into the conscious. Insofar that this emergent activity is typical of all mental processes, it is possible to describe his point-of-view as voluntaristic.

Wundt describes apperceptive processes as psychologically highly differentiated and, in many regards, bases this on methods and results from his experimental research. One example is the wide-ranging series of experiments on the [[mental chronometry]] of complex [[reaction time]]s. In research on feelings, certain effects are provoked while pulse and breathing are recorded using a [[kymograph]]. The observed differences were intended to contribute towards supporting Wundt's [[emotion#Theories|theory of emotions]] with its three dimensions: pleasant – unpleasant, tense – relaxed, excited – depressed.<ref>Wundt: Grundzüge, 1902, Volume 2, pp. 263–369.</ref>