A photography exhibition of old psychological instruments organized by the Banja Luka Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Belgrade Laboratory of Experimental Psychology was inaugurated on November 13at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Banja Luka. The instruments shown in the photographs are part of the Collection of old psychological instruments of the Belgrade Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. The collection boasts around one hundred instruments dating back to the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Back then, the instruments were ordered by the founder of psychology in this part of the world, Prof. Borislav Stevanović, in order to be used to foster research in psychology. This collection, founded by Prof. Aleksandar Kostić during the 1980s, is part of the Association of museums of science and technology of Serbia and represents one of the most valuable collections of this sort worldwide.
The collection contains instruments for measuring cognitive processes (memory and learning); instruments for controlled generating of quantitatively and qualitatively diverse visual, auditive, tactile, and other types of stimuli; instruments for investigating fatigue, manual abilities, agility, etc; instruments of general use and ancillary instruments (such as recation time tasters, stopwatches, metronomes, etc). Besides intruments, the collection contains ability tests in use for instance in workplace psychology and developmental psychology, charts with visual illusions and similar instruments.
Despite the importance of objective measurement in psychology and the benefits it leads to, wider audience is mostly unaware of experimental psychology methodology and results. For this reason, exhibitions like this one have a special role in bringing experimental measurement in psychology to the public.
Photographies can be viewed until February 13 in the premises of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Banja Luka or online, through the web page of The Collection of old psychological instruments of the Belgrade Laboratory of Experimental Psychology.
