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APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

On August 16:

1816 - Johann Jacob Guggenbuhl was born. Guggenbuhl founded the first residential treatment facility for people with mental retardation at Abendberg, Switzerland.

1832 - Wilhelm Wundt was born. He gathered introspective reports of elementary visual, auditory, and other experiences to study how selective attention and the will construct conscious experience from them. Wundt founded the world's first functional psychology laboratory (1879) at the University of Leipzig, and his students were the primary founders of experimental psychology.

1879 - Charles Wilfred Valentine was born. Valentine, an educational psychologist, founded the British Journal of Educational Psychology and wrote several texts on early education and intelligence testing in children. In addition, his text on experimental aesthetics was a standard for 40 years.

1991 - APA President Charles Spielberger presided over the opening ceremonies of the APA Centennial celebration at the 99th Annual Convention in San Francisco.

1991 - The first issue of the APA Daily News, the APA's convention newspaper, was published for the APA convention in San Francisco.

Copyright © 1995, American Psychological Association. Web version by permission. Source: Street, W. R. (1994). A Chronology of Noteworthy Events in American Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Association and Central Washington University have supported the development of the APA Historical Database.

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