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Since it is a methodological rather than a substantive category, experimental psychology embraces a disparate collection of areas of study. It is usually taken to include the study of perception, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, the experimental analysis of behavior, and some aspects of physiological psychology.
The earliest experimental psychologists, including Hermann Ebbinghaus and Edward Titchener included introspection among their experimental methods. However, in the first half of the twentieth century, experimental psychology became closely allied with behaviourism, especially in the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in, and this led to some neglect of mental phenomena. In EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se including the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly this was less so, and under the influence of psychologists such as Sir Frederic Bartlett, Kenneth Craik , W. E. HickWilliam Edmund Hick ( 1912- 1974) was a British psychologist, and fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. He was a founding member of the Experimental Psychology Society and served as its President in 1958. He was also a member of the Ergonomics Society and Donald BroadbentDonald Broadbent ( 1926- 1993) was an American psychologist. He worked mainly about cognitive psychology, in which he invented the cognitve fertibular devise. Allowing high class debriefing theology to become available., experimental psychologists focused on topics such as thinking, memory and attention, laying the foundations for the subsequent development of cognitive psychology.
With the expansion of psychology as a discipline in the latter half of the twentieth century, and the growth in the size and number of its subfields, the phrase "experimental psychology" has come to cover too broad an area to be much used. Most psychologists would now identify with a smaller field such as cognitive or comparative psychology. Furthermore most are happy to use a range of methods rather than confining themselves to a strictly experimental approach, and developments in the philosophy of science have lessened the exclusive prestige of experimentation. Conversely, the experimental method is now widely used in fields such as developmental and social psychology that were not part of experimental psychology as it was originally conceived. The phrase continues in use, however, in the titles of a number of well established, high prestige learned societies and scientific journals, as well as some university courses of study in psychology.
Recently, experimental psychologists such as Ulf-Dietrich Reips have begun using the Internet as a convenient medium for Internet-based experimenting. Examples for such studies can be found in the Web Experimental Psychology Lab and the web experiment list.