 |
XX Symposium de la SEHP |
| 10-12 de Mayo de 2007 Cadaqués, Girona |
Clica en los nombres para ver los resúmenes de sus trabajos. Volver
Título: Motion: a key-word in psychotechnics
Angela De
Leo
Department of Psychology
University of Bari
Palazzo Ateneo, P.zza Umberto I, 70121 Bari (Italy)
Tel.: +39.080.5714448; e-mail:
deleoangela@virgilio.it
Resumen:
Economisation of human muscular effort was a topic which fascinated psychologists particularly in the first part of the 20th century. According to Taylor’s dictat that “rigid rules for each motion of every man”, in Europe as well as in America many ingenious measuring and recording devices were invented to study fatigue during walking, running, and working on the basis that filming and measuring fatigue might be used to help training for trades or the organisation of battalions, and to increase efficiency at work.
Starting from a historical background of research on psychomotor activity, which is concerned with the pioneers as the brothers Weber, É.-J. Marey, his fellowers Demenÿ and Andriveau, Ch.W. Braüne and O. Fischer, the current paper focuses on the work of two Italian psychologists Mario Ponzo, Ferruccio Banissoni, and Leandro Canestrelli, who were representative exponents of Roman School of psychology. With a profound conviction in the usefulness and possibilities of applied psychology, Ponzo, Banissoni, and Canestrelli fought strenuously for its recognition in education, in industry, in vocational guidance, and in personnel selection.
Called to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rome, in 1931, Ponzo succeeded Sante De Sanctis in the chair of psychology, which he held until 1952, when he reached the retiring age for a staff-professor. He was president of the Italian Psychological Association and a member of both the Executive Committee of the International Union of Scientific Psychology and the International Association of Applied Psychology.
After 1940 Ponzo devoted himself to applied psychology contributing to aptitude testing, professional selection, and accident prevention. Recognition and growth of applied psychology and emphasis on the problems of applied psychology in Italian work psychology were to a great degree the result of Ponzo’s research and activity.
As head of the Experimental Centre of Applied Psychology, that was a section of the National Research Council (C.N.R.) founded in 1940, Banissoni inspired and directed several projects in this field. The directorship of the Centre, after Banissoni’s death, was turned over to Canestrelli, who succeeded also Ponzo as the head of the Roman University Institute.
Canestrelli distinguished himself by original studies of motion and by his development and use of a special technique for photographing the trajectories covered during movement in the study of voluntary acts.
That technique, the history of which is analysed in this paper, was based on a method invented by Taylor’s pupils, F. and L. Gilbreth. Starting from Taylor’s aim to measure the time necessary to carry out work, they decided to represent graphically the elements of movement. To replace the clock, which only timed psychic phenomena, and Marey’s chaussures exploratrices, they created a cyclograph which marked out graphically those hesitations, habits, and aptitudes which conditioned movement. Therefore, Marey’s opinion that “just as machines are regulated to obtain a useful effect with minimum expenditure of energy, human beings can regulate their movements to produce the desired effects with minimum expenditure of energy, and consequently the least fatigue possible” was still valid in the middle of the 20th century.