Fact and fable in psychology . sting in this reveal the limited control that children haveover their muscles, and their difficulty to fix the atten-tion when and where desired. Their involuntary move- A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS. 333 ments are large, with great fluctuations, and irregularlytowards the object of attention. Fig. 25 illustratessome of these points ; in thirty-five seconds the childshand moved by large steps seven inches toward thependulum, and the entire appearance of the outline isdifferent from those obtained upon adults. Much attention has recently been paid
Fact and fable in psychology . sting in this reveal the limited control that children haveover their muscles, and their difficulty to fix the atten-tion when and where desired. Their involuntary move- A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS. 333 ments are large, with great fluctuations, and irregularlytowards the object of attention. Fig. 25 illustratessome of these points ; in thirty-five seconds the childshand moved by large steps seven inches toward thependulum, and the entire appearance of the outline isdifferent from those obtained upon adults. Much attention has recently been paid to automaticwriting, or the unconscious indication of the nature^not merely the dwection of ones thoughts, while theattention is elsewhere engaged. I attemjoted this uponthe automatograph by asking the subject to view orthink of some letter or geometric figure, and thensearching the record for some trace of the letter orfigure ; but always with a negative result. While un-successful in this sense, the records prove of value in. Fig. 26.—Thinking of letter 0. Pencil held in hand; record ontable. I., subject standing; II., subject seated. furnishing a salient contrast to the experiments inwhich the attention was fixed in a definite example, the subject is thinking of the letter O ;he does not think of it as in any special place, and therecord (Fig. 26) likewise reveals no movement in anyone direction. Two records are shown quite similar insignificance, and illustrating as well the difference be-tween the, movements while standing and while sitting. 334 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY VI There have thus been passed in review a variety ofinvoluntary movements obtained in different ways, andwith bearing? upon many points of importance to thepsychologist. They by no means exhaust the possi-bilities of research, or the deduction of conclusions inthis field of study ; but they may serve to illustratehow subtle and intricate are the expressions of thethoughts that lie withi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectspiritu, bookyear1901
