Fact and fable in psychology . e elbow bent in a fairly comfort-able posture ; his attention is engaged by asking him 312 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY to listen to and count the strokes of a metronome; tolook at and count the oscillations of a pendulum; toread from a book; to call out the names of colors;to think of a given direction or locality, or the positionof an object; and so on. He is instructed to think aslittle as possible of his hand, making a reasonableeffort to keep it from moving. To cut off the appara-tus from the subjects field of vision and attention, alarge screen is interpose
Fact and fable in psychology . e elbow bent in a fairly comfort-able posture ; his attention is engaged by asking him 312 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY to listen to and count the strokes of a metronome; tolook at and count the oscillations of a pendulum; toread from a book; to call out the names of colors;to think of a given direction or locality, or the positionof an object; and so on. He is instructed to think aslittle as possible of his hand, making a reasonableeffort to keep it from moving. To cut off the appara-tus from the subjects field of vision and attention, alarge screen is interposed between him and the record,a curtain with a suitable opening for the arm formingpart of the screen. The operator holds the glass pen-cil in his hand, and when all is in readiness allows itto slip through the glass tube and begin to write, re-moving it again after a definite interval or when therecord seems completed. Ill We may now consider a few typical results. Fig. 2,an ordinary average result, was obtained while the sub-. FiG. 2.—Reading colors. Time of record, 95 seconds. Positionof colors »^ >, Subject facing >» >. In all the figures A repre-sents the beginning of the record, and Z the end. The arrows are usedto indicate the direction in which the object attended to was situated, andalso the direction in which the subject was facing. The tracings are per-manently fixed b} coating them with a weak solution of shellac in alcohol. ject was calling out the names of a series of smallpatches of color, displayed on the wall facing him, abouteight feet distant. It will be observed that the move- A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 313 ment (which in all the illustrations has its beginningmarked by an A and its end by a Z) proceeds irregu-larly but decidedly towards the object upon which theattention was fixed. As a rule the subject is unawareof the movement which his hand has made, and exercisesno essential control over the results ; indeed it is likelythat he is cons
Size: 3365px × 743px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectspiritu, bookyear1901
