Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory - Hugo Münsterberg (best life changing books txt) 📗
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from the present one by many subsequent images. His memory was
capacious rather than selective. His eyesight was tested and found to
be normal for the range of the apparatus. Possibly his age (55 yrs.)
is significant, although one of the two subjects who showed the
greatest preference for objects and movements, Mo., was only six yrs.
younger. The ages of the other subjects were S. 36 yrs., Hu. 23 yrs.,
B. 25 yrs., Ho. 27 yrs.
That some if not all of the subjects did not have objective images in
many of the noun and verb couplets if they were left to their own
initiative to obtain them is evident from the image records in the A
set, in which the presence of the objective images was optional but
the record obligatory. The same subject might have in one noun or verb
series no visual images and in another he might have one for every
couplet of the series. After the completion of the A set, the effect
of the presence of the objective images in series of 10 nouns alone,
or 10 objects alone after two days’ interval, was tested. This was
merely a repetition of similar work by Kirkpatrick after three days’
interval, and yielded similar results. As a matter of fact some of the
subjects were unable wholly to exclude the objective images, but were
compelled to admit and then suppress them as far as possible, so that
it is really a question of degree of prominence and duration of the
images.
The presence of the objective images having been shown to be an aid in
the case of series of nouns, the subjects were henceforth requested to
obtain them in the noun and verb series of the B and C sets, and
the image records show that they were entirely successful in doing so.
2. The total number of couplets in any one or in several sets may be
divided into two classes: (1) Those in which indirect associations did
not occur in the learning, and (2) those in which they did occur. For
reasons already named we may call the first pure material and the
second mixed. We can then ascertain in each the proportion of
correctly recalled couplets after one, two, nine and sixteen days’
interval, and thus see the importance of indirect associations as a
factor in recall. This is what has been done in the following table.
The figures give the number of couplets correctly or incorrectly
recalled out of 64. In the case of the interval of one day the figures
are a tabulation of the III. test (twenty-one hours) of the C set,
which contained 16 series of 4 couplets each. The figures for the
intervals of two, nine and sixteen days are a tabulation of the B
set, which also contained 16 series of 4 couplets each. C denotes
correct, I incorrect.
TABLE VIII.
SHOWING GREATER PERMANENCE OF COUPLETS IN WHICH INDIRECT ASSOCIATIONS
OCCURRED.
Pure Material. Mixed Material.
Days. One. Two. Nine. Sixteen. One. Two. Nine. Sixteen.
C I C I C I C I C I C I C I C I
M. 40 22 23 39 22 40 2 0 2 0 3 0
Mo. 36 22 31 27 29 29 6 0 6 0 5 1
S. 27 34 6 55 2 59 1 60 2 1 3 0 3 0 3 0
Hu. 35 22 16 45 5 56 4 57 6 1 3 0 3 0 3 0
B. 48 16 17 43 9 51 7 53 0 0 4 0 1 3 1 3
Ho. 37 15 17 30 13 36 3 46 10 2 9 6 8 7 7 8
Total: 147 87 132 217 83 268 66 285 18 4 27 6 23 10 21 12
P’c’t.: 63 37 38 62 24 76 19 81 82 18 82 18 70 30 64 36
We see from the table that the likelihood of recalling couplets in
which indirect associations did not occur in learning is 63 per cent.
after one day, and that there is a diminution of 44 per cent. in the
next fifteen days. The fall is greatest during the second day. On the
other hand, the likelihood of recalling couplets in which indirect
associations did occur is 82 per cent. after one day, and there is a
diminution of only 18 per cent. during the next fifteen days. The
fading is also much more gradual.
It is evident, then, that in all investigations dealing with language
material the factor of indirect associations—a largely accidental
factor affecting varying amounts of the total material (in these six
subjects from 3 per cent. to 23 per cent.) is by far the most
influential of all the factors, and any investigations which have
heretofore failed to isolate it are not conclusive as to other
factors.
The practical value of the foregoing investigation will be found in
its bearing upon the acquisition of language. While it is by no means
confined to the acquisition of the vocabulary of a foreign language,
but is also applicable to the acquisition of the vocabulary of the
native language, it is the former bearing which is perhaps more
obvious. If it is important that one become able as speedily as
possible to grasp the meaning of foreign words, the results of the
foregoing investigation indicate the method one should adopt.
*
MUTUAL INHIBITION OF MEMORY IMAGES.
BY FREDERICK MEAKIN.
The results here presented are the record of a preliminary inquiry
rather than a definitive statement of principles.
The effort to construct a satisfactory theory of inhibition has given
rise, in recent years, to a good deal of discussion. Ever since it was
discovered that the reflexes of the spinal cord are normally modified
or restrained by the activity of the brain and Setschenow (1863)
attempted to prove the existence of localized inhibition centers, the
need of such a theory has been felt. The discussion, however, has been
mainly physiological, and we cannot undertake to follow it here. The
psychologist may not be indifferent, of course, to any comprehensive
theory of nervous action. He works, indeed, under a general
presumption which takes for granted a constant and definite relation
between psychical and cerebral processes. But pending the settlement
of the physiological question he may still continue with the study of
facts to which general expression may be given under some theory of
psychical inhibition not inconsistent with the findings of the
physiologist.
A question of definition, however, confronts us here. Can we, it may
be asked, speak of psychical inhibition at all? Does one conscious
state exercise pressure on another, either to induce it, or to expel
it from the field? ‘Force’ and ‘pressure,’ however pertinent to
physical inquiries, are surely out of place in an investigation of the
relations between the phenomena of mind. Plainly a distinction has to
be made if we are to carry over the concept of inhibition from the
domain of nervous activity to the conscious domain. Inhibition cannot,
it should seem, have the same sense in both. We find, accordingly,
that Baldwin, who defines nervous inhibition as ‘interference with the
normal result of a nervous excitement by an opposing force,’ says of
mental inhibition that it ‘exists in so far as the occurrence of a
mental process prevents the simultaneous occurrence of other mental
processes which might otherwise take place.’[1]
[1] Baldwin, J.M.: ‘Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,’
New York and London, 1901, Vol. I., article on ‘Inhibition.’
Even here, it may be said, there is in the term ‘prevents’ an
implication of the direct exercise of force. But if we abstract from
any such implication, and conceive of such force as the term
inhibition seems to connote, as restricted to the associated neural or
physiological processes, no unwarranted assumptions need be imported
by the term into the facts, and the definition may, perhaps, suffice.
Some careful work has been done in the general field of psychical
inhibition. In fact, the question of inhibition could hardly be
avoided in any inquiry concerning attention or volition. A. Binet[2]
reports certain experiments in regard to the rivalry of conscious
states. But the states considered were more properly those of
attention and volition than of mere ideation. And the same author
reports later[3] examples of antagonism between images and sensations,
showing how the latter may be affected, and in some respects
inhibited, by the former. But this is inhibition of sensations rather
than of ideas. Again, Binet, in collaboration with Victor Henri,[4]
reports certain inhibitory effects produced in the phenomena of
speech. But here again the material studied was volitional. More
recently, G. Heymans[5] has made elaborate investigation of a certain
phase of ‘psychische Hemmung,’ and showed how the threshold of
perception may be raised, for the various special senses, by the
interaction of rival sensations, justly contending that this shifting
of the threshold measures the degree in which the original sensation
is inhibited by its rival. But the field of inquiry was in that case
strictly sensational. We find also a discussion by Robert Saxinger,[6]
‘Ueber den Einfluss der Gefühle auf die Vorstellungsbewegung.’ But the
treatment there, aside from the fact that it deals with the emotions,
is theoretical rather than experimental.
[2] Binet, A.: Revue Philosophique, 1890, XXIX., p. 138.
[3] Binet, A.: Revue Philosophique, 1890, XXX., p. 136.
[4] Binet, A., et Henri, V.: Revue Philosophique, 1894,
XXXVII., p. 608.
[5] Heymans, G.: _Zeitschrift f. Psych. u. Physiol. d.
Sinnesorgane_, 1899, Bd. XXI., S. 321; Ibid., 1901, Bd.
XXVI., S. 305.
[6] Saxinger, R.: _Zeitschrift f. Psych. u. Physiol. d.
Sinnesorgane_, 1901, Bd. XXVI., S. 18.
In short, it appears that though much has been said and done upon the
general subject of psychical inhibition, experimental inquiry into the
inhibitory effect of one idea upon another—abstraction made, as far
as possible, of all volitional influence—virtually introduces us to a
new phase of the subject.
The term ‘idea,’ it should be noted, is here used in its broadest
sense, and includes the memory image. In fact, the memory image and
its behavior in relation to another memory image formed the material
of the first part of the research, which alone is reported here.
Apparatus and method were both very simple.
The ideas to be compared were suggested by geometrical figures cut out
of pasteboard and hung, 25 cm. apart, upon a small black stand placed
on a table in front of the observer, who sat at a distance of four
feet from the stand. The diagrams and descriptions which follow will
show the character of these figures.
Before the figures were placed in position, the subject was asked to
close his eyes. The figures being placed, a few seconds’ warning was
given, and at the word ‘look’ the subject opened his eyes and looked
at the objects, closing his eyes again at the word ‘close.’ The time
of exposure was five seconds. This time was divided as equally as
possible between the two figures, which were simultaneously exposed,
the observer glancing freely from one to the other as in the common
observation on which our ideas of objects are founded. At the end of
the exposure the subject sat with closed eyes and reported the several
appearances and disappearances of the ideas or mental images of the
objects just presented. The conditions required of him were that he
should await passively the entry of the rival claimants on his
attention, favoring neither and inhibiting neither; that is to say, he
was to remit all volitional activity, save so far as was
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