The American Journal of Psychology Volume 26 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...grow more and more familiar, would constitute essentially a series of cross-sections through the recognitive consciousness at successive points between its initial, hesitant stage, and its final, facile and mechanized stage. In a final series of preliminary experiments, the materials chosen were alphabets printed from five different faces of type, each representing a characteristic variant from the common letter-form. These variant letter-forms were wholly unfamiliar to the observers at the outset; and the experiment consisted in having him describe the mental contents and the mental procedures employed in successive acts of recognition at various stages throughout the process of learning. The lower-case alphabets were arranged in vertical columns, side by side, on a strip of white paper 6 cm. wide. This strip was placed on the drum of a Spindler and Hoyer exposure-apparatus, and the mechanism timed to furnish a three-seconds' exposure. The name of each face of type was plainly printed on the bevel of the exposure aperture, so that it would appear just below the column to which it belonged. Six observers took part in this experiment. All had had training in introspection, and four of the six were specially trained students and investigators in experimental psychology. The experiments were begun April 3, 1912, and concluded June 6, 1912. The observer was instructed to note the letters as they appeared (the row of five different "a's," then the " b's," etc.), in any fashion he chose, endeavoring to learn the characteristics of the different faces. After the exposure of the entire series, the observer was shown isolated letters from the list; he was asked to name the type to which each isolated letter belonged, and then to give a detailed...