The Arizona champion., 1890-11-01
AN INTERESTING MEMORY TEST.
Ascertaining the Receptive Powers oi
 School Children-Test Sentences.

Ascertaining the Receptive Powers of
 School Children-Test Sentences.
 MT. H. H. Ballard publishes in The Journal of Education the result of test of the memories and receptive powers of school children. The sentence, ''Your redemption from the distress into which you have fallen is in your own hands, and in no wise depends on forms of gov ernment or modes of election,' was care fully read to one of ten selected pupils, who repeated it exactly as possible to the next scholar, and this one to the third, and so on to the tenth. The tenth pupil wrote down what he received from the ninth. In one case the sentence emerged from this process as 1.-The redemption of your distress is in your own hands, in another it was: 1.-The invention which has fallen into your hand;" and the sen tence had dwindled into this already at the sixth pupil.
 In another case the sentence was whis- pered instead of distinctly read, and the process of calling on the imagination when the senses give no clear impression is illustrated in the result, which was, 1.-The attempts into which we have fallen during the government election are very low.'' In the Pittsfeld, Mass, high school the sentence reduced to, ''Redemp- tion is in your own hands, and depends upon no formal government nor love. In the senior class of another high school, in which the average age of the pupils was IS years, the result was, "Our re- demption for our destruction has nothing to do with us." In still another school it was, .rYour distress into which you have fallen is by no means the fault of government. A set of 8-year-old pupils reduced it to, 1.-The redemption that lies in your hand is done;" and the first class of the high school in the same town made it, "Your redemption into which you have fallen is your own fault"
 In one school the experiment was modified; two pupils from each of five grades were selected, and the sentence clearly read aloud to them all. After minutes interval each of the ten wrote down what he could of the sentence. The sentences written by one pupil of the highest, one of the middle, and one of lowest grades were these: ''Your re- demption from the distress into which you have fallen lies ill your own hands, and in nowise depends on the govern ment or manner of election" "Your redemption from the distress into which you have fallen is in your own hands, and depends in no wise upon the forms of government or the modes of election" "Your redemption and distress in which you have fallen depends on yourself, and in no wise on the government or it's mode of election" Although not one of the ten got it perfectly accurate, yet many were very near it; and they all show how much more the wear and tear on the sentence is in passing through ten mouths than through one. By the other process one accumulates the combined inaccuracies of all, and one pupil with very poor receptive organ in the middle of the ten prevents the circulation of good repetition after him. After this the sentence was passed through the ten pupils arranged in order of grade, and issued as, ''Your redemption from the distress into which you have fallen de bends entirely upon yourself, and by no mSd0S upon Iue lOIulS OA SONSAAAhShO VI helps from education"
 The sentence here selected is quite difficult one, but an easier one from Elm erson was hardly more successful. The sentence was 'All things are double, one against another-tit for tat, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood, measure for measure, love for Iove"-and the result, ''All things are good for one another" Although the test, as thus applied, is too complex to allow valid inferences to be drawn from it, it at any rate shows how difficult it is to repeat accurately what has been heard, as well as how little confidence is to be placed in the declarations of persons re- porting the very few words of a conver- sation held weeks or months before; 1t illustrates, too, in simple form, the process by which a simple tale becomes an elaborately embellished narrative by passing through several hands; and per haps it indicates that the powers of care ful attention and retention need more systematic training than is devoted to them in the ordinary school work Science