The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-10-27
STUDYING MENTALACTION
VARIOUS EXPERIMENTS TRIED IN A
PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY.
Effort to Throw Light on the Work
ings of the Mind-Interesting
Data from Turtles and Frogs.

from being merely metaphysical specu-
lation concerning the essence of the SOUL
as one of its leading opponents has phrased
it, to what may be called an exact science.
AS recently as 1873 Professor Wilhelm
Wundt established at the University of
Leipsic the first laboratory of experimental
psychology. There is naturally a great
contrast between the little room where
Wundt began his experiments with his
homemade apparatus and a modern psy-
Geological laboratory like that now estab-
lished at Harvard equipped with a hun
dred appliances for the assistance of the
student in his investigations: and the con-
trast seems only the greater perhaps,
when one learns that Professor Hugo
Muensterberg, the present head of the
Harvard laboratory was one of the first of
Wundts pupils. In 1892 he was called
to America to organize and superintend
the equipment of this new branch of the
university activity, at which time the Har-
ward laboratory, which had already been
started by Professor William Jones, though
retaining its full connection with the di-
vision Of philosophy-in which psychology
is one of the most important branches
was established as a distinct department.
ranking with the Jefferson Physical Lab
oratory, the Chemical Laboratory, the
Gray Herbarium. or the Museum of Com
parative Zoology. To-day it is the center
of the interests OF large number Of stu
dents, graduate and undergraduate. the
former representing perhaps a score of
different colleges and universities.
WE THINK QUICKLY.
To illustrate the work done in such a
place one may point perhaps to the one
or the other special line. The expert
mental psychologist studies for instance
the time of mental processes. For that
purpose he uses clocks, monographs and
chronoscopes, which give the thousandth
part of a second and record accurately the
time it takes TO sense" color or think
a thought The mechanism of the chrome
scopes is so delicate that only electric
currents are used to start and stop them.
Various instruments are employed in con-
nection with them in order that a sound
may be given, or a light suddenly shown,
or color or a letter or word exposed,
and at the same instant an electric cur
rent be made to start the clock. Mean
while some one has been waiting for the
sound or the light, with his hand upon
telegraph key. The moment he hears
the sound or sees the light the hand is
removed from the key, and an electric
current stops the clock. The time that the
clock runs is the time that it has taken
him to see the light or hear the sound and
to move his hand. The time is about 125
thousandths of a second in the case of
sound, and about 16O thousandths for light
From this simplest and shortest of all
reactions the psychologist may then pro-
coed to more complex problems. He can
measure the time it takes to name a color
or a letter or a picture of some simple OBJ
ject, to read word or sentence, TO add,
subtract or multiply, to think of his own
name, to think of the capital of the United
States to give the meaning of a Latin or
German word.
WHAT EXPERIMENTS SHOW.
1t has been found that women can see
light or hear a sound and then move the
hand more rapidly than men; that women
and children see and name colors more
quickly than they can see and. name the
words for the colors, while men name the
word for the color more quickly than the
color itself. 1t takes about the same time
to read a word of five or six letters as it
does to read a single letter People, it
appears, read by jumping at groups of
words at a time, not by picking out a
sentence word for word-a theory which
| has already been applied in teaching chill
dren to read.
The chronoscope shows that one remem-
bers ones own name more quickly than
the name of ones friend, no matter how
intimate, although may seem, in or
diary speech outside the laboratory, to re-
member both names instantaneously. 1t
shows, in thousandths of a second, how
much better one knows in what State ones
own city is than in what State some other
city is to be found, or in what country
| Paris or Berlin may be. Even the most
confirmed Anglomaniac does not know the
location of London quite so we'll as he
knows that of his native town in America.
The chronoscope, indeed. as DR.. Lightner
Wilmer, of the University of Pennsylva-
mia. has suggested. would be better than
any possible examination paper that could
be devised to test the familiarity of a body
of students in the rudiments Of a Ian
guage or science.
Everyone that has studied Latin" he
says, land many that have not knows the
meaning of the verb 'amo,' and could even
conjugate perfectly the present indicative
active. In an ordinary examination to
would hardly be a test of scholarship. but
as recorded with the chronoscope. the best
Latin scholars viii give the English words
for 'amo' a few thOusandths of a second
before the others. The best mathemati-
clan can add two and two, or multiply
two by three, a few thousandths of a sec
ond more quickly than the others. You may
be familiar with two languages, and may
think that you know equally well the
Latin word for good and the Greek word
but the chronoscope would show you that
you were mistaken. You win always read
most fuenty the language that you began
earliest in your life. although you may
think you know and read both equally
well and alothough others can detect no
difference But there is a difference, and
the chronoscope would detect it and re-
cord it in thousandths of a second"
SOME MENTAL TESTS.
The study and measurement of mental
acts. of the precipitations of time and
space, of association Of ideas of attention,
of discrimination. of memory, of the feel
ings-both pleasant and painfuI-of the
emotions, of will. Of voluntary and invol-
untary movements, or of the degree of in
terest or appreciation one has for aesthet-
les, also receive the attention of the expert
mental psychologists, involving the use Of
special and highly complicated conditions
and apparatus. Three rooms at the Iabo-
~atorx- in Eav,brfdge ara nnfpte,7 l,1ool~ ,,,,7