Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
accompaniments indicated excessive motor stimulation following, of
course, upon an unduly excited condition of the cerebral cells. At the
close of the experiments he generally seemed exhausted, and upon three
occasions it was thought best not to permit him to make the entire
fifteen trials.
Another pupil, W. R., two years younger, illustrates a different type.
In the morning trials he was no better than A. M., but he, too, was
subjected to five different tests at half past eleven, with the result
that he could in every instance complete the task without any apparent
fatigue. There was no constraint apparent in the face or hands, no
unusual effort to co-ordinate the muscles of the body, and no
twitchings of any kind. Now, it seems probable that in the case of W.
R. the brain was able to adjust effort in right degree to the needs of
the occasion, while with A. M. there was such prodigality in the
expenditure of energy in various irrelevant motor tensions and
activities that it not only defeated its purpose, but it was soon
largely spent. A. M. showed this tendency to nervous extravagance in
all the work of the school. While an unusually bright boy, he yet
became fatigued in the performance of duties that W. R. could
discharge with no evidence of overstrain; indeed, the latter boy
seemed never to reach a point beyond which he could not go with safety
if he chose.
Further illustrations of this principle of individual differences in
the conservation of nervous energy were afforded by another simple
experiment. The apparatus employed consisted of a plate of smoked
glass set in a frame so that it could be moved horizontally. Just
touching the glass, and adjusted to it by a delicate spring, was a
fine metal point which could be maintained at any height by a silk
thread to be held in the fingers of the subject to be experimented
upon, who stood with closed eyes endeavoring to keep his hand
perfectly quiet for one half minute. During the test the glass was
moved slowly in the frame, the metal point thus tracing a line which
was a faithful index to most of the movements, at any rate, of the
subject's hand. Five sets of experiments were made upon a number of
pupils in the morning soon after the opening of school, and again just
before the noon recess. The accompanying tracings are reproductions of
those gained at one of the tests, and are typical examples. The first
two were secured from a girl, M. L. R., eleven years of age. The one
made at half past eleven, after two and a quarter hours' work in
school, shows a significant phenomenon which could be easily witnessed
during the experiment. She had become so fatigued that all muscular
expressions were unusually constrained. During the short period while
the experiment continued one could observe the arm and fingers
contracting, which accounts for the upward direction of the tracing.
The body swayed almost to the point of falling, the fingers of the
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