Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
Many of the subjects visualize a time line in the form of a curve. In
each case of this kind the introduction of a change, either in
intensity or location, if large enough to produce an effect on the
time estimation, produced a distortion on the part of the curve
corresponding to the interval affected. All of the subjects employed
in the experiments of Group 2 were distinctly conscious of the change
in attention from one point to another, as the two were stimulated
successively, and three of them, _Hy_, _Hs_ and _P_, thought of
something passing from one point to the other, the representation
being described as partly muscular and partly visual. Subjects _Mr_
and _B_ visualized the two hands, and consciously transferred the
attention from one part of the visual image to the other. Subject _Mr_
had a constant tendency to make eye movements in the direction of the
change. Subject _P_ detected these eye movements a few times, but
subject _B_ was never conscious of anything of the kind.
All of the subjects except _R_ were conscious of more or less of a
_strain_, which varied during the intervals, and was by some felt to
be largely a tension of the chest and other muscles, while others felt
it rather indefinitely as a 'strain of attention.' The characteristics
of this tension feeling were almost always different in the second
interval from those in the first, the tension being usually felt to be
more _constant_ in the second interval. In experiments of the third
group a higher degree of tension was felt in awaiting a light tap than
in awaiting a heavy one.
Evidently, in all these cases, the effect of a _difference_ between
two stimulations was to introduce certain changes in sensation
_during_ the interval which they limited, owing to the fact that the
subject expected the difference to occur. Thus in the third group of
experiments there were, very likely, in all cases changes from
sensations of high tension to sensations of lower, or vice versa. It
is probable that, in the experiments of the second group, there were
also changes in muscular sensations, partly those of eye muscles,
partly of chest and arm muscles, introduced by the change of attention
from one point to another. At any rate, it is certain that there were
certain sensation changes produced during the intervals by changes of
locality.
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