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
When two exactly similar contacts are given and are perceived as one,
we cannot be sure whether the subject feels only one of the contacts
and does not feel the other at all, or feels both contacts and thinks
they are in the same place, which is only another way of saying he
feels both as one. It is true that when asked to locate the point he
often locates it between the two points actually touched, but even
this he might do if he felt but one of the points. To test the matter
of errors of localization I have made a few experiments in the
Columbia University laboratory. In order to be sure that the subject
felt both contacts I took two brass rods about four inches long,
sharpened one end and rounded off the other. The subject sat with the
palm of his right hand on the back of his left and his fingers
interlaced. I stimulated the back of his fingers on the second
phalanges with the sharp end of one rod and the blunt end of the other
and asked him to tell whether the sharp point was to the right or to
the left of the other. I will not give the results in detail here, but
only wish to mention a few things for the purpose of illustrating the
point in question. Many of the answers were wrong. Frequently the
subject would say both were on the same finger, when really they were
on fingers of opposite hands, which, however, in this position were
adjacent fingers. Sometimes when this happened I would ask him which
finger they were on, and after he had answered I would leave the point
on the finger on which he said both points were and move the other
point over to the same finger, then move it back to its original
position, then again over to the finger on which the other point was
resting, and so on, several times. The subject would tell me that I
was raising one point and putting it down again in the same place all
of the time. Often a subject would tell me he felt both points on the
same finger, but that he could not tell to which hand the finger
belonged. When two or more fingers intervened between the fingers
touched no subject ever had any difficulty in telling which was the
sharp and which the blunt point, but when adjacent fingers were
touched it was very common for the subject to say he could not tell
which was which. This cannot be because there is more difference in
the quality of the contacts in one case than in the other. If they
were on the same finger it might be said that they were stimulating
the same general area, but since one is on one hand and one on the
other this is impossible. The subject does not think the two points
are in the same place, because he feels two qualities and hence he
infers two things, and he knows two things cannot be in the same place
at the same time. If the two contacts were of the same quality
probably they would be perceived as one on account of the absence of
difference, for the absence of difference is precisely the quality of
oneness.
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