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
An interesting side light is thrown on M.'s memory by his work in
another experiment in which he was a subject. This experiment required
that the subject look at an object for 10 secs. and then after the
disappearance of its after-image manipulate the memory image. M.
showed unusually persistent after-images. The memory images which
followed were unusually clear in details and also persistent. They
were moreover retained for weeks, as was shown by his surprising
ability to recall the details of an image long past, and separated
from the present one by many subsequent images. His memory was
capacious rather than selective. His eyesight was tested and found to
be normal for the range of the apparatus. Possibly his age (55 yrs.)
is significant, although one of the two subjects who showed the
greatest preference for objects and movements, Mo., was only six yrs.
younger. The ages of the other subjects were S. 36 yrs., Hu. 23 yrs.,
B. 25 yrs., Ho. 27 yrs.
That some if not all of the subjects did not have objective images in
many of the noun and verb couplets if they were left to their own
initiative to obtain them is evident from the image records in the _A_
set, in which the presence of the objective images was optional but
the record obligatory. The same subject might have in one noun or verb
series no visual images and in another he might have one for every
couplet of the series. After the completion of the _A_ set, the effect
of the presence of the objective images in series of 10 nouns alone,
or 10 objects alone after two days' interval, was tested. This was
merely a repetition of similar work by Kirkpatrick after three days'
interval, and yielded similar results. As a matter of fact some of the
subjects were unable wholly to exclude the objective images, but were
compelled to admit and then suppress them as far as possible, so that
it is really a question of degree of prominence and duration of the
images.
The presence of the objective images having been shown to be an aid in
the case of series of nouns, the subjects were henceforth requested to
obtain them in the noun and verb series of the _B_ and _C_ sets, and
the image records show that they were entirely successful in doing so.
2. The total number of couplets in any one or in several sets may be
divided into two classes: (1) Those in which indirect associations did
not occur in the learning, and (2) those in which they did occur. For
reasons already named we may call the first pure material and the
second mixed. We can then ascertain in each the proportion of
correctly recalled couplets after one, two, nine and sixteen days'
interval, and thus see the importance of indirect associations as a
factor in recall. This is what has been done in the following table.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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