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
As before, the advantage is on the side of the disconnected lines. In
this case, however, it is very slight, the general averages showing
34.03 seconds for the completed figure, as against 36.40 seconds for
the lines. This reduction in the difference of the averages is
probably to be explained by the reduced complexity in the arrangement
of the lines. So far as they are all parallel they would not be likely
to give rise to great diversity of movement, though one subject does,
indeed, speak of traversing them in all directions. In fact, the
completed figures show greater diversity of direction than the lines,
and in this respect might be supposed to have the advantage of the
lines. The notes suggest a reason why the lines should still prove the
more persistent in ideation. "The lines appealed to me as a group; I
tended always to throw a boundary around the lines," is the comment of
one of the subjects. From this point of view the lines would form a
figure with a content, and we have learned (see Series No. VI.) that a
space with a varied content is more effective in ideation than a
homogeneous space of the same extent and general character. And this
unity of the lines as a group was felt even where no complete boundary
line was distinctly suggested. "I did not throw a boundary around the
lines," says another subject, "but they had a kind of unity." It is
possible also that from the character of their arrangement the lines
reinforced each other by a kind of visual rhythm, a view which is
supported by the comments: 'The lines were a little plainer than the
figure;' 'figure shadowy, lives vivid;' 'the figure grew dimmer
towards the end, the lines retained their vividness.'
On the whole, however, the chances are very nearly equal in the two
cases for the recurrence of the image, and a comparison of this series
with Series No. XII. cannot leave much doubt that the greater
effectiveness of the lines in the latter is due to their greater
complexity. In view, therefore, of the fact that in both series the
objects are all linear, and that the two series differ in no material
respect but in the arrangement of the disconnected lines, the
circumstance that a reduction in the complexity of this arrangement is
attended by a very considerable reduction in the power of the lines to
recur in the image or idea is a striking confirmation of the soundness
of our previous interpretation.
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