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
Frequent comparison of the image with the percept was made at the
close of experiments and showed the utmost diversity in size,
vividness and distinctness. During an experiment when the suppressed
image came back, it was rarely more than a mere blur of color; in two
or three instances the form came without color. Green was found to be
a difficult color to hold. C. had an orange after-image from a
retained yellow image, a red image having been suppressed. Between the
images of a gray disc and an orange disc, three inches apart, he had
a blue disc. J., while suppressing an orange disc and retaining a
green disc, noticed that 'when off the fovea the whole green disc
became bright orange.' There was always a sense of readiness on the
part of the suppressed image to slip back. As C. expressed this, "The
thing suppressed exists in the fringe of consciousness." The recurring
image usually came back at its original position even when the
retained image was being held in a different part of the field. In
such cases the retained image at once resumed its original place.
G. and J. were successful in proportion as they freed themselves from
the nervous strain of anxiety as to the result.
V. MOVEMENTS OF A SINGLE IMAGE, THE OBJECT HAVING BEEN MOVED DURING
THE EXPOSURE.
In an additional series of experiments with five of the same subjects
(B., G., H., I. and K.), the object was moved during the five seconds
of exposure either right, left, up or down, a distance of about six to
eight inches, and back again. In this way the subject was supplied
with further material of a pure memory type and it was believed that
some addition to our knowledge of the nature of the control of the
image might thus be made by securing data contrasting the construction
and the more purely reminiscent work of the imagination.
The question proposed is as follows: Does the fact that a certain
movement of an object was presented to the optical perception give an
advantage in time, or ease, to the mental recall of that object as so
moving, over its recall as moving in other directions? The subjective
experiences during such recalls may be expected to throw light upon
the matter.
The subject, with closed eyes, was requested to move the mental image
of the object in the four directions indicated above, returning it
after each movement to its original position, and the time of each
movement was recorded and, as well, the report of the subject with
regard to his subjective experiences. There were sixteen hundred
movements in all, eight hundred away from the original position of the
image (two hundred in each of the four directions mentioned above) and
eight hundred in returning to the original position.
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