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
I have already stated that the two series of experiments reported in
Section II. throughout point to the conclusion that an increase of
pressure is taken to mean an increase in the distance. I now carried
on some further experiments with short filled distances, making
variations in the place at which the pressure was increased. I found a
maximum tendency to underestimate when the central points in the
filled space were weighted more than the end points. A strong drift in
the opposite direction was noticed when the end points were heavier
than the intermediate ones. It is not so much the pressure as a whole,
as the place at which it is applied, that causes the variations in the
judgments of length. In these experiments the total weights of the
points were the same in both cases. An increase of the weight on the
end points with an equivalent diminution of the weights on the
intervening points gave the end points greater distinctness apparently
and rendered them less likely to disappear from the judgments.
At this stage in the inquiry as to the cause of the underestimation of
short distances, I began some auxiliary experiments on the problem of
the localization of cutaneous impressions, which I hoped would throw
light on the way in which the fusion or displacement that I have just
described takes place. These studies in the localization of touch
sensations were made partly with a modification of the Jastrow
æsthesiometer and partly with an attachment to the apparatus before
described (Fig. 1). In the first case, the arm upon which the
impressions were given was screened from the subject's view, and he
made a record of his judgments on a drawing of the arm. The criticism
made by Pillsbury[6] upon this method of recording the judgments in
the localization of touch sensations will not apply to my experiments,
for I was concerned only with the relative, not with the absolute
position of the points. In the case of the other experiments, a card
with a single line of numbered points was placed as nearly as possible
over the line along which the contacts had been made on the arm. The
subject then named those points on the card which seemed directly over
the points which had been touched.
[6] Pillsbury, W.B.: Amer. Journ. of Psy., 1895, Vol. VII., p.
42.
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