Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. — John Shaqi
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
This explanation of Graefe is not to be admitted, however, since in
the case of eye-movement there are muscular sensations of one's own
activity, which are not present when one merely sits in a coach. These
sensations of eye-movement are in all cases so intimately connected
with our perception of the movement of objects, that they may not be
in this case simply neglected. The case of the eye trying to watch its
own movement in a mirror is more nearly comparable with the case in
which the eye follows the movement of some independent object, as a
race-horse or a shooting-star. In both cases the image remains on
virtually the same point of the retina, and in both cases muscular
sensations afford the knowledge that the eye is moving. The
shooting-star, however, is perceived to move, and the question
remains, why is not the eye in the mirror also seen to move?
F. Ostwald[7] refutes the explanation of Graefe from quite different
considerations, and gives one of his own, which depends on the
geometrical relations subsisting between the axes of vision of the
real eye and its reflected image. His explanation is too long to be
here considered, an undertaking which indeed the following
circumstance renders unnecessary. While it is true that the eye cannot
observe the full sweep of its own movement, yet nothing is easier than
to observe its movement through the very last part of the arc. If one
eye is closed, and the other is brought to within about six inches of
an ordinary mirror, and made to describe little movements from some
adjacent part of the mirror to its own reflected image, this image can
almost without exception be observed as just coming to rest. That is,
the very last part of the movement _can_ be seen. The explanation of
Ostwald can therefore not be correct, for according to it not alone
some parts of the movement, but absolutely all parts alike must remain
invisible. It still remains, therefore, to ask why the greater part of
the movement eludes observation. The correct explanation will account
not only for the impossibility of seeing the first part of the
movement but also for the possibility of seeing the remainder.
[7] Ostwald, F., _Revue Scientifique_, 1896, 4e Série, V., p.
466.
Apart from the experience of the eye watching itself in a glass, Dodge
(_loc. citat._) found another fact which strongly suggested
anæsthesia. In the course of some experiments on reading, conducted by
Erdmann and Dodge, the question came up, how "to explain the meaning
of those strangely rhythmic pauses of the eye in reading every page of
printed matter." It was demonstrated (_ibid._, p. 457) "that the
rhythmic pauses in reading are the moments of significant
stimulation.... If a simple letter or figure is placed between two
fixation-points so as to be irrecognizable from both, no eye-movement
is found to make it clear, which does not show a full stop between
them."
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