In general the same subjects took part throughout the experiments.
One, an instructor in Harvard University, whom I shall call K, was
not subject for the second division of the experiment. Two others, E
and H, both graduate students in Harvard University, could not serve
as subjects in an important part of the first division. Of those
remaining, B was a student in Radcliffe College, F an instructor in
Harvard University, and A, C, and D graduate students in Harvard
University. These last five were my subjects for all parts of the
experiment.
I. THE NATURE OF THE FEELING OF CERTAINTY
The general method here was, of course, the method of introspection.
Situations were created about which the subject might be expected
to make judgments with different sorts or different degrees of
certainty, if such should be possible. He was then questioned as to
his experience. The method has the fault of all introspective methods,
viz., its results can in no case be verified. The results here are none
the less suggestive, and, for the second problem, at any rate, definite
enough to be convincing.
Most of the experiments were conducted in connection with visual
fields. In working at the first problem which we have now to consider,
however, the certainty connected with the dermal sensations and that
connected with the simple reasoning process of addition were also
examined. The apparatus used consisted of three sets of cards. On
one set were pasted geometrical shapes cut from colored paper, and
black and white letters or figures. Each of these cards was shown to
a subject for a second and a half, or two seconds. After the exposure
he told what he judged to be on the card, giving all that he could
about the nature of his feeling of confidence (or certainty) for each
judgment. On the second set of cards square pieces of tin, smooth
rubber, rough rubber, cotton, felt, undressed kid, leather, eiderdown,
flannel, coarse and fine sandpaper, and pricked paper were stuck, six
on each card. The experimenter passed these cards so that these bits
of material rubbed against the forefinger of the subject, while a
curtain kept the card and the hand hidden from the subject's sight.
Here, again, the subject judged of what had been on the card, just as
he had done after seeing each of the first set of cards. Small sample
cards, each having pasted upon it a piece of one of the substances
used, were also behind the curtain, and the subject was allowed to feel
of these as much as he wished while giving his report. Such sample
cards were required because of the underdevelopment of the association
of names of any kind with the dermal sensations. A single card with
three groups of figures for addition upon it made up the third part
of the apparatus. Here the subject was asked first to add the columns
rapidly and to introspect as to his certainty of the correctness of the
different results; then to go over the addition again, and yet a third
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