The question of the effect of voluntary attention upon error, for
answering which Table IV was compiled, brings out again the marked
individual variation among these seven subjects which has shown itself
in practically all parts of the experiment. Some effect seems to
have been produced always, but this was sometimes to give a larger
percentage of mistakes in the attended-to groups and sometimes a
smaller. With A, B, and F the percentage of mistakes in certainty (1)
was lower for the groups attended to than for the total number of
judgments of that order. Only with subject B, however, is this true
of the group of lower grades of certainties also. On the other hand,
with subjects C, D, E, and H the percentage is greater for certainty
(1) in the groups attended to than for certainty (1) in the collection
of all the judgments of certainty (1) taken together. Here, too, in
the case of subject D, the results with regard to the lower grades of
certainty reverse those for certainty (1). Thus all four possibilities
as to the kind of influence of voluntary attention upon certainty
appear. We cannot say that the place of voluntary attention will tend
to affect the percentage of error in any given way. We can only say
that apparently it made some difference with each subject. It might be
found by further experimenting that the character of this difference
is associated with some other characteristic of either attention or
the feeling of certainty, as, for instance, with the ease with which
attention is held to the chosen field or with the type of the subject's
certainty.
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