Experiments made by Ranschburg[102] on the significance of similars
in the process of learning and remembering determined that when
duplicates occur within a series of stimuli, one either totally or
very greatly inhibits the perception of the other according as they
are contiguous or are separated by other stimuli. Dr. Yerkes,[103]
in testing the effect of auditory on visual and tactual stimuli in
frogs, found that if the auditory stimulus preceded another stimulus
by various time-intervals, it had an alternating reënforcing and
inhibitory effect. A similar result was obtained by Hofbauer[104] in
a similar experiment on human subjects. The question now arises,--if
the time-interval were increased between a stimulus and its duplicate
in a series would the inhibitory effect gradually approach zero where
all effect of the preceding stimulus ceased, to which Ranschburg's
experiments point, or would the inhibitory effect be alternated with
one of reënforcement as the experiments of Dr. Yerkes and Hofbauer
would indicate? This problem--the effect of a stimulus on its duplicate
in a succeeding series of stimuli--is the problem I undertook to solve.
For this purpose, it was necessary to introduce exactly determinable
time-intervals between the stimulus and its duplicate. Therefore I
used--as Miss Kleinknecht[105] did for other purposes--a stroboscopic
arrangement instead of simultaneous presentation which Ranschburg used.
My apparatus was Professor Münsterberg's Stereoscope without Prisms or
Lenses, a description and photograph of which was published in the
article by that title in Psychological Review, vol. 1; or rather, I
used Professor Münsterberg's attachment to Kohl's centrifugal machine,
since my apparatus was not identical, except in principle, with the
"Stereoscope." The "attachment" consists of two black discs about
thirty inches in diameter, mounted about eight inches apart on the
disc-shaft of the centrifugal machine. The back disc is of wood. The
outer three inches of its face is furnished with thirty-six equidistant
strips of black tin, one end of each of which is bent so as to grip a
groove in the rim of the disc, and the other end of each is gripped
by tiny thumb-screws so that the strips lie along radii of the face
of the disc. The front disc, slightly smaller than the back disc, is
of pasteboard. Between the two discs a stationary black screen with
a short narrow slit was placed so that the slit revealed only the
strip on the horizontal radius of the back disc. Behind this screen an
eight-candle-power electric light was placed to illuminate the back
disc,--as the experiment was carried on in a darkened room. By moving
this light I was enabled to vary the intensity of illumination to
offset the skill of the observer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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