Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.
exposure was five seconds and the longer exposure ten seconds.  The color that was to be seen the longer time was exposed first alone; after five seconds the other was exposed; and then both were seen for five seconds together, so that neither might have the advantage of the more recent impression.  The two colors were regularly alternated, and in one half of the series the longer exposure was to the right, in the other half to the left.  The extra five seconds were thus in each case at the beginning of the experiment.

The general averages show only a slight advantage in favor of the color which was exposed the longer time, namely, 29.15 seconds, as against 27.75 seconds.  It is not easy to believe that the advantage of sole occupancy of the visual field for five seconds, without any offsetting disadvantage in the next five seconds, should have so slight an effect on the course of ideation.  And it is not improbable that there was an offsetting disadvantage.  In the presence of color the subject can scarcely remain in the attitude of quiet curiosity which it is easy to maintain in the observation of colorless objects.  A positive interest is excited.  And the appearance of a new color in the field when there is another color there already seems to be capable of exciting, by a sort of successive contrast different from that ordinarily described, an interest which is the stronger from the fact that the subject has already been interested in a different color.  That is to say, the transition from color to color (only red and green were employed) seems to be more impressive than the transition from black to color.  And, under the conditions of the experiment, the advantage of this more impressive transition lay always with the color which was exposed the shorter time.

Judging from the introspective notes, the outline seems to suffer, in competition with a colored content, some loss of power to carry the attention and maintain its place in the ideation.  “The colors tend to diffuse themselves, ignoring the boundary,” says one.  “The images fade from the periphery toward the center,” says another.  On the other hand, one of the subjects finds that when both images are present the color tends to fade out.  This may perhaps be explained by the remark of another subject to the effect that there is an alternate shifting of the attention when both images are present.  An attitude of continued and definite change, we may suppose, is one in which the color interest must yield to the interest in boundaries and definite spatial relations.

Other interesting facts come out in the notes.  One subject finds the ideated plane farther away than the objective plane; another conceives the two as coinciding.  The movement of the eyes is by this time distinctly perceived by the subject.  The reports run as follows:  ‘Eye-movements seem to follow the changes in ideation;’ ’I find my eyes already directed, when an image is ideated, to the corresponding side, and am sometimes conscious

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Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.