Abstract
PAINSTAKING records of psychological experiments are, as a rule, not the most entertaining form of literature. Yet an exception must certainly be allowed in the case of the work of Drs. Erdmann and Dodge, which is no less distinguished by literary charm than by the thoroughness and completeness of the investigations it records. The greater part of this admirable work is devoted to a careful and, in the judgment of the present reviewer, unanswerable refutation of the opinion which since Wernicke has been current among German pathologists, that in normal reading the letters are spelt out separately, one after another. By a series of elaborate experiments the authors seem to establish beyond a doubt that our apprehension of a written text takes place exclusively during the pauses between the movements of the eye along the lines, that six to seven letters can be clearly perceived during each such pause, and finally that a short word of not more than four letters can be read off in less time than a single letter. In the later chapters Cattell's well-known experiments on reaction-times for written symbols are submitted to a searching criticism; and it is shown from the absence, under normal conditions, of conflicting optical suggestions or of conscious sensory-motor “feelings of innervation” that no element of “discrimination” or “selection” enters into our ordinary apprehension of the meaning of the symbol. As this means that simple apprehension is not “discrimination” of any kind, the result is an important one, and may be commended to the attention of those psychologists who still talk glibly of “discrimination” as the essential feature in perception. Altogether the book is a model of what a psychological monograph should be, clear, well-arranged, and most accurate.
Psychologische Untersuchungen über das Lesen.
By Benno Erdmann Raymond Dodge. Pp. viii + 360. (Halle, 1898.)
The Story of the Mind.
By J. M. Baldwin. Pp. 263. (London: George Newnes, Ltd., 1899.)
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TAYLOR, A. Psychologische Untersuchungen über das Lesen The Story of the Mind. Nature 60, 172 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060172a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060172a0