Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory

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Psychological Studies, Volume 1, by Various

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Title: Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Author: Various
Editor: Hugo Münsterberg
Release Date: July 12, 2005 [EBook #16266]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE Psychological Review
EDITED BY
J. McKEEN CATTELL and J. MARK BALDWIN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF
ALFRED BINET, éCOLE DES HAUTES-éTUDES, PARIS; JOHN DEWEY, H.H. DONALDSON, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO; G.S. FULLERTON, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA; G.H. HOWISON, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA; JOSEPH JASTROW, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN; G.T. LADD, YALE UNIVERSITY; HUGO MüNSTERBERG, HARVARD UNIVERSITY; M. ALLEN STARR, COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, NEW YORK; CARL STUMPF, UNIVERSITY, BERLIN; JAMES SULLY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
H.C. WARREN, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Associate Editor and Business Manager.
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Series of Monograph Supplements, Vol. IV., No. 1 (Whole No. 17), January, 1903.
HARVARD PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES,
Volume I CONTAINING
Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
EDITED BY HUGO MüNSTERBERG.
PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 41 N. QUEEN ST., LANCASTER, PA. 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
AGENT: G.E. STECHERT, LONDON (2 Star Yard, Cary St., W.C.) Leipzig (Hospital St., 10); PARIS (76 rue de Rennes).

PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA.
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PREFACE.
The appearance of the HARVARD PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES does not indicate an internal change in the work of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. But while up to this time the results of our investigations have been scattered in various places, and have often remained unpublished through lack of space, henceforth, we hope to have in these STUDIES the opportunity to publish the researches of the Harvard Laboratory more fully and in one place. Only contributions from members of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory will be printed in these volumes, which will appear at irregular intervals, and the contributions will represent only our experimental work; non-experimental papers will form an exception, as with the present volume, wherein only the last one of the sixteen papers belongs to theoretical psychology.
This first volume does not give account of all sides of our laboratory work. An essential part of the investigations every year has been the study of the active processes, such as attention, apperception, and volition. During the last year several papers from these fields have been completed, but we were unable to include them in this volume on account of the space limits; they are kept back for the second volume, in which accordingly the essays on the active functions will prevail, as those on perception, memory, and feeling prevail in this volume. It is thus clear that we aim to extend our experimental work over the whole field of psychology and to avoid one-sideness. Nevertheless there is no absence of unity in our work; it is not scattered work as might appear at a first glance; for while the choice of subjects is always made with relation to the special interests of the students, there is after all one central interest which unifies the work and has influenced the development of the whole laboratory during the years of my direction.
I have always believed--a view I have fully discussed in my 'Grundzüge der Psychologie'--that of the two great contending theories of modern psychology, neither the association theory nor the apperception theory is a satisfactory expression of facts, and that a synthesis of both which combines the advantages without the defects of either can be attained as soon as a psychophysical theory is developed which shall consider the central process in its dependence, not only upon the sensory, but also upon the motor excitement. This I call the action theory. In the service of this theory it is essential to study more fully the r?le of the centrifugal processes in mental life, and, although perhaps no single paper of this first volume appears to offer a direct discussion of this motor problem, it was my interest in this most general question which controlled the selection of all the particular problems.
This relation to the central problem of the r?le of centrifugal processes involves hardly any limitation as to the subject matter; plenty of problems offer themselves in almost every chapter of psychology, since no mental function is without relation to the centrifugal actions. Yet, it is unavoidable that certain groups of questions should predominate for a while. This volume indicates, for instance, that the ?sthetic processes have attracted our attention in an especially high degree. But even if we abstract from their important