Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory

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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PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES, VOL 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.
* * * * *

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,
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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remained unpublished through lack of space, henceforth, we hope to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 rôle 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 rôle 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