Study of Association in Insanity | Page 3

contained in it will fall into two classes: the common reactions, those which are to be found in the tables, and the individual reactions, those which are not to be found in the tables. For the sake of accuracy, any reaction word which is not found in the table in its identical form, but which is a grammatical variant of a word found there, may be classed as
doubtful.
The value of any reaction may be expressed by the figure representing the percentage of subjects who gave it. Thus the reaction, _table--chair_, which was given by two hundred and sixty-seven out of the total of our one thousand subjects, possesses a value of 26.7 per cent. The significance of this value from the clinical standpoint will be discussed later.

�� 4. NORMAL ASSOCIATIONAL TENDENCIES
The normal subjects gave, on the average. 6.8 per cent of individual reactions, 1.5 per cent of doubtful ones, and 91.7 cent of common ones. The range of variation was rather wide, a considerable number of subjects giving no individual reactions at all, while a few gave over 30 per cent.[1]
[Footnote 1: In the study of the reactions furnished by our normal subjects it was possible to analyze the record of any subject only by removing it from the mass of material which forms our tables, and using as the standard of comparison the reactions of the remaining 999 subjects.]
In order to determine the influence of age, sex, and education upon the tendency to give reactions of various values, we have selected three groups of subjects for special study: (1) one hundred persons of collegiate or professional education; (2) one hundred persons of common school education, employed in one of the State hospitals as attendants, but not as trained nurses; and (3) seventy-eight children under sixteen years of age. The reactions given by these subjects have been classified according to frequency of occurrence into seven groups: (a) individual reactions (value 0); (b) doubtful reactions (value ��); (c) reactions given by one other person (value 0.1 per cent); (d) those given by from two to five others (value 0.2--0.5 per cent); (e) those given by from six to fifteen others (value 0.6-1.5 per cent); (f) those given by from sixteen to one hundred others (value 1.6--10.0 per cent); and (g) those given by more than one hundred others (value over 10.0 per cent). The averages obtained from these groups of subjects are shown in Table 1, and the figures for men and women are given separately.
TABLE I
Value of reaction 0 �� 0.1 0.2-0.5 0.6-1.5 1.6-10 >10 Sex Number % % % % % % % of cases
Persons of M.. 60 9.2 1.8 5.2 9.7 11.0 27.8 85.5 collegiate F... 40 9.5 1.8 8.0 9.8 11.7 28.0 83.4 education Both 100 9.3 1.8 4.7 8.7 11.8 28.2 34.4 Persons of M.. 50 5.8 1.6 8.6 8.3 10.2 81.6 88.7 common school F.. 50 4.6 1.8 8.8 7.1 9.4 82.0 42.1 education Both 100 5.2 1.4 3.5 7.7 9.8 81.8 40.4 School children M... 33 5.9 0.8 4.2 8.7 10.0 28.6 88.5 under 16 Jr. F.. 45 5.0 1.0 4.6 9.8 11.0 80.1 36.7 years of age Both 78 5.7 1.4 4.6 9.8 11.2 29.4 87.4 General average. Both.1000 6.8 1.5
It will be observed that the proportion of individual reactions given by the subjects of collegiate education is slightly above the general average for all subjects, while that of each of the other classes is below the general average. In view, however, of the wide limits of variation, among the thousand subjects, these deviations from the general average are no larger than might quite possibly occur by chance, and the number of cases in each group is so small that the conclusion that education tends to increase the number of individual reactions would hardly be justified.
It will be observed also that this comparative study does not show any considerable differences corresponding to age or sex.
With regard to the type of reaction, it is possible to select groups of records which present more or less consistently one of the following special tendencies: (1) the tendency to react by contrasts; (2) the tendency to react by synonyms or other defining terms; and (3) the tendency to react by qualifying or specifying terms. How clearly the selected groups show these tendencies is indicated by Table II. The majority of records, however, present no such tendency in a consistent way; nor is there any evidence to show that these tendencies, when they occur, are to be regarded as manifestations of permanent mental characteristics, since they might quite possibly be due to a more or less accidental and transient associational direction. No further study has as yet been made of these tendencies, for the reason that they do not appear to possess any pathological significance.
TABLE II.
Special group values.