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Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Hugo Münsterberg

By Hugo Münsterberg · Psychology · Public domain

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Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2 is a public-domain classic of psychology by Hugo Münsterberg.

The complete text is on this page and the chapter pages below — all 9 chapters, about 236,413 words (~20 hours of reading), free to read online with no signup. Chapters include “Part I Is Concerned With Single Stimuli Affecting Only One Kind of”, “PART III. In Attempting to Measure the Rate At Which Feeling-Tones for”, “Section Iv, 1. the Experiments of Table Ix, C, Repeat Those of a With”, and more.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2 at a glance

Author
Hugo Münsterberg
Length
236,413 words · about 20 hours to read
Chapters
9
Price
Free — public domain

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Read Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2 online — full text

Volume Ii

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1906

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published June 1906

CONTENTS

EMERSON HALL: Hugo Münsterberg.

I. Experimental Psychology in Harvard 3 II. The Need for Emerson Hall 8 III. Emerson as Philosopher 16 IV. The Place of Experimental Psychology 31 V. The Psychological Laboratory in Emerson Hall 34

OPTICAL STUDIES.

Stereoscopic Vision and the Difference of Retinal Images: G. V. Hamilton 43 Eye-Movements during Dizziness: E. B. Holt 57 Vision during Dizziness: E. B. Holt 67 Visual Irradiation: Foster Partridge Boswell 75

FEELING.

The Expression of Feelings: F. M. Urban 111 The Mutual Influence of Feelings: John A. H. Keith 141 The Combination of Feelings: C. H. Johnston 159 The Æsthetics of Repeated Space Forms: Eleanor Harris Rowland 193 The Feeling-Value of Unmusical Tone-Intervals: L. E. Emerson 269

ASSOCIATION, APPERCEPTION, ATTENTION.

Certainty and Attention: Frances H. Rousmaniere 277 Inhibition and Reënforcement: Louis A. Turley 293 The Interference of Optical Stimuli: H. Kleinknecht 299 Subjective and Objective Simultaneity: Thomas H. Haines 309 The Estimation of Number: C. T. Burnett 349 Time-Estimation in its Relations to Sex, Age, and Physiological Rhythms: Robert M. Yerkes and F. M. Urban 405 Associations under the Influence of Different Ideas: Bird T. Baldwin 431 Dissociation: C. H. Toll 475

MOTOR IMPULSES.

The Accuracy of Linear Movement: B. A. Lenfest 485 The Motor Power of Complexity: C. L. Vaughan 527

ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The Mutual Relations of Stimuli in the Frog Rana Clamata Daudin: Robert M. Yerkes 545 The Temporal Relations of Neural Processes: Robert M. Yerkes 575 The Mental Life of the Domestic Pigeon: John E. Rouse 581 Reactions of the Crayfish: J. Carleton Bell 615

PLATES

Frontispiece 3 I 60 II 64 III 78 IV 80 V 269 VI 271 VII 273 VIII 293 IX 295

EMERSON HALL

EMERSON HALL

BY HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

I. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD

On the 27th of December, 1905, Harvard University opened its new house of philosophy, Emerson Hall. The presence of the American Philosophical and Psychological Associations gave national significance to the completion of this building.

The psychologist will find quarters in all parts of Emerson Hall. The general courses in psychology will be held on the first floor in the large lecture-room, which has nearly four hundred seats; and close by are the psychological seminary-room and smaller lecture-rooms for the advanced psychological courses. On the second floor the psychologist finds his special library as a wing of the large library hall. But the exclusive domain of the psychologist is the third floor,--a psychological laboratory with twenty-five rooms. A large attic hall for laboratory purposes on the fourth floor completes the psychologist's allotment.

The work to be reported in future in the Harvard Psychological Studies will be work done in this new building, and while the researches reported in the following pages were completed in the smaller quarters of the old laboratory, it seems natural that this volume, which appears at this new epoch of our work, should give an account both of our psychological past and of the development and purpose of Emerson Hall.

The Harvard Psychological Laboratory was founded in 1891 by Professor William James, who had introduced some experimental features into his psychological lecture courses for some time before the formal opening of a regular workshop. Professor James started with two large rooms on the second floor of Dane Hall, and secured an excellent equipment, especially for the study of the psychology of the senses. He was assisted by Dr. Herbert Nichols, and at once gathered a number of graduate students for research.

In the following year Professor James withdrew from the experimental work, and the conduct of the laboratory was given over to me. In the years which followed, Dr. Arthur Pierce, Dr. J. E. Lough, and Dr. Robert MacDougall were the assistants until three years ago, when the development of the laboratory demanded a division of the assistant functions; since that time Dr. E. B. Holt has been the assistant for the work in human psychology, while Dr. R. M. Yerkes has had charge of the work in comparative psychology. Since from the first I laid special emphasis on research work, a greater number of small rooms was soon needed. In the year 1893, we divided a part of the adjacent lecture-room into four rooms for special investigations, and two years later the larger of the two original rooms was divided into five. As the lecture-room also was finally made part of the research laboratory, we had at last eleven rooms in Dane Hall. The activities of the laboratory, however, went far beyond the research work. We had regular training-courses in experimental practice, and the lecture courses in human and in comparative psychology drew largely on the resources of our instrument cases. Yet the original investigations absorbed the main energy of the laboratory, and demanded a steady expansion of its apparatus. An illustrated catalogue of the instruments has been published as part of the Harvard Exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair.

The participation of the students has been controlled by a principle which has characterized our Harvard work through all these years, and distinguished it from the methods of most other institutions. I insist that no student shall engage in one investigation only, but that every one who has charge of a special problem shall give to it only half of his working time, while in the other half he is to be subject in four, five, or more investigations by other members of the laboratory. In this way each research is provided with the desirable number of subjects, and all one-sidedness is avoided. Every experimenter thus comes in contact with a large range of problems and gets a fair training in manifold observations, besides the opportunity for concentration on a special research. It is true that this demands a complicated schedule and careful consideration of the special needs of every research, but it gives to the work a certain freshness and vividness, and banishes entirely the depression which is unavoidable whenever a student is for any length of time a passive subject in one psychological enquiry only. In both capacities, as experimenter and as observing subject, only graduate students have been acceptable. In this way about one hundred investigations on human psychology have been carried on, for most of which I have proposed the problems and the special lines of work, taking care that the research of succeeding years and of succeeding generations of graduate students should show a certain internal continuity. Whenever the results seemed fit for publication, the papers have been published under the names of the students who had the responsibility for the conduct of the experiments. Until three years ago the publication was scattered; most of the papers, however, appeared in the Psychological Review. The Harvard Psychological Studies, beginning in 1903, are to gather the bulk of our material, although not a few of the researches of recent years have been published in other places.

The laboratory has always sought to avoid one-sidedness, and this the more as it was my special aim to adjust the selection of topics to the personal equations of the students, many of whom came with the special interests of the physician, the zoölogist, the artist, the pedagogue, and so on. My own special interests may have emphasized those problems which refer to the motor functions and their relations to attention, apperception, space-sense, time-sense, feeling, etc. At the same time I have tried to develop the psychological-æsthetic work, which has become more and more a special branch of our laboratory, and there has been no year in which I have not insisted on some investigations in the fields of association, memory, and educational psychology. On the other hand, in a happy supplementation of interests, Dr. Holt has emphasized the physiological psychology of the senses, and Dr. Yerkes has quickly developed a most efficient experimental department of animal psychology.

As the work thus became more manifold, the old quarters in Dane Hall appeared less and less sufficient. And yet this laboratory development has been merely parallel to the growth of general philosophical studies in the whole University. The demand for a new hall, exclusively devoted to philosophy, was thus suggested from many sides. The idea of linking it with the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson has been for years a cherished plan of Professor Palmer.

An especially appropriate time for the realization of such a plan came in the approach of the hundredth anniversary of Emerson's birthday. Almost two years before this date the Department took the first steps in seeking to interest the members of the Visiting Committee for the collection of the necessary funds. This Committee, consisting of Mr. G. B. Dorr, chairman, Mr. R. H. Dana, Dr. R. Cabot, Mr. J. Lee, Mr. D. Ward, and Mr. R. C. Robbins, showed not only warm interest, but lent itself to the furtherance of the plans with such an energy and devotion that the Philosophical Department owes to these friends of philosophy in Harvard the most lasting gratitude. Various means were taken by the Committee and by the Department to stir the interest of the public, and soon the gifts began to come in, gifts of which some were clearly given from sympathy with the work of the Philosophical Department, some evidently in memory of Emerson. The original plans of the architect called for $150,000 for the building. When, on the 25th of May, 1903, the hundredth anniversary of Emerson's birthday was celebrated, the University had contributions amounting to more than this sum, and given by one hundred and seventy persons.

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