The Story of the Mind

J >> James Mark Baldwin >> The Story of the Mind

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It is probable that interesting applications of this illusion may be
discovered in aesthetics. For wherever in drawing or painting it is
wished to indicate to the observer that a point is midway between two
lines of different lengths, we should find that the artist, in order
to produce this effect most adequately, deviates a little from the
true middle. So in architecture, the effect of a contrast of masses
often depends upon the sense of bilateral balance, symmetry, or
equality, in which this visual error would naturally come into play.
Indeed, it is only necessary to recall to mind that one of the
principal laws of aesthetic effect in the matter of right line
proportion is the relation of "one to one," as it is called, or equal
division, to see the wide sphere of application of this illusion. In
all such cases the mistake of judgment would have to be allowed for if
masses of unequal size lie at the ends of the line which is to be
divided.

IV. _The Accuracy of Memory._--Another investigation may be cited to
illustrate quite a different department. It aimed to find out
something about the rate at which memory fades with the lapse of time.
Messrs. W., S., and B.[7] began by formulating the different ways in
which tests may be made on individuals to see how accurate their
memories are after different periods of time. They found that three
different tests might be employed, and called them "methods" of
investigating memory. These are, first, the method of Reproduction.
The individual is asked to reproduce, as in an oral or written
examination, what he remembers of something told him a certain time
before. This is the ordinary method of the schools and colleges, of
civil-service examinations, etc. Second, the method of Identification,
which calls upon the person to identify a thing, sentence, report,
etc., a second or third time, as being the same in all respects as
that which he experienced the first time it appeared. Third, the
method of Selection, in which we show to the person a number of
things, sentences, reports, descriptions of objects, etc., and require
him to select from them the ones which are exactly the same as those
he has had before. These methods will be better understood from the
account now to be given of the way they were carried out on a large
number of students.

[Footnote 7: Prof. H. C. Warren, Mr. W. J. Shaw, and the writer.]

The first experiments were made by Messrs. S. and B. in the University
of Toronto on a class of students numbering nearly three hundred, of
whom about one third were women. The instructors showed to the class
certain squares of cardboard of suitable size, and asked them to do
the following three things on different days: First, to reproduce from
memory, with pencil on paper, squares of the same size as those shown,
after intervals of one, ten, twenty, and forty minutes (this gives
results by the method of Reproduction); second, to say whether a new
set of squares, which were shown to them after the same intervals,
were the same in size as those which they had originally seen,
smaller, or larger (illustrating the method of Identification); third,
they were shown a number of squares of slightly different sizes, again
at the same intervals, and asked to select from them the ones which
they found to be the same size as those originally seen (method of
Selection).

The results from all these experiments were combined with those of
another series, secured from a large class of Princeton students; and
the figure (Fig. 8) shows by curves something of the result. The
figure is given in order that the reader may understand by its
explanation the "graphic method" of plotting statistical results,
which, with various complications, is now employed in psychology as
well as in the other positive sciences.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Memory curves: I. Method of Selection. II.
Method of Identification.]

Briefly described in words, it was found that the three methods agreed
(the curves are parallel)[8] in showing that during the first ten
minutes there was a great falling off in the accuracy of memory (slant
in the curves from 0 to 10); that then, between ten and twenty
minutes, memory remained relatively faithful (the curves are nearly
level from 10 to 20), and that a rapid falling off in accuracy
occurred after twenty minutes (shown by the slant in the lines from 20
to 40).

[Footnote 8: This figure shows curves for two of the methods only,
Selection and Identification.]

Further, the different positions of the curves show certain things
when properly understood. The curve secured by the method of
Reproduction (not given in the figure) shows results which are least
accurate, because most variable. The reason of this is that in drawing
the squares to reproduce the one remembered, the student is
influenced by the size of the paper he uses, by the varying accuracy
of his control over his hand and arm (the results vary, for example,
according as he uses his right or left hand), and by all sorts of
associations with square objects which may at the time be in his mind.
In short, this method gives his memory of the square a chance to be
fully assimilated to his current mental state during the interval, and
there is no corrective outside of him to keep him true.

That this difficulty is a real one no one who has examined students
will be disposed to deny. When we ask them to reproduce what the
text-book or the professor's lectures have taught, we also ask them to
express themselves accurately. Now the science of correct expression
is a thing in which the average student has had no training. With his
difficulty in remembering is connected his difficulty of expression;
and with it all goes a certain embarrassment, due to responsibility,
personal fear, and dread of disgrace. So the results finally obtained
by this method are really very complex.

One of the curves, that given by the method of Selection (I), also
shows memory to be interfered with by a certain influence. We saw in
connection with the experiments reported above that, even in the most
elementary arrangements of squares in the visual fields, an element of
contrast comes in to interfere with our judgment of size. This we find
confirmed in these experiments when the method of Selection is used.
By this method we show a number of squares side by side, asking the
individual to select the one he saw before. All the squares, being
shown at once, come into contrast with one another on the background;
and so his judgment of the size of the one he remembers is distorted.
This, again, is a real influence in our mental lives, leading to
actual illusion. An unscrupulous lawyer may gradually modify the story
which his client or a witness tells by constantly adding to what is
really remembered, other details so expertly contrasted with the
facts, or so neatly interposed among them, that the witness gradually
incorporates them in his memory and so testifies more nearly as the
lawyer desires. In our daily lives another element of contrast is also
very strong--that due to social opinion. We constantly modify our
memories to agree more closely with the truths of social belief,
paring down unconsciously the difference between our own and others'
reports of things. If several witnesses of an event be allowed to
compare notes from time to time, they will gradually come to tell more
nearly the same story.

The other curve (II) in the figure, that secured by the method of
Identification, seemed to the investigators to be the most accurate.
It is not subject to the errors due to expression and to contrast, and
it has the advantage of allowing the subject the right to recognise
the square. It is shown to him again, with no information that it is
the same, and he decides whether from his remembrance of the earlier
one, it is the same or not. The only objection to this method is that
it requires a great many experiments in order to get an average
result. To be reliable, an average must be secured, seeing that, for
one or two or a few trials, the student may guess right without
remembering the original square at all. By taking a large number of
persons, such as the three hundred students, this objection may be
overcome. Comparing the averages, for example, of the results given
by the men and women respectively, we found practically no difference
between them.

This last point may serve to introduce a distinction which is
important in all work in experimental psychology, and one which is
recognised also in many other sciences--the distinction between
results obtained respectively from one individual and from many. Very
often the only way to learn truth about a single individual is to
investigate a number together. In all large classes of things,
especially living things, there are great individual differences, and
in any particular case this personal variation may be so large that it
obscures the real nature of the normal. For example, three large sons
may be born to two small parents; and from this case alone it might be
inferred that all small parents have large sons. Or three girls might
have better memories than three boys in the same family or school, and
from this it might be argued that girls are better endowed in this
direction than boys. In all such cases the proper thing to do is to
get a large number of cases and combine them; then the preponderance
which the first cases examined may have shown, in one direction or the
other, is corrected. This gives rise to what is called the statistical
method; it is used in many practical matters, such as life insurance,
but its application to the facts of life, mind, variation, evolution,
etc., is only begun. Its neglect in psychology is one of the crying
defects of much recent work. Its use in complicated problems involves
a mathematical training which people generally do not possess; and its
misuse through lack of exactness of observation or ignorance of the
requirements is worse than its neglect.

Another result came out in connection with these experiments on
memory, which, apart from its practical interest, may serve to show an
additional resource of experimental psychology. In making up the
results of a series of experiments it is very important to observe the
way in which the different cases differ from one another. Some cases
may be so nearly alike that the most extreme of them are not far from
the average of them all; as we find, for example, if we measure a
thousand No. 10 shot. But now suppose we mix in with the No. 10 some
No. 6 and some No. 14, and then take the average size; we may now get
just the same average, and we can tell that this pile is different
from the other only by observing the individual measurements of the
single shot and setting down the relative frequency of each particular
size. Or, again, we may get a different average size in one of two
ways: either by taking another lot of uniform No. 14 shot, let us say,
or by mixing with the No. 10 a few very large bullets. Which is
actually the case would be shown only by the examination of the
individual cases. This is usually done by comparing each case with the
average of the whole lot, and taking the average of the differences
thus secured--a quantity called the "mean variation."

In the case of the experiments with the squares, the errors in the
judgments of the students were found to lie always in one direction.
The answers all tended to show that they took, for the one originally
shown, a square which was really too large. Casting about for the
reason of this, it was considered necessary to explain it by the
supposition that the square remembered had in the interval become
enlarged in memory. The image was larger when called up after ten or
twenty minutes than it was before. This might be due to a purely
mental process; or possibly to a sort of spreading-out of the brain
process in the visual centre, giving the result that whenever, by the
revival of the brain process, the mental image is brought back again
to mind, this spreading out shows itself by an enlargement of the
memory image. However it may be explained, the indications of it were
unmistakable--unless, of course, some other reason can be given for
the uniform direction of the errors; and it is further seen in other
experiments carried out by Messrs. W. and B. and by Dr. K.[9] at a
later date.

[Footnote 9: Dr. F. Kennedy, demonstrator, now professor in the
University of Colorado (results not yet published).]

If this tendency to the enlargement of our memories with the lapse of
time should be found to be a general law of memory, it would have
interesting bearings. It would suggest, for instance, an explanation
of the familiar fact that the scenes of the past seem to us, when we
return to them, altogether too small. Our childhood home, the old
flower garden, the height of house and trees, and even that of our
hero uncle, all seem to the returning traveller of adult life
ridiculously small. That we expect them to be larger may result from
the fact that the memory images have undergone change in the direction
of enlargement.

V. _Suggestion._--Space permits only the mention of another research,
which, however, should not be altogether omitted, since it illustrates
yet other problems and the principles of their solution. This is an
investigation by Messrs. T. and H.,[10] which shows the remarkable
influence of mental suggestions upon certain bodily processes which
have always been considered purely physiological. These investigators
set out to repeat certain experiments of others which showed that if
two points, say those of a pair of compasses, be somewhat separated
and put upon the skin, two sensations of contact come from the points.
But if while the experiment is being performed the points be brought
constantly nearer to each other, a time arrives when the two are felt
as only one, although they may be still some distance apart. The
physiologists argued from this that there were minute nerve endings in
the skin at least so far apart as the least distance at which the
points were felt as two; and that when the points were so close
together that they only touched one of these nerve endings, only one
sensation was produced. Mr. T. had already found, working in Germany,
that, with practice, the skin gradually became more and more able to
discriminate the two points--that is, to feel the two at smaller
distances; and, further, that the exercise of the skin in this way on
one side of the body not only made that locality more sensitive to
minute differences, but had the same effect, singularly, on the
corresponding place on the other side of the body. This, our
experimenters inferred, could only be due to the continued suggestion
in the mind of the subject that he should feel two points, the result
being an actual heightening of the sensibility of the skin. When he
thought that he was becoming more sensitive on one side--and really
was--this sense or belief of his took effect in some way in both
hemispheres of his brain, and so both sides of the body were alike
affected.

[Footnote 10: G. A. Tawney, now professor in Beloit College, and C. W.
Hodge, now professor in Lafayette College.]

This led to other experiments in Princeton in which suggestions were
actually made to the subjects that they were to become more or less
sensitive to distance and direction between the points on the skin,
with the striking result that these suggestions actually took effect
all over the body. This was so accurately determined that from the
results of the experiments with the compasses on the skin in this case
or that, pretty accurate inferences could be made as to what mental
suggestions the subject was getting at the time. There was no chance
for deception in the results, for the experiments were so controlled
that the subject did not know until afterward of the correspondences
actually reached between his states of mind and the variations in
sensibility of the skin.

This slight report of the work done in one laboratory in about two
sessions, involving a considerable variety of topics, may give an
idea, so far as it goes, of the sort of work which experimental
psychology is setting itself to do. It will be seen that there is as
yet no well-knit body of results on which new experiments may proceed,
and no developed set of experimental arrangements, such as other
positive sciences show. The procedure is, in many important matters,
still a matter of the individual worker's judgment and ability. Even
for the demonstrations attempted for undergraduate students, good and
cheap apparatus is still lacking. For these reasons it is premature as
yet to expect that this branch of the science will cut much of a
figure in education. There can be no doubt, however, that it is making
many interesting contributions to our knowledge of the mind, and that
when it is more adequately organized and developed in its methods and
apparatus, It will become the basis of discipline of a certain kind
lying between that of physical science and that of the humanities,
since it will have features in common with the biological and natural
sciences. Its results may be expected also to lead to better results
than we now have in the theory and practice of education.

CHAPTER VII.

SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS--HYPNOTISM.

In an earlier place certain illustrations of Suggestion have been
given. By Suggestion we mean the fact that all sorts of hints from
without disturb and modify the beliefs and actions of the individual.
Certain cases from my own observation may be given which will make the
matter clear.

_Physiological Suggestion._--Observation of an infant for the first
month or six weeks after birth leads to the conviction that his life
is mainly physiological. When the actions which are purely reflex,
together with certain random impulsive movements, are noted, we seem
to exhaust the case.

Yet even at this remarkably early stage H. was found to be in some
degree receptive to certain Suggestions conveyed by repeated
stimulation under uniform conditions. In the first place, the
suggestions of sleep began to tell upon her before the end of the
first month. Her nurse put her to sleep by laying her face down and
patting gently upon the end of her spine. This position soon became
itself not only suggestive to the child of sleep, but sometimes
necessary to sleep, even when she was laid across the nurse's lap in
what seemed to be an uncomfortable position.

This case illustrates what may be called Physiological Suggestion. It
shows the law of physiological habit as it borders on the conscious.

The same sort of phenomena appear also in adult life. Positions given
to the limbs of a sleeper lead to movements ordinarily associated with
these positions. The sleeper defends himself, withdraws himself from
cold, etc. Children learn gradually to react upon conditions of
position, lack of support, etc., of the body, with those actions
necessary to keep from falling, which adults have so perfectly. All
secondary automatic reactions may be classed here; the sensations
coming from one action, as in walking, being suggestions to the next
movement, unconsciously acted upon. The consciousness at any stage in
the chain of movements, if present at all, must be similar to the
baby's in the case above--a mere internal glimmering. The most we can
say of such physiological suggestion is, that there is probably some
consciousness, and that the ordinary reflexes seem to be abbreviated
and improved.

_Subconscious Adult Suggestion._--There are certain phenomena of a
rather striking kind coming under this head whose classification is so
evident that we may enumerate them without discussion of the general
principles which they involve.

_Tune Suggestion._--It has been pointed out recently that dream states
are largely indebted for their visual elements--what we see in our
dreams--to accidental lines, patches, etc., in the field of vision
when the eyes are shut, due to the distended blood vessels of the
cornea and lids, to changes in the external illumination, to the
presence of dust particles of different configuration, etc. The other
senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by
equally subconscious suggestions. There is no doubt, further, that our
waking life is constantly influenced by such trivial stimulations.

I have tested in detail, for example, the conditions of the rise of
so-called "internal tunes"--we speak of "tunes in our head" or "in our
ears"--and find certain suggestive influences which in most cases
cause these tunes to rise and take their course. Often, when a tune
springs up "in my head," the same tune has been lately sung or
whistled in my hearing, though quite unnoticed at the time. Often the
tunes are those heard in church the previous day or earlier. Such a
tune I am entirely unable to recall voluntarily; yet when it comes
into the mind's ear, so to speak, I readily recognise it as belonging
to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various accidental
suggestions, such as the tune Mozart suggested by the composer's name,
the tune Gentle Annie suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these
cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness
and after much seeking that the suggesting influence is discovered.

Closer analysis reveals certain additional facts: The "time" of such
internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhythmical subconscious
occurrence. After hearty meals it is always the time of the heart
beat, unless there be "in the air" some more impressive stimulus; as,
for example, when on shipboard, the beat is with me invariably that of
the engine throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of the footfall. On
one occasion a knock of four beats on the door started the
Marseillaise in my ear; following up this clew, I found that at any
time different divisions of musical time being struck on the table at
will by another person, tunes would spring up and run on, getting
their cue from the measures suggested. Further, when a tune dies away,
its last notes often suggest, some time after, another having a
similar movement--just as we pass from one tune to another in a
"medley." It may also be noted that in my case the tune memories are
auditive: they run in my head when I have no words for them and have
never sung them--an experience which is consistent with the fact that
these "internal tunes" arise in childhood before the faculty of
speech. They also have distinct pitch. For example, I once found a
tune "in my head" which was perfectly familiar, but for which I could
find no words. Tested on the piano, the pitch was F-sharp and the time
was my heart beat. Finally, after much effort, I got the unworthy
words "Wait till the clouds roll by" by humming the tune over
repeatedly. The pitch is determined probably by the accidental
condition of the auditory centre in the brain or by the pitch of the
external sound which serves as stimulus to the tune.

_Normal Auto-Suggestion._--A further class of Suggestions, which fall
under the general phrase Auto-suggestion, or Self-suggestion of a
normal type, may be illustrated. In experimenting upon the possibility
of suggesting sleep to another I have found certain strong reactive
influences upon my own mental condition. Such an effort, which
involves the picturing of another as asleep, is a strong
Auto-suggestion of sleep, taking effect in my own case in about five
minutes if the conditions be kept constant. The more clearly the
patient's sleep is pictured the stronger becomes the subjective
feeling of drowsiness. After about ten minutes the ability to give
strong concentration seems to disintegrate, attention is renewed only
by fits and starts and in the presence of great, mental inertia, and
the oncoming of sleep is almost overpowering. An unfailing cure for
insomnia, speaking for myself, is the persistent effort to put some
one else asleep by hard thinking of the end in view, with a continued
gentle movement, such as stroking the other with the hand.

On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state of drowsiness
by imagining myself asleep. The first effort at this, indeed, is
promising, for it leads to a state of restfulness and ease akin to the
mental composure which is the usual preliminary to sleep; but it goes
no further. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, which
effort of attention or effort not to attend only intensifies. If the
victim of insomnia could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could
forget himself altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The
contrast between this condition and that already described shows that
it is the Self-idea, with the emotions it awakens,[11] which prevents
the suggestion from realizing itself and probably accounts for many
cases of insomnia.

[Footnote 11: A friend informs me that when he pictures himself dead
he can not help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a
corpse.]

_Sense Exaltation._--Recent discussions of Hypnotism have shown the
remarkable "exaltation" which the senses may attain in somnambulism,
together with a corresponding refinement in the interpretative
faculty. This is described more fully below. Events, etc., quite
subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence upon the
subject. Unintended gestures, habitual with the experimenter, may
suffice to hypnotize his accustomed subject. The possibility of such
training of the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient
emphasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial and other
personal indications are remarkable. The prolonged experience of
putting H. to sleep--extending over a period of more than six months,
during which I slept beside her bed--served to make me alive to a
certain class of suggestions otherwise quite beyond notice. It is well
known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants when they
are asleep to everything else.

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