THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY.
CONTENTS: February, 1891. Vol. III. No. 4.
AUTOMATIC MUSCULAR MOVEMENTS AMONG THE INSANE; THEIR
PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE. By C. P. Bancroft.
ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIME. By Herbert Nichols.
ON THE RECOVERY OF STIMULATED GANGLION CELLS. By C. F. Hodge.
PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE. The Nervous System—by H. H.
Donaldson; Psychiatry—by William Noyes—Experimental;
Miscellaneous.
CONTENTS: April, 1891. Vol. IV. No. 1.
ARITHMETICAL PRODIGIES. By E. W. Scripture.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIME. By Herbert Nichols.
PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE: Cerebral Localisation. By Henry H.
Donaldson; Notes on Models of the Brain. By H. H. Donaldson;
A Laboratory Course in Physiological Psychology. By E. C.
Sanford; Contemporary Psychologists—Prof. Edward Zeller. By
The Editor.
It is pointed out by Dr. Bancroft that the close relationship between automatic muscular movement and the inhibitory power renders a study of the latter essential to a complete understanding of the subject of automaticity in health and disease. The inhibitory power is intimately associated with all the higher faculties, and as it must, in common with them, seek expression through functional activity of the cerebral cortex, functional or organic disturbance of this region should be attended by disordered inhibition. In many cases of insanity that portion of the brain that "originates the will impulse" is cut off by reason of organic or functional disturbance, and consequently the areas that lie nearer the centrifugal nerves are left to act independently of will and inhibition. The development of mechanical attitudes among the chronic insane is illustrated by a plate exhibiting two cases of melancholia with stupor and two cases of chronic dementia.
The literature of the Psychology of Time is dealt with by Mr. Nichols from the historical and the experimental standpoints. The most striking feature of the whole time investigation is, that of all the philosophers and psychologists who have touched upon the problem, only two of the whole number, Condillac obscurely, and James Mill definitely, have solved the mystery by letting the sequences themselves be the ultimate mystery—by letting their process, as process and of itself, show forth its own explanation. The results of experimental investigations in time psychology are scarcely more satisfactory. Most experimenters have confined themselves to the determination of the Constant Error, Sensibility, and Weber's Law, yet with difficulty, if at all, can the results of any two of such determinations be harmonised. The majority of evidence is strongly against the validity of Weber's Law; also against any fixed or constant Periodicity. Later investigators look to physiological processes for explanation of time-judgments, and particularly to rhythmic habits of nerve centres.
Dr. Hodge's paper is a continuation of chapters which appeared in the American Journal of Psychology in May 1888 and May 1889. His experiments on cats show that spinal ganglion cells do recover from the effects of injuries by electrically stimulating the nerve going to them, but that the recovery is a slow process.
An account is given by Dr. Scripture of the known Arithmetical Prodigies. The opinion of Bidder was that "mental calculation depends on two faculties of the mind in simultaneous operation—computing and registering the result"! The power to do long calculations in the mind without making a mistake is the most remarkable fact in regard to ready reckoners; next the wonderful rapidity which some of them have shown. All of them possessed a remarkable impressibility, and practised modes by which arithmetical associations may be enormously shortened. Dr. Scripture offers for consideration the points that the power of mental calculation could be greatly developed under cultivation; that numbers and their values may be learned before figures, just as a child learns words and their meanings long before he can read; that it is best to teach "calculation" by the abacus before "ciphering."
Mr. Nichols records in his second article the result of a series of experiments made by him at Clark University to investigate the apparently contradictory results obtained by various experimenters regarding the Constant Error of Time-judgments. The experiments teach nothing of the cause of the Constant Error, but it is shown that those individuals who make the largest constant error, make the error most constantly in one direction, and are apt to make a constantly increasing error throughout the series of experiments. Mr. Nichols's final conclusion is that "the processes of our environment, of our bodily organism, and of the sensations and images which correspond thereto, are, in themselves a sufficient explanation of time-psychology, and that time perception cannot be explained by any single state or disparate sense, but alone be accounted for as a process." (E. C. Sanford, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. April, 1891. Vol. I. No. 2.