| 0.142 | and | 0.137; |
that for distinguishing a given letter from all the rest of the alphabet (not reacting until that letter appeared),
| 0.119 | and | 0.116; |
that for distinguishing a word from any of twenty-five other words, from
| 0.118 | to | 0.158 sec. |
—the difference depending on the length of the words and the familiarity of the language to which they belonged.
Prof. Cattell calls attention to the fact that the time for distinguishing a word is often but little more than that for distinguishing a letter: "We do not, therefore," he says, "distinguish separately the letters of which a word is composed, but the word as a whole. The application of this in teaching children to read is evident."
He also finds a great difference in the time with which various letters are distinguished, E being particularly bad.
The time required for association of one idea with another has been measured. Gallon, using a very simple apparatus, found that the sight of an unforeseen word would awaken an associated 'idea' in about ⅚ of a second. Wundt next made determinations in which the 'cue' was given by single-syllabled words called out by an assistant. The person experimented on had to press a key as soon as the sound of the word awakened an associated idea. Both word and reaction were chronographically registered, and the total time-interval between the two amounted, in four observers, to 1.009, 0.896, 1.037, and 1.154 seconds respectively. From this the simple reaction-time and the time of merely identifying the word's sound (the 'apperception-time,' as Wundt calls it) must be subtracted, to get the exact time required for the associated idea to arise. These times were separately determined and subtracted. The difference, called by Wundt association-time, amounted, in the same four persons, to 706, 723, 752, and 874 thousandths of a second respectively. The length of the last figure is due to the fact that the person reacting was an American, whose associations with German words would naturally be slower than those of natives. The shortest association-time noted was when the word 'Sturm' suggested to Wundt the word 'Wind' in 0.341 second. Prof. Cattell made some interesting observations upon the association-time between the look of letters and their names. "I pasted letters," he says, "on a revolving drum, and determined at what rate they could be read aloud as they passed by a slit in a screen." He found it to vary according as one, or more than one, letter was visible at a time through the slit, and gives half a second as about the time which it takes to see and name a single letter seen alone. The rapidity of a man's reading is of course a measure of that of his associations, since each seen word must call up its name, at least, ere it is read. "I find," says Prof. Cattell, "that it takes about twice as long to read (aloud, as fast as possible) words which have no connection, as words which make sentences, and letters which have no connection, as letters which make words. When the words make sentences and the letters words, not only do the processes of seeing and naming overlap, but by one mental effort the subject can recognize a whole group of words or letters, and by one will-act choose the motions to be made in naming, so that the rate at which the words and letters are read is really only limited by the maximum rapidity at which the speech-organs can be moved.... For example, when reading as fast as possible the writer's rate was, English 138, French 167, German 250, Italian 327, Latin 434, and Greek 484; the figures giving the thousandths of a second taken to read each word. Experiments made on others strikingly confirm these results. The subject does not know that he is reading the foreign language more slowly than his own; this explains why foreigners seem to talk so fast....