Experimental contribution to a theory of thinking / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Watt, Henry J. (Henry Jackson), 1879-1925.
Date:
[1904?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Experimental contribution to a theory of thinking / by Henry J. Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    determined by the factors already discovered. There is no reason to expect that the subject in his record should be able to give the reason for any reaction, or even always the previous mental experience by which the reproduction in question under the operation of the task was determined. A detailed examination of the experiments with each task by themselves, leads to interesting results which tend to separate the task as a psychological factor still more from the tendency to reproduction in itself and from other factors. Interesting connections are shown between the logical relations contained in the tasks given and the psychological processes found in the experiments, in which the psychological simplicity and rapidity of happening are shown to be sometimes on the side of the logical simplicity and sometimes not. In a lengthy summary the results are brought together under various points of view and several theories formulated. After a short summary of individual differences, a criticism of the distinction between motor and sensory reaction is given. First of all, the facts are brought together to show that this distinction is a fairly good description of some differences between the subjects. The first basis of the distinction was the usual arithmetical mean, but of late it has been thought that the curve of distribution of the reaction-times gives a better foundation. This curve is formed by making a time equal to the probable error of all time-observations of the series the unit in the horizontal, and by setting the number of cases which occur at each such unit on the perpendicular. If the number of factors involved is small and limited, then this curve ought to rise to one or more symmetrical points. This is sometimes the case, especially in the motor reaction, according to the latest researches. It is evident, according to the last two of these, that the time of even the motor reaction can be shortened a good deal with practice, and the curves seem to show points at somewhat regular periods,—these periods being, however, liable to minimal displacements when the nature or quantity of the stimulus is changed. It is also indisputably true, that the class to which any experiment is to be reckoned, is not determined by the nature of the experiment after it has been made, but by the nature of the given preparation, the direction of the attention to sensory or motor elements. Here, then, we have again differences between what we call the task and the mere tendency to reproduction or any physiological basis for the latter. A motor reaction is, therefore, merely the quickest and most constant reaction possible, which constancy and rapidity are achieved by simple and constant conditions of experiment and of task especially. The long-practised so-called natural reaction, in which the task directs the attention specially neither to the stimulus nor to the movement which is