SUMMARIES AND CORRELATIONS. 243 



tributary evidence for these conclusions he found in his other experi- 

 ments, as well as in acute alcoholic intoxication, and in the interrelation 

 between the effects of alcohol and disease processes, particularly in 

 relation with epilepsy. 



The conception of all sensory and motor processes as a resultant of 

 complex stimulating and inhibiting factors was not as well established 

 in the psychophysiological tradition when Kraepelin did his experi- 

 mental work and made his first analyses, as it is at present. His own 

 analysis of the work curve, for example, was a later development. 

 While we can no longer regard discrimination and choice as adequately 

 describing the characteristics of the " discrimination " and " choice" 

 reactions, we have come to regard the conditions of neural processes 

 on a scheme of reciprocating mechanisms, as a complex of exciting and 

 controlling tendencies, with great variability of the adequacy and 

 completeness of the controls. 



In contrast to the experimental processes of the Kraepelin series, our 

 experiments were planned expressly to test the conditions of the nervous 

 system at widely different levels in the simplest practicable processes. 

 The question of the incidence of the effect of alcohol on the different 

 levels is not merely an effort to explain our data. It was a direct 

 problem from the beginning of our investigation and served as one of 

 the principles that determined the choice of measurable processes. 1 

 But, even more than the direct measurement of the effects of alcohol 

 on the various processes, we believe that their interrelations and 

 experimental analyses give us the conditions for a more definite answer 

 to the problem of the incidence of the effects of alcohol within the 

 physiological schema of nervous action than could have been given by 

 a less systematically organized group of processes. 



The relevant data with respect to the incidence of the effect of alcohol 

 are collected in table 46, arranged in the order of previous discussion. 

 From this table it appears that the most marked effects of alcohol are 

 shown in the knee-jerk, where alcohol increased the average latent 

 time 10 per cent and decreased the average extent of muscle- thickening 

 46 per cent. This extreme effect, it will be remembered, made it 

 impracticable to measure the knee-jerk of several subjects after the 

 larger dose (dose B). 



The second largest effect is produced in the lid-reflex, which shows 

 an average increased latency of 7 per cent and decreased extent of 

 movement of 19 per cent. These changes vary directly with the dose 

 of alcohol, and must satisfy the most exacting demands of reliability. 

 The change would be much larger, save for the two exceptional cases of 

 Subjects X and IV whose lid reflexes were small in amplitude by reason 

 of inheritance, or training, or both. In explanation of these two cases, 



Psychological Program, p. 273, (2) and (3). 



