356 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Summary of Papers. 



Professor Thorndike reported some work on memory for paired asso- 

 ciates, in which he has found that German-English vocabularies can be 

 learned with a speed far in excess of what is regarded as possible in the 

 usual teaching of a foreign language, and retained much better than would 

 be expected from the results of Ebbinghaus on nonsense material. 



Mr. Betts said that in studying the correlation of visual imagery with 

 college standing, he had been unable to detect any positive correlation. 

 The relation seems to be a purely chance one. 



After mentioning his own early experiments on the association of ideas, 

 Dr. Scripture described some work he had lately done with Dr. Jung in the 

 Psychiatrical Institute at Zurich, in which, following Jung's method, the sub- 

 ject gives associates with given words; the time is taken, and the subject is 

 also required afterwards to repeat his former associations from memory. 

 The presence of an emotional complex is indicated by slowness, forgetful- 

 ness, superficiality or unusualness of associates, etc. The emotional com- 

 plexes so revealed are often causes of mental depression, anxiety, excit- 

 ability, neurasthenia and hysteria. Contrary to Jung, the speaker did not 

 believe them causes also of dementia precox. 



Dr. Bell reported his experiments on the effect of suggestion upon the 

 reproduction of triangles and of point distances. The subject was required 

 to reproduce the height of a given triangle, for instance, in the presence of 

 figures higher or lower than the required height. In the first third of the 

 experiments each of the six observers gave evidence of being influenced by 

 both high and low suggestion, the low being the more effective. There 

 were striking individual differences in the susceptibility to suggestion. As 

 the experiments proceeded, the observers seemed to become habituated to 

 the suggestion, so that the effect grew less and less marked. 



Professor Tufts said in abstract: The problem of determining the rela- 

 tive luminosity of lights of differing color is fraught with difficulty. Three 

 methods have been used, but as they do not give perfectly concordant 

 results, each depends on its own definition of what shall be regarded as 

 equal luminosity. The three definitions are the following: (1) Two simi- 

 lar surfaces, illuminated by two lights of different color, may be said to be 

 of equal luminosity if, in the judgment of the observer, they appear equally 

 luminous. (2) Two similar surfaces, white, with black markings on them, 

 illuminated by two lights of different color, may be said to be of equal 

 luminosity if, when placed at the same distance from the eye, the details 

 can be distinguished with the same minuteness. (3) Two similar surfaces, 

 illuminated by two lights of different color, are said to be of the same lumi- 



