140 VITALITY AND EFFICIENCY WITH RESTRICTED DIET. 



required all of the men to be on time ; it provided a suitable occasion for 

 announcements and general instructions in procedure, and it also gave 

 a period for quiet work and adjustment of mental attitude before the 

 individual measurements were begun. Immediately after the stand- 

 ard evening meal (see p. 59) in a nearby restaurant, the men came to 

 the Nutrition Laboratory. The group tests were made in the library. 

 This room is 16 by 27 feet, with ceiling 11 feet high, and was well 

 suited for a group experiment with a squad of 12 men; the lighting was 

 direct from three clusters at the ceiling arranged lengthwise of the 

 table. These clusters were suppUed with Mazda and nitrogen-filled 

 lamps and no one complained of the lighting at any time except Can, 

 whose eyes were rather weak and who thought the light was too bril- 

 liant. The table at which the men worked was 16 feet long and 4 feet 

 wide; no objects other than the pencils and the paper blanks to be used 

 by the subjects were on the table. The men were arranged 6 on either 

 side of the table. At the first session seats were assigned and each man 

 occupied his particular seat at the subsequent sessions when he was 

 present, although it was not believed that one location in the room was 

 more favorable than another for the group experiments. A considerable 

 period was allowed for preliminary adjustments, announcements, ques- 

 tions, and a general quieting of the men before beginning the evening 

 session. In the following paragraphs the measurements given by the 

 group method will be described in the order in which they were used 

 each evening. This order was never varied. 



(1) Accuracy in Tracing Between Irregular Parallel Lines. 



In such a test, in which the subject has but a narrow space within 

 which he must mark to avoid contact with printed lines, the pencil with 

 which the record is made is naturally of importance. It should be 

 fairly hard and well pointed, but not so sharp as to break on slight 

 pressure or to catch in the paper. Each subject was provided with 

 two long No. 3 pencils, which were carefully pointed. In the sharpener 

 used for this purpose, the tip of the pencil lead finally came to rest 

 against a member between the two cutters and thus indicated by pres- 

 sure, to the one who was doing the sharpening," that sufficient grinding 

 had been done, since no more wood can be removed from the pencil 

 without crushing the point already made. The points made with this 

 type of sharpener are uniform and satisfactory. 



The form of the blank used can be easily understood from inspection 

 of figure 18.^ This particular blank was filled in with a pen for illustra- 

 tion. The open space between the parallel lines is 2 mm. wide; the 

 straight lines of which the maze is composed are each 10 mm. in length. 



^This form of motor test was described and figured by Whitley, Archives of Psychology (Col- 

 umbia Contributions to Philosophy and Psychology), 1911, 20, p. 87 ff . Dr. Whitley meas- 

 ured the total time to complete the task, adding to the score 5 seconds for each touch error. 



