MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 73 



tion, and that thought occupies a relatively insignificant position. Judd has 

 suggested — and his suggestion seems well founded — that children are not 

 more imaginative than adults, but that their constructions are simply less 

 controlled and consequently are more likely to attract our attention. If this 

 position be correct, then much that the school teaches younger children is 

 clearly without psychological foundation. 



A small amount of investigation of a scientific character has been done on 

 the subject of memory. Meumann found by having persons memorize non- 

 sense syllables, that, for the ages of 7, 14, and 22, respectively, the abilities 

 were in the ratio 3, 8, and 12. I recently enlarged upon Meumann's experi- 

 ment by employing in addition to non-sen?e syllables, sense syllables and 

 poetry. I employed the last two kinds of material to determine whether or 

 not there existed a difference between memorizing non-sense syllables and 

 other materials. My results with non-sense syllables were almost identical 

 with those obtained by Meumann, and the results of memorizing sense syl- 

 lables and poetry differed so little frOm these that they may be considered 

 the same. The ratios of abilities in the three ages for the three kinds of 

 material were as follows : 



If these experiments may be taken as an index of relative memory abili- 

 ties, it is readily seen that the child's memories are decidedly inferior in quick- 

 ness of learning to those of the adult. 



The question of relative retentivity has not been so satisfactorily studied. 

 I repeated my experiments — as described above — 60 days after the material 

 was first learned, and found that the ratios for relearning were approximately 

 1, 2, and 4 for the various groups of subjects. That is to say, the ratios of 

 retentivity were not materially different from those of the first learning, and 

 suggests strongly that children's memories are not superior to adult's in this 

 respect, but, on the other hand, that they are ^uch inferior. It should be 

 remarked in passing that in obtaining my experimental results fifty pupils of 

 each age were examined. The failure to obtain better results on retentivity 

 was owing to the extreme difficulty in preventing children from repeating the 

 material between the first learning and the relearning. 



In regard to the ability of children to think, we have little definite knowl- 

 edge. Although no one doubts that they do think to some extent, there is no 

 agreement as to their real ability. At one extreme it is maintained that their 

 ability is almost zero, while at the other it is asserted that it is almost equal 

 to that of the adult. Until this question is scientifically settled, it is impos- 



^Poetry. ^Sense syllables. ^Nonsense syllables. 



