6o4 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from conversation, and so on. Dr. Granville does not recognize 

 the motor-type, but gives a series of tests for distinguishing be- 

 tween an eye-minded and an ear-minded person, which, in brief, 

 are as follows : Unknown to the subject of the trial, a slip of paper 

 containing some eight or ten monosyllabic words, arranged so as 

 to have no natural association, is prepared and presented to him 

 to be silently read once only. He must then write as many of the 

 words as he can remember. The same is repeated with an equiva- 

 lent set of words read aloud once to the subject, which he at- 

 tempts to repeat. A comparison of the errors in a number of 

 papers prepared in this way will reveal whether the words are 

 better apprehended by the eye or by the ear. By having a longer 

 or shorter interval between the reading and the repeating, the 

 sense by which the subject remembers more securely will be 

 determined. 



The test is good but insufficient ; a reliable and complete esti- 

 mate of the part played in one's mental life by the several senses 

 can be gained only by a series of varied and mutually corrobora- 

 tive tests. A few such tests which I have tried and found satis- 

 factory — and which will readily suggest others — will be here de- 

 tailed. 



The general principles on which I proceed are three : I. I test 

 the limit of the capacity for receiving impressions by the eye, and 

 a similar limit for the ear. The sense that has the largest capacity 

 is the dominant one. II. I test the subject in a performance in 

 which error is sure to occur, both by eye and by ear, and compare 

 the amount of the error in equally difficult performances, as well 

 as derive hints from the nature of the errors. III. I have two 

 processes, one requiring the use of the eye, the other that of the 

 ear, going on at the same time ; and find which one absorbs 

 the maximum of attention and gets best remembered. All of 

 these principles admit of a variety of applications, both for im- 

 mediate apperception as well as for remembrance after an in- 

 terval. 



I. The simplest test relates to the mechanical apprehension of 

 form and sound. For this one can find the maximum number of 

 nonsense-syllables that can be repeated after a single reading, and 

 compare it with the number remembered after a single hearing. 

 One can do the same with numbers, with words of a foreign 

 tongue, with simple diagrams or colors and sounds, and so on. 

 The " visionaire " remembers more of the seen ; the " auditaire " of 

 the heard. The next step is to use significant words, as Dr. Granville 

 suggests. It is still more instructive and often amusing to take 

 short sentences from the newspaper or a book and find the largest 

 number of words in construction retained after a single hearing 

 or a single reading. Another interesting test is to find the num- 



