ON ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION AND PER- 

 CEPTION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TESTS OF 

 COLOR VISION AND TACTILE DISCRIMINATION 

 DESCRIBED IN THE REPORTS OF THE CAM- 

 BRIDGE ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPEDITION 

 TO TORRES STRAITS. 



By E. B. TITCHENER. 



(Read April 7, igi6.) 



The work of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres 

 Straits was planned to include a psychological study of the native 

 population. The " equipment of a small psychological laboratory " 

 was taken out to Murray Island and set up in the disused mission- 

 ary house ; and the tests made, there and elsewhere, were conducted 

 by Messrs. Rivers, Myers, McDougall and Seligmann. The leader 

 of the expedition was already known to the natives, whose goodwill 

 was thus assured.^ On the whole, I suppose that field-work in 

 psychology has never been done under better conditions : the ap- 

 paratus had been considered and chosen beforehand, the experi- 

 menters were competent, the natives were amenable. Yet I think 

 that no home-staying experimentalist can read the psychological part 

 of the Report with satisfaction. At any rate, the impression left by 

 my own repeated reading is that the tests were inadequate to their 

 purpose. 



In the present paper I criticize, as severely as I can, two samples 

 of this field-work. I have chosen tests whose results have been widely 

 quoted, and I have chosen them for their strength rather than for 

 their weakness. It is true that the Report is fifteen years old; and 

 it is true that, during the past fifteen years, experimental psychology 

 has made great methodical advances, social anthropology has grown 



^ See Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres 

 Straits, II., 1901, v. f., I ff. This volume is referred to, in later notes, by the 

 letter R. 



204 



