Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixvi. (1922), No. 2. 



II. Number-Forms. 



By T. H. Pear, M.A., B.Sc, 

 Professor of Psychology in The University of Manchester. 



{Read October 78fh, 19:21. Received for publication November 1st, 1921.) 



An excellent illustration — and, to those unfamiliar with it, 

 an amazino- one — of the manifold ways in which meaning may 

 be carried by mental imagery is afforded by the number-form, 

 one of the perennial delights of the beginner in psychology. 

 The characteristics of this type of mental apparatus were first 

 described by Galton (3, 79 — 105). Since his time, how^ever, 

 comparatively few treatments of the subject are to be found in 

 psychological literature.^ 



To those readers who do not possess this mental gift, 

 Galton 's original description may be recommended. He 

 mentions that persons who are able to visualize a number 

 sometimes see it not only in some particular direction with 

 regard to themselves, but also at some definite distance. 



" If they were looking at a ship on the horizon at the 

 moment that the figure 6 happened to present itself to their 

 minds, they could say whether the image lay to the left or 

 right of the ship, and whether it was above or below the line 

 of the horizon ; thev could always point to a definite spot 

 in space, and say with more or less precision that that Avas 

 the direction in which the image of the figure they were 

 thinking of first appeared. 



" Now the strange psychological fact to which I desire 

 to draw attention is that among persons who visualize 

 figures clearly there are many who notice that the image of 

 the same figure invariably makes its first appearance in the 

 same direction and at the same distance. Such a person 

 would always see the same figure when it first appeared 

 to him at (we may suppose) one point of the compass 



1. Professor M. W. Calkins's (1) article on the subject contains much 

 valuable information. Professor G. E. Miiller's (4) gives a lengthy general 

 account of this phenomenon, with reference to the work of others. The three 

 works 1, 3 and 4, together with the results of examining a series of number- 

 forms kindly contributed by the author's friends, form the chief basis of 

 this chapter. 



September 20th^ ig22. 



