382 



MILDRED WEST LORING 



increase in reaction time with the number of syllables for both 

 nouns and adjectives, and a uniformly larger reaction time for 

 any group of nouns over adjectives of the same number of sylla- 

 bles. For subject IV no conclusions can be drawn; the reaction 

 time for nouns of one, two, and three syllables is practically con- 

 stant. Since this subject did none of the adjectives no compar- 

 ison is possible between the reaction times for adjectives and 

 nouns. The vocabulary of subject IV was very wide; there 

 were only two or three failures during the whole series due to un- 

 familiarity with the word. This may indicate that the increase 

 in reaction time with the number of syllables is not dependent 



TABLE 1 

 Reaction times for unselected adjectives and nouns* (totals) 



* Adjectives and nouns refer to the stimulus words in all tables. 



on the actual increase in length of time for the stimulus word 

 to be spoken, but rather because words increase in complexity 

 of meaning and strangeness with their length. This would ac- 

 count for the increase in reaction time with the increase in the 

 number of syllables for subjects II and III, and for the con- 

 stancy in reaction tune for subject IV whose interests were 

 chiefly literary. The results for subject I are peculiar but thor- 

 oughly explainable. It will be noticed that for the adjectives, 

 which were completed before the nouns were begun, there was 

 a steady decrease in reaction time in progressing from one 

 syllable to two syllables and then to three syllables, the 

 averages being respectively 1912, 1324, and 1268 sigma. The 



