May io, 1906] 



NATURE 



45 



GERMAN CONGRESS OF EXPERIMENTAL 

 PSYCHOLOGY. 

 'pill': second congress of the German Society for Experi- 

 ^ nu-ntal Psychology took place on April 1S-21 in the 

 picturiisque old 'town of Wiirzburg, partly at the old uni- 

 versity and partly at the well-known psychological labor- 

 atory of Prof, kulpe. Two visits were paid to Prof. 

 Rieger's nerve hospital. The attendance amounted to 

 nearly 200, and thus was even more numerous than at the 

 first 'congress two years previously in Giessen. Prof. 

 G. E. MiiUer was in the chair. Fewer papers were read 

 than before, but nevertheless they could with dilificulty be 

 got through in the three and a half days available, reading 

 eight hours a day. 



A new feature in this congress — and one that indicates 

 the rapid growth and advancing specialisation of experi- 

 mrntal psychology — was that several members of the society 

 had been commissioned to make general reports (Sammel- 

 referate) on particular branches of research with which 

 they were known to have an exhaustive acquaintance. 

 Conspicuous among these reports was that of Kiilpe (Wiirz- 

 burg), on the general state of experimental oeslhetics. 

 The methods of experiment were grouped under three 

 general heads, impression (Eindruck), formation (Herstell- 

 ung), and expression (.Ausdruck) ; each of these admitted 

 of many further subdivisions. 1 he interesting results com- 

 municated were mostly of American and very recent origin. 

 In general, Kulpe emphatically maintained that aesthetic 

 values are not wholly of a subjective nature (Einfiihlung, 

 zustandlich, &c.), but are to some degree at least objective 

 (gegenstandlich). The time was near, he said, when these 

 experimental investigations would claim serious attention 

 from both art critics and artists.' Sommer (Giessen) gave 

 a very interesting report on psychiatry and individual 

 psychology, tracing back the modern close union and 

 wonderful development of these two sciences to ideas which 

 arose in the eighteenth century, as the natural sequel to 

 the psvchological researches of Descartes and, above all, 

 Locke.' The execution of these idea? has only been delayed 

 until now for want of adequate methods. Sommer indicated 

 the essentials of good methods of psycho-pathological in- 

 vestigation, particularly insisting upon the necessity of a 

 uniform system of tests', thoroughly tried in normal, border, 

 and distinctly pathological cases. Weygandt (Wurzburg) 

 presented a full report on the psychological examination of 

 weak-minded children. Krueger (Leipzig) reported on the 

 relation between phonetics and psychology. In the course 

 of an exhaustive and lucid exposition of the previous 

 methods and results, he showed that hitherto attention 

 had ueen almost exclusively confined to the bare morpho- 

 logical elements of speech, as represented by the letters of 

 the alphabet. He himself had chiefly investigated how one 

 and the same syllable can be represented by very varying 

 sounds, according to nationality, emotion, or shade of 

 meaning ; his graphic registrations of the modulations of 

 voice as regards speed and pitch excited considerable interest 

 among the audience. On a subsequent day Krueger gave a 

 practical demonstration of his ingenious apparatus for 

 registering the vibrations of the larynx (Kehltonschreiber), 

 designed by himself together with Wirth. Schumann 

 (ZiJrich) gave a report on the psychology of reading. He de- 

 scribed the remarkable success with which reading had been 

 taught bv whole words, instead of by single letters. A large 

 portion of the paper dealt with tachistoscopy, and especially 

 with the best means of exposing letters to view for very 

 short periods of time ; the difficulty is to prevent a per- 

 sistent after-image, and the remedy recommended is to 

 let the exposed letters be replaced, not by a blank surface, 

 but bv another arrangement of letters. 



Turning to the exclusively original papers, a remark- 

 able one was read bv Stumpf (Berlin^ on the " sensations 

 of feeling " (Gefuhlsempfindungen). The feeling (i.e. the 

 pleasantness or unpleasantness) that characterises a sensa- 

 tion must be sharply distinguished, he finds, from the 

 feeling characterising intellectual states. The former may 

 be conceived in three ways : first, as a " feeling-tone " 

 or mere qualltv of the sensation ; secondly, as a peculiar 

 element of consciousness, closely associated indeed with 



1 Kiilpe's paper will be somewhat amplified in the official account of the 

 jjroceeJings of the Congress. (Published by Earth, Leipzig.) 



NO. 1906, VOL. 74] 



the sensation, but just as self-existent as the latter ; and 

 thirdly, as onlv another kind of sensation in addition to, 

 and independent of, those of touch, sight, sound, taste, 

 and smell. He expounded the grounds which had now at 

 last compelled him to adopt the third alternative. The 

 paper found warm appreciation, but very little acquiescence. 

 Uiirr (Wurzburg) had, by means of reaction experiments, 

 investigated voluntary action and association. These two 

 had proved themselves perfectly different from one another ; 

 Ihe former was either a making distinct (Vcrdeutlichung) 

 or else a production (Produktionserfolg) ; the latter was 

 a reproduction (Reproduktionserfolg). I'uriher, his results 

 were in flat contradiction to the popular theory that the 

 ultimately victorious motive inust be the one accompanied 

 by the idea of greatest pleasure or least pain. At the 

 same time, he attributed little causal importance to the 

 consciousness of self (Ichbewusstsein). In harmony with 

 his results was a notable experimental investigation of the 

 will by Ach (Marburg). Here too reaction experiments 

 were used, but cleverly devised so that the force of the 

 will and that of association acted in direct opposition to 

 one another. By this means the manifestations of the two 

 forces could be vividly contrasted, and even subjected to 

 a certain degree of ineasurement. .Ach, like Diirr, finds 

 the pleasure-pain theory to be totally discordant with actual 

 observation. Biihler (Wurzburg) discussed the e.xperimental 

 analysis of complicated processes of thought. Each of his 

 observers had had to reply to a series of questions, and at 

 the same time to observe carefully the mental process 

 thereby involved. The result had been to corroborate the 

 statement of Ach and Binet, that the real elements of 

 thought are' not faint presentations (verblasste Vorstell- 

 ungen), but ideas (Bewusstheiten). Messer (Giessen), in 

 his experimental psychological investigation of thought 

 (again by means of reaction experiments), had been able 

 to delect and observe the process of " judgment " as a 

 specific conscious experience. He admitted that this was 

 only possible under certain very favourable conditions, and 

 to this cause he attributed the fact that the experiments of 

 Marbe had resulted in a denial of any such specific 

 experience. 



Wirth (Leipzig) dealt with the distribution of attention in 

 different senses (sight, sound, and touch). The allotted 

 three-quarters of an hour barely sufficed for enumerating 

 swiftly the chief features of his wonderfully skilful and 

 complicated mechanical arrangements. Of his rich harvest 

 of psychological results he had only time left to exhibit 

 some numerical tables, showing that all parts of each 

 sensory field presented a regular gradation of sensibility, 

 the maximum of which lay wherever the attention happened 

 to be focused. Fortunately, this research will very soon 

 find more adequate expression in print (Psycholog. Studien, 

 ii., 2). Unexpected results had been obtained by Specht 

 (Leipzig) concerning the divergence of the relative and 

 absolute thresholds of sensibility under the influence of 

 alcohol ; though the powder of discriminating between two 

 sounds of different intensity is much weakened by alcohol, 

 the .power of hearing a sound at all is actually in- 

 creased by it. Rupp (Gottingen) had analysed (by re- 

 action experiirients) the localisation of touch stimuli on 

 the fingers into two distinct processes : the localisation 

 of the sensation in space, and its attribution to a par- 

 ticular finger. The former process was the quicker one. 

 By means of certain unusual postures the two pro- 

 cesses could be brought to give contradictory indica- 

 tions ; thereupon the reaction-time was always lengthened, 

 and sometimes the sensation was even attributed to the 

 wrong finger. Linke (Naumburg) showed by his_ new 

 stroboscopical experiments that stroboscopical effect is not 

 wholly due to after-images, but also in large measure to 

 causes of a more intellectual nature. The investigation by 

 Veraguth (Zurich) of the galvanic psychophysical reflex 

 had revealed that mental excitement has a marked effect 

 on an electric current passing through any part of the 

 body ; but Sommer explained that these electric phenomena 

 were of a secondary character, arising from changes of 

 pressure and sweat-excretion. Marbe (Frankfort) exhibited 

 an ingenious, practical, and comparatively inexpensive ex- 

 perimental arrangement for brief optical stimuli ; a ray of 

 light of any desired briefness, intensity, or colour is pro- 

 jected beside another similar but continuant ray. Ebbing- 



