398 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— J. 



a tendency to direct the mental energy at once to particular aspects of a new situation ; 

 a keener and swifter sensitiveness to the presence of a certain kind of relation, and to 

 the way of indicating it in the foreign tongue. 



Group D was, then, the most effective method. It is suggested, in conclusion, that 

 a modification of the technique of modern language teaching on a basis of psychological 

 investigations might bring about a considerable saving of time and energy in the 

 learning of languages. 



Mr. H. BiNNS. — Some Experiments with Wool-textile Trade Advertisements. 



Dr. C. S. Myers, C.B.E., F.R.S. — The Place of Industrial Psychology in a 

 University City. 



In every important industrial University centre we should before long see 

 established a Lecturer in Industrial Psychology, whose duty it would be to give 

 theoretical and practical instruction in the subject to certain students of economics, 

 education, commerce, and engineering, and to others who will later take up a business 

 career, to carry out research and to train future investigators in industrial psychology, 

 to promote better vocational guidance and to engage in it, to act as a consultant to 

 local industrial and commercial firms, and to help an influential local Committee 

 (which could well be constituted as the Committee of a Branch of the National 

 Institute of Industrial Psychology) in getting together a large group of local people 

 interested in the subject and in encouraging the directors of local concerns to employ 

 in them the aims and methods of Industrial Psychology. 



Monday, September 8. 



Discussion (Sections I, J) on the question, In what Sense can we speak 

 of Primary Colours ? (See Section I.) 



Dr. R. H. Thouless. — The Influence of the Physical Object on Perception, 

 and its Bearing on the Laws of Perspective. 



If an experimental subject is made to look at an inclined circle and to indicate the 

 shape that it appears to him either by drawing or by matching it with one of a series 

 of ellipses of difiFerent ratios of short to long axis, he draws or chooses an ellipse, not 

 of the shape which the laws of perspective would lead us to expect, but one in which 

 the above ratio is considerably greater. In other words, he perceives the inclined 

 circle not in the shape of the image on his retina but in a shape which is intermediate 

 between that and the actual (circular) shape of the object perceived. Similarly, if 

 two discs of different actual sizes are arranged at different distances from the subject 

 until he sees them as equal, the actually larger disc must be at such a distance that 

 its retinal image is considerably smaller. Again, the perceived relative sizes of the 

 discs is intermediate between the relative sizes of their retinal images and their relative 

 actual sizes. A similar observation with respect to brightnesses was reported by 

 Bering, who used the term ' Gedachtniss-farben.' 



The shape, size or brightness perceived by the subject may be called the 

 ' phenomenal ' character, in contrast with the corresponding ' stimulus ' or ' perspective ' 

 character which is the shape, size or brightness impressed on the receiving end organ. 

 The results reported may be stated in general terms as a tendency of the phenomenal 

 character to differ from the stimulus character and to be intermediate between this 

 and the real, physical character of the object. This peculiarity of perception may be 

 called ' phenomenal regression.' Hering's term ' memory-colours ' is inappropriate, 

 since experiment shows that the regression depends not on memory of the real character 

 of the object, but on the presence at the time of perception of sensory cues giving 

 indications of the real character. 



The presence of phenomenal regression has obvious implications for the teaching 

 of drawing. In teaching children to draw in accordance with the laws of perspective 

 we are not teacliing them to draw things as they ' really ' see them. On the contrary, 

 we are teaching them to depart from the really seen phenomenal figure in favour of 

 the perspective figure. 



