120 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 56. 



at entrance, and repeated upon the same 

 students at the end of their Sophomore and 

 Senior years. The object of the tests is to ob- 

 tain a record for comparative purposes of cer- 

 tain mental and physical characteristics of 

 the students at different times during a period 

 of rather active intellectual growth, and at 

 the same time to furnish material for a sta- 

 tistical study of the particular points ex- 

 amined. Stress is laid to a certain extent 

 upon the more purely mental inquiries, such 

 as memory, rate of perception, and motor re- 

 sponse, accuracy of perception, color vision, 

 etc., but enough physical tests are included 

 to afford a comparison between bodily and 

 mental development if any relation between 

 the two exists. Dr. Farrand's paper led to 

 a discussion of the advantages of such pro- 

 longed statistical inquiries, at the conclu- 

 sion of which, on motion of Prof. Baldwin, 

 of Princeton, the Association voted to ap- 

 point a committee to consider the matter of 

 the cooperative collection of such data by 

 the various psj'chological laboratories. This 

 committee, as announced at the business 

 meeting, is composed of Professors Baldwin, 

 Jastrow, Sanford, Witmer and Cattell 

 (chairman) . 



Dr. Arthur MacDonald's paper on Some 

 Psycho- Neural Data was a report upon experi- 

 ments similar to those reported on by the 

 same speaker at the Princeton meeting (see 

 Science, I., 43), but this time including, be- 

 sides experiments upon pain, others on dis- 

 criminative sensitivity of the skin ("Weber's 

 circles), and just observable differences in 

 warmth. The experiments were regarded 

 rather as tests of tests than as leading to 

 definitive results, but they nevertheless 

 appeared to indicate some interesting rela- 

 tions, of which the most general were the 

 greater general sensitiveness of the left side 

 as compared with the right, the greater sen- 

 sitiveness to pain of women as compared 

 with men, and the greater sensitiveness of 

 young men of the wealthy classes both to 



differences in locality (Weber's circles), 

 and to pain as compared with men in the 

 Boston ' Army of the Unemployed.' 



Mr. Oliver Cornman, the next speaker, 

 reported upon An Exprimental Investigation 

 of the Processes of Ideation, a study upon 

 school children undertaken under the 

 direction of Prof. Witmer. The children 

 were asked to write as many words as pos- 

 sible in an interval of fifteen minutes, writ- 

 ing the words in columns. In general lists 

 of from 200 to 400 words result, which ai-e 

 then classified and subjected to statistical 

 treatment. It has been found that the di- 

 rections given the children at starting are 

 extremely important in determining the flow 

 of associated words, and that the last third 

 of the fifteen-minute period gives results 

 most indicative of the individuality of the 

 child. This investigation is understood to 

 be still in progress. 



The session of Friday afternoon was 

 opened by the Presidential Address of Prof. 

 Cattell, of Columbia College, who described 

 the history and recent progress of psychol- 

 ogy and the part played in its development 

 by experiment and measurement. Psychol- 

 ogy is by no means a new science, but its 

 growth during the last few years has been 

 rapid, and it now rivals the other leading 

 sciences in productiveness of research and 

 publication and in academic position. 

 Science is either genetic or quantitative, and 

 psychology is advancing in both directions. 

 The problems that can be treated in the 

 laboratory were reviewed, and it was claimed 

 that these have added directly and in- 

 directly new subject matter and methods, 

 have set a higher standard of accuracy and 

 objectivity, have made some part of the 

 subject an applied science with useful ap- 

 plications, and have enlarged the field and 

 improved the methods of teaching psychol- 

 ogy. In conclusion, the relations of psy- 

 chology to the other sciences and to philos- 

 ophy were reviewed and their interdepen- 



