762 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 803 



child working alone is different from tlie 

 child working in a class. A few years ago 

 Dr. Mayer, of Wiirzburg, studied experi- 

 mentally this difference as regards the 

 ability to do school work. His problem 

 was to determine whether and under what 

 conditions the work of pupils in a group 

 give better results than the individual 

 work of the isolated pupil. He tested the 

 ability of pupils to work alone or in com- 

 pany with others, using dictation, mental 

 arithmetic, memory tests, combination tests 

 after the manner of Ebbinghaus, and writ- 

 ten arithmetic. 



Dr. Mayer's method was briefly as fol- 

 lows : a number of boys in the fifth school 

 year of the people's school in "Wiirzburg 

 were given five different tasks as class exer- 

 cises, and also each boy was required to 

 prepare a similar task for comparison in 

 which he sat alone in the class-room, only 

 the class teacher or a colleague being pres- 

 ent. The material for the tasks was care- 

 fully chosen and was familiar to the pupils. 

 The pupils were representative of very dif- 

 ferent elements as regards school ability, 

 behavior, temperament, and home condi- 

 tions. The number tested was 28, the 

 average age twelve years. 



In general the result of the work of the 

 pupils in groups was superior to their work 

 as individuals. This appeared not only in 

 the decrease of time, but in the superior 

 quality of the work done. In individual 

 cases the saving of time was specially 

 striking ; for example, one pupil for a com- 

 bination test required 10 minutes and 25 

 seconds when working alone, for a similar 

 test when working with the group 7 min- 

 utes and 30 seconds; another, alone 13 

 minutes and 11 seconds, with the group 6 

 minutes and 45 seconds. 



Dr. Triplett tested the influence of the 

 presence of a coworker on a simple phys- 

 ical performance. His subjects were forty 



school children, and he had them turn a 

 reel as rapidly as possible. The children 

 turned the reel now alone and then in 

 company with another child, in both cases 

 with directions to turn as rapidly as pos- 

 sible. Two results were noted. It ap- 

 peared, on the one hand, that pupils worked 

 more rapidly when another child worked 

 in combination ; but, on the other hand, in 

 case of many children, hasty uncoordi- 

 nated movements appeared which reduced 

 their performance. 



Wherever men are together the indi- 

 vidual is influenced by others without being 

 aware of it. This is specially well illus- 

 trated by certain experiments in the labo- 

 ratory. Meumann cites the case of a 

 subject whose work at night with the 

 ergograph had a very definite value. Acci- 

 dentally one evening Meumann entered the 

 laboratory, and at once the work done was 

 decidedly increased in comparison with 

 that of other days, and this without the 

 subject's making any voluntary effort to 

 accomplish more. In such experiments 

 the subject always attempts to do his 

 utmost, and hence the significance of the 

 increased work done in the presence of 

 another individual. Many examples of 

 such effects of suggestion have been re- 

 ported by psychologists. 



Meumann, in experiments in the People 's 

 Schools, corroborated the results of Trip- 

 lett and Fere in a striking manner. Seven 

 pupils of the age of thirteen or fourteen 

 were tested repeatedly with the dynamom- 

 eter and ergograph. In case of the test of 

 the pupils separately, with no one else in 

 the room, the amount of work was always 

 less than when others were present. If the 

 experiments were made in the presence of 

 the teacher alone, the pupils did not do as 

 much work as when they were all together 

 without the teacher. 



Prom all this it appears, as Mayer points 



