526 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 692 



petition of the child is with himself; he 

 knows exactly what progress he makes and 

 does the best he can to improve. 



Practise Curves in Learning: W. F. Dear- 

 born, Univei'sity of Wisconsin. 

 The report concerned, first, the daily im- 

 provement made by twelve subjects in the 

 ability to memorize rapidly the meanings 

 of from thirty to fifty French or German 

 words and passages of English poetry and 

 prose. The subjects were college juniors 

 and seniors and the practise was made 

 daily for twenty days. The various sub- 

 jects were then tested after intervals of 

 from two weeks to ninety-five days to de- 

 termine the relative permanence of that 

 memorized before the marked gains of the 

 practise compared with that memorized 

 towards the end of the practise. 



After practise, and in most cases after 

 the first five or six days, it took less than 

 one half the original time to do the same 

 amount of work. There was a gain of 

 time ranging from 53 per cent, to 62 per 

 cent, in the learning of vocabulary, and 

 55 per cent, to 82 per cent, in the learning 

 of poetry and prose. 



The permanence of the practise gain was 

 tested by determining the time necessary 

 to relearn the first two and the last two 

 lists of voeabulaiy and passages of poetry 

 and prose. Two weeks after the end of 

 practise three subjects relearned the last 

 tests or passages in somewhat less time 

 than the first (three subjects), after four 

 weeks 'it took from one third to one half as 

 long again to relearn the last passages as 

 to learn the first (three subjects), after 

 three months' time it took one half as long 

 again to relearn the last passages. The 

 permanence of the more rapid acquisitions 

 was, therefore, less than that learned at a 

 greater expenditure of time. However, 

 the total time spent in learning and re- 

 learning in the last part of the practise is 



much less than that required in the earlier 

 part — from 30 to 50 per cent. less. 



This practise method is evidently well 

 si^ited to some sorts of learning, especially 

 where permanence of results is not a prime 

 consideration, e. g., in learning a declama- 

 tion, and also where there is frequent op- 

 portunity for renewing acquaintance with 

 the subject-matter. It is probably well 

 suited to the learning of the vocabulary of 

 a foreign language. 



The Effect of Practise on the Range of 

 Visual Attention: Professor Guy Mon- 

 trose Whipple, University of Missouri. 

 The object of the investigation, which 

 was prosecuted in the Educational Labora- 

 tory of Cornell University, was to deter- 

 mine the feasibility of producing measur- 

 able augmentation of the range of visual 

 attention in adults by continued daily prac- 

 tise, and to determine by introspection the 

 manner in which such augmentation, if 

 present, was brought about. 



Preliminary tests with 0.1 sec. exposure 

 of simple geometrical drawings, digits and 

 letters indicated that observers very quick- 

 ly reached a physiological limit beyond 

 which further progress was impossible. 



Extended tests with 3 sec. exposure by 

 means of a pendulum tachistoscope of 

 varied forms of test-material— groups of 

 dots, pictures, nonsense syllables, draw- 

 ings, stanzas of poetry, etc., and with a 

 6 sec. exposure of groups of miscellaneous 

 objects placed upon a table, indicated little 

 or no improvement in the range of visual 

 attention with practise, but revealed 

 marked individual differences between dif- 

 ferent observers for different kinds of 

 material. The factors which condition the 

 range were determined with some exact- 

 ness by an analysis of the results in the 

 light of introspective evidence. The net 

 result, pedagogically, is that it is not worth 

 while, as has often been erroneously as- 



