October 27, 1893.] 



SCIENCE. 



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MENTAL IMAGES. 



BY E. A. KIEKPATEICK, WINONA, MINN. 



Spencek, in his "Philosophy of Style," decides in favor 

 of the English custom of placing the adjective before the 

 noun because when the word 'horse," for example, is 

 pronounced, there tends to arise in the mind a mental 

 image of a horse, probably of a brown color, since that is 

 most common, and when the adjective "black" follows, as 

 in French, this image must be changed, producing 

 hindrance. While listening to a recitation upon this 

 well-known passage, in a high school, the question came 

 to me: "Do people form distinct mental images when 

 words are spoken ?" I immediately obtained permission to 

 test the matter there and later in the grammar school 

 and in a college in the same town. 



The following ten words were selected and pronounced, 

 one at a time, the pupils being requested to write down 

 just what came into their minds when the words were 

 spoken: "church," "book," "drum," "tree," "horse," "dog," 

 "chair," "stove," "man," "lamp." They were told to give 

 the size and color, if it were visual, and if it was some- 

 thing heard or felt to state that fact. 



The answers were various, and of all grades of distinct- 

 ness and vagueness, so that the task of classifying them 

 was very difficult. This standard was finally adopted. If 

 the writer mentioned the size and color of the object, or 

 named an individual or species of the general class indi- 

 cated by the word, his mental image was counted as a 

 distinct mental image, otherwise it was not. Three 

 classes of visual images were found: (1) distinct, includ- 

 ing all that conformed to the standard given above; (2) 

 particular, including those of the above that were of par- 

 ticular or individual things; (3) indistinct images, or none. 

 The auditory and tactile images, which were very few in 

 number, were classified separately. 



The general results for the different grades of pupils 

 and classes of students, and the sexes are shown in 

 table I. 



It will be seen from the general average that for those 

 persons and those words distinct visual images were 

 found in about three-fourths of the cases. The conditions 

 were much more favorable, however, for forming mental 

 images than are present in ordinary reading or listening. 

 More time was allowed between the words. A tendency 

 to form mental images was excited by the preliminary 

 remarks, and the fact that they were to write some- 

 thinsf tended to make them form more distinct men- 



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