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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 265. 



chological theory of music,' criticising 

 sharply the current theories and insisting 

 particularly upon the necessity of the num- 

 ber 7 in a scientific theory of music. 



Dr. A. H. Pierce closed the session with 

 a paper ' Is there an independent auditory 

 space ?' The speaker argued for the affirm- 

 ative, basing his conclusion upon the phe- 

 nomena of intra-cranial localization ' occur- 

 ring when two fusing sounds are given 

 simultaneously, one at each ear, the result- 

 ant' reference to the interior of the head 

 being a genuine audit ory phenomenon and 

 not a localization made by the aid of factors 

 borrowed from the visual or tactual space 

 fields. 



In the meeting of the philosophical sec- 

 tion, held simultaneously with the forego- 

 ing, papers were read as follows : Professor 

 E. H. Griffin, ' The natural history point of 

 view in psychology '; Professor J. H. Hys- 

 lop, 'Kant's doctrine of apperception and 

 the use of the categories '; Professor Wil- 

 liam Caldwell, ' Pragmatism '; Professor J. 

 A. Leighton, ' Metaphysical method ' ; Pro- 

 fessor Alexander Meiklejohn, ' The concept 

 of substance. ' 



On Thursday afternoon the psychologists 

 adjourned to meet with the naturalists for 

 their annual discussion, Professor Jastrow 

 representing the Association. 



At the meeting of the experimental sec- 

 tion on Friday morning, the first paper was 

 by Mr. Clark Wissler on ' Some experiments 

 on motor diffusion.' Mr. Wissler reported 

 experiments showing the time relation be- 

 tween the primary, voluntary contractions 

 of finger muscles and the accompanying 

 secondary, unintentional contractions of the 

 other arm muscles, the latter being due to 

 a difi^usion of the motor discharge. Primary 

 contractions are first in order of time and 

 are followed by secondary contractions in 

 an order corresponding to their distance 

 anatomically from the muscle innervated. 

 Further, training finger muscles trains other 



arm muscles and training biceps trains fin- 

 ger muscles. Secondary contractions also 

 take place on opposite side of the body. 

 He argued that transference of practice 

 effect is simply the result of diffused nerve 

 currents. 



' The influence of special training in gen- 

 eral ability ' was the subject of a paper by 

 Drs. E. L. Thorndike and E. S. Woodworth. 

 Experiments were reported in which spe- 

 cial abilities were studied as follows : (1) 

 The speed and accuracy of making certain 

 complex observations, e. g., of picking out 

 from a page of print all the verbs or all the 

 words containing both r and e, etc., etc. 

 (2) The recognition of weights, lengths and 

 sizes. (3) Attention to and retention of 

 names. (4) Discrimination of two complex 

 objects shown successively. In each set of 

 experiments, after training in some one line, 

 the subject was tested for general improve- 

 ment in the same field. As far as the re- 

 search has gone, the experiments fail to de- 

 tect any pronounced influence of special 

 training on general ability except in so far 

 as a person may acquire in a special line of 

 work certain methods and ideals of accuracy 

 and speed which may be of use inther lines. 



Professor J. McK. Cattell read a paper 

 ' On relations of time and space in vision.' 

 Experiments were reported showing that a 

 surface moving under a window in a screen 

 appears larger than the window and that 

 if the surface exhibit two colors successively, 

 say green followed by red for -^-^ sec. each, 

 the observer sees not green followed by red, 

 but the two colors side by side or variously 

 intermingled, the arrangement varying with 

 the observer, but making for perception a 

 spatial continuum. On the other hand, if the 

 line of sight moves over objects, saj' a row 

 of books on a shelf, each retinal element is 

 successively stimulated but the objects are 

 seen simultaneously, side by side, without 

 fusion, even though the intermittent stimu- 

 lations be as frequent as 1000 per second. 



