ATTENTION. 407 



It is obvious tliat siich observations decide nothing at all 

 about our attention, projDerlj so called. They rather meas- 

 ure in part the distinctness of our vision — especially of the 

 primary-memor^^-image* — in part the amount of association 

 in the individual between seen arrangements and the names 

 of numbers, t 



Each number-name is a way of grasping the beans as 

 one total object. In such a total object, all the parts con- 

 verge harmoniously to the one resultant concept ; no sin- 

 gle bean has special discrepant associations of its own ; 

 and so, with practice, they ma^^ grow quite numerous ere 

 we fail to estimate them aright. But where the 'object' be- 



* If a lot of dots or strokes on a piece of paper be exhibited for a mo- 

 ment to a person in normal condition, with the request that he say how 

 many are there, he will find that they break into groups in his mind's eye, 

 and that whilst he is analyzing and counting one group in his memory the 

 others dissolve. In short, the impression made by the dots changes rapidly 

 into something else. In the trance-subject, on the contrary, it seems to 

 stick ; I find that persons in the hypnotic state easily count the dots in 

 the mind's eye so long as they do not much exceed twenty in number. 



f 3Ir. Cattell made Jevons's experiment in a much more precise way 

 (Philosophische Studien, in 121 ff.). Cards were ruled with short lines, 

 varying in number from four to fifteen, and exposed to the eye for a hun- 

 dredth of a second. When the number was but four or five, no mistakes 

 as a rule were made. For higher numbers the tendency was to under- 

 rather than to over-estimate. Similar experiments were tried with letters 

 and figures, and gave the same result. When the letters formed familiar 

 words, three times as many of them could be named as when their com- 

 bination was meaningless. If the words formed a sentence, twice as many 

 of them could be caught as when they had no connection. " The sentence 

 was then apprehended as a whole. If not apprehended tbus, almost noth- 

 ing is apprehended of the several words; but if the sentence as a whole is 

 apprehended, then the words appear very distinct." — Wundt and his pupil 

 Dietze had tried .similar experiments on rapidly repeated strokes of sound. 

 Wundt made them follow each other in groups, and found that groups of 

 twelve strokes at most could be recognized and identified when they suc- 

 ceeded each other at the most favorable rate, namely, from three to five 

 tenths of a second (Phys. Psych., ii. 215). Dietze found that by mentally 

 subdividing the groups into sub-groups as one listened, as many as forty 

 strokes could be identified as a whole. They were then grasped as eight 

 sub-groups of five, or <is five of eight strokes each. (Philosophische Studien, 

 II. 362.) — Later in Wundt's Laboratory, Bechterew made observations on 

 two simultaneously elapsing series of metronome strokes, of which one con- 

 tained one stroke more than the other. The most favorable rate of succes- 

 sion was 0.3 sec, and he then discriminated a group of 18 from one of 

 18+ 1, apparently. (Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, 272.) 



