558 PSYCHOLOGY. 



in which the ' cue ' was given h^ single-syllabled words 

 called out by an assistant. The person experimented on 

 had to press a key as soon as the sound of the word awak- 

 ened an associated idea. Both word and reaction were 

 chronographically registered, and the total time-interval 

 between the two amounted, in four observers, to 1.009, 

 0.896, 1.037, and 1.154 seconds respectively. From this the 

 simple physiological reaction-time and the time of merely 

 identifying the word's sound (the 'apperception-time,' a» 

 Wundt calls it) must be subtracted, to get the exact time 

 required for the associated idea to arise. These times were 

 separately determined and subtracted. The difference, 

 called by Wundt the association-time, amounted, in the same 

 four persons, to 706, 723, 752, and 874 thousandths of a 

 second respectively.* The length of the last figure is due 

 to the fact that the person reacting (President G. S. Hall) 

 was an American, whose associations with German words 

 would naturally be slower than those of natives. The short- 

 est association-time noted was when the word ' Sturm ' sug- 

 gested to Prof. Wundt the word ' Wind ' in 0.341 second. t — 

 Finally, Mr. Cattell made some interesting observations 

 upon the association-time between the look of letters and 

 their names. "I pasted letters," he says, "on a revolving 

 drum, and determined at what rate they could be read 

 aloud as they passed by a slit in a screen." He found it 

 to vary according as one, or more than one letter, was visi- 

 ble at a time through the slit, and gives half a second as 

 about the time which it takes to see and name a single 

 letter seen alone. 



" When two or more letters are always in view, not only do the pro- 

 cesses of seeing and naming overlap, but while the subject is seeing one 

 letter he begins to see the ones next following, and so can read them 

 more quickly. Of the nine persons experimented on, four could read 

 the letters faster when five were in view at once, but were not helped 

 by a sixth letter ; three were not helped by a fifth, and two not by a 

 fourth letter. This shows that while one idea is in the centre, two, 



* Physiol. Psych., ii. 280 fol. 



f For interesting remarks on the .forts of things associated, in these ex- 

 periments, with the prompting word, see Galton, op. cit. pp. 185-203, and 

 Trautscholdt in Wundt's Psychologische Studien, i. 213. 



