ASSOCIATION. 559 



three, or four additional ideas may be in the background of conscious- 

 ness. The second letter in view shortens the time about ^^o, the third 

 :^, the fourth yi-g, the fifth -^^ sec. 



" I find it takes about twice as long to read (aloud, as fast as pos- 

 sible) words which have no connection as words which make sentences, 

 and letters which have no connection as letters which make words. 

 When the words make sentences and the letters words, not only do the 

 processes of seeing and naming overlap, but by one mental effort the 

 subject can recognize a whole group of words or letters, and by one 

 will-act choose the motions to be made in naming, so that the rate 

 at which the words and letters are read is really only limited by the 

 maximum rapidity at which the speech-organs can be moved. As the 

 result of a large number of experiments, the writer found that he had 

 read words not making sentences at the rate of \ sec, words making 

 sentences (a passage from Swift) at the rate of ^ sec, per word. . . . 

 The rate at which a person reads a foreign language is proportional to 

 his familiarity w^ith the language. For example, when reading as fast 

 as possible the writer's rate was, English 138, French 167, German 250, 

 Italian 327, Latin 434, and Greek 484 ; the figures giving the thou- 

 sandtlis of a second taken to read each word. Experiments made on 

 others strikingly confirm these results. The subject does not know 

 that he is reading the foreign language more slowly than his own ; this 

 explains why foreigners seem to talk so fast. This simple method of 

 determining a person's familiarity with a language might be used in 

 school examinations. 



" The time required to see and name colors and pictures of objects 

 was determined in the same way. The time was found to be about the 

 same (over \ sec.) for colors as for pictures, and about twice as long as 

 for w^ords and letters. Other experiments I have made show that we 

 can recognize a single color or picture in a slightly shorter time than a 

 word or letter, but take longer to name it. This is because, in the case 

 of words and letters, the association between the idea and name has 

 taken place so often that the process has become automatic, whereas in 

 the case of colors and pictures we must by a voluntary effort choose 

 the name.* 



In later experiments Mr. Cattell studied the time for 

 various associations to be performed, the termini (i.e., cue 

 and answer) being words. A word in one language was to 

 call up its equivalent in another, the name of an author the 

 tongue in w^hich he wrote, that of a city the country in 

 which it lay, that of a writer one of his works, etc. The 

 mean variation from the average is very great in all these 

 experiments ; and the interesting feature which they show 



