414 ASXALS XEW YORK ACADEMY OF sCIEXCEs 



negroes, the negroes three fourths pnre. and the quadroons were some- 

 what less variable than the whites. The results of the experiments will 

 be published in full in the ^'ATchives of PsTchology." 



Professor Cummins said in abstracT: The investigation oonoerns the 

 practical application of the laws of memory in such public-school exer- 

 cises as geography and historV; and deals with the relative advantages of 

 an irregular distribution of time as compared with the regular distribu- 

 tion which is commonly used in the arrangement of the school programme. 



Subjects. — The subjects used in the experiment included pupils in 

 grades from the third to the seventh — a total of 699. 



The seventh-grade pupils were in the Eutherford. Xew Jersey, public 

 school and were mostly Americans of good social standing. Those of the 

 other grades were from the Lyndhurst. Xew .Jersey, public schools and 

 represented about 50 per c-ent. of foreigners. mc»stly Italians and PollcK?ks, 

 being of a rather low grade of economic and social standing. 



Materials. — The standard one-column addition sheets of Thomdike 

 were used with the third and fourth grades: the division sheets devised 

 by Kirby were used in the fifth grade : in the upper grades the geography 

 and history material used was devised by the writer and consisted of a 

 selection of priaciples and facts of geography c-ondensed into brief sen- 

 tences and priated on sheets 6x9 and 6 x 12 inches. These sheets were 

 passed out for study. These, after a given length of time, were taken up 

 and other sheets passed out. These latter sheets were the same as the first 

 ones except that all the important words were omitted and the numbers, 

 which, by the way. were placed in parentheses in front of these words on 

 the study sheets, iodicated the missing words. The pupils were required 

 to write on separate scoring sheets as many of these missing words as 

 possible in a given time. 



Tasl'. — The task assigned in all the grades consisted in doing the exer- 

 cises in addition, division, geography or history, as the case might be. so 

 many minutes, say 5. 10. or 15. per day or per every other day, or what 

 not. acc-ording to the arrangement of the time schedule for each group. 

 A total of 115 minutes was used with the third and fourth grades doing 

 addition. The same time was used with the fifth grade doing division, 

 the measurement being taken from the mid-point of the initial fifteen 

 minutes of practise to the mid-point of the final fifteen minutes of prac- 

 tise — ». e., 100 minutes of practise were measured. In the case of the 

 sixth and seventh grades doing geography and history a total of 120 min- 

 utes was used in the experiment, the measurement being taken from the 

 mid-point of the initial fifteen minutes of practise to the mid-point of 

 the final fifteen minutes of practise — i. f.. 105 minutes of practise were 

 measured. 



