io6 THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



' horse ', reacting to a movement on the part of the ques- 

 tioner, stopped at 3, but the latter, having intended to ob- 

 tain 2, made the following entry : " I noted clearly that I 

 ceased thinking of the number too late, and did not put 

 on the brakes, as it were, until I had arrived at 3 ". We 

 see that errors here were entirely the fault of the ques- 

 tioner, just as had been the case in the tests with Hans. 

 (Seepage I5if.). 



In a second group of experiments I asked a subject to 

 fix his mind upon certain concepts, such as " up ", or 

 "down", "right" or "left", "yes" or "no", and 

 others, in any order he pleased, but with the greatest 

 possible degree of concentration. The subject each time 

 had the choice of four or six concepts, and he was told 

 to think of one of them at the signal " Now ! ". How he 

 was to ' think ' the concept was left entirely to him. 

 He was also told to interpolate the series with a ' blank ', 

 that is, to think of nothing at all. Standing opposite the 

 subject, I tried to guess at the mental content of the per- 

 son's mind, on the basis of expressive movements. Some- 

 times I reacted by shaking or nodding the head, etc., just 

 as Hans had done, but as a rule I was content to say 

 the word which I thought the subject had in mind. With 

 twelve subjects (a total of 350 tests) I made an average 

 of 73% correct responses, and in the more favorable cases 

 I attained even 90 to 100% correct responses. Very 

 slight involuntary movements of the head and eyes, 

 which showed but little individual variation, and always 

 occurred when the subject began to fix upon the concept, 

 were the signs which I used as cues. As in the case of 

 the movements expressive of the release of tension, which 

 I discussed above, these movements, too, occurred with- 

 out the subject being aware of them, (except in those 



