LABORATORY TESTS 107 



rare cases in which they had once or twice been especially 

 pronounced). Indeed, it was very difficult and in some 

 cases almost impossible for those persons whom I had 

 initiated into the secret, to inhibit them voluntarily. 

 "Up" and "down", "right" and "left", were ex- 

 pressed by movements of head or eye in those directions, 

 " forward " by a forward movement of the head, " back " 

 by a corresponding movement. " Yes " was accompanied 

 by a slight nod of the head ; " no " by two to four rapid 

 turnings of the head to either side.* "Zero" was ex- 

 pressed by a movement of the head describing an oval in 

 the air. Indeed, it was even possible to discover whether 

 the subject had conceived of a printed or a written 

 zero, for the characteristics of both were revealed in 

 the head-movements. I was able later to verify this 

 graphically. With Ch. as subject, I made 70% correct 



* It was Charles Darwin ^ who first pointed out that the expressive 

 movements (of the coarser sort) to be noted in nearly every race and 

 people show a great, though by no means complete, similarity. The 

 similarity is most pronounced in the shaking of the head to signify ne- 

 gation and nodding to denote affirmation. It will be noted that the 

 former is essentially of the nature of a turning toward, and the latter 

 a turning away.* These same movements have been reported in the 

 case of the blind and deaf Laura Bridgman,' and we have been ex- 

 plicitly assured that they were a spontaneous development, and not 

 acquired by imitation. For it is by imitation and never before the 

 completion of the first year, that our children acquire these move- 

 ments. On account of his unreliability, we can put but little stock in 

 the statement of Garner," a writer on the speech of monkeys, that 

 these same gestures have been observed in the case of those animals. 

 My experiments show that the same movements, greatly diminished in 

 scope, as a rule accompany the mere thought of " yes," " no," etc. I 

 cannot, however, regard the assertion as an established fact that every 

 thought process whatsoever is connected with some form of niuscular 

 movement, as has been generalized by the French physiologist Fer^.U 

 and the American psychologist Wm. James." 



