Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/163

Rh But the climax of Wirth's misrepresentation is found in his objections to my discussion of his reaction-experiments (§12). I did not, it is true, mention the fact that their purpose was purely negative; that is, that Wirth meant to compare reaction-times (which have frequently been assumed to express variations of attention) with the results obtained by his previous method (the Schwellen methode}, in order to show that they do not afford as reliable a measurement of attention as do his liminal clearness-values. But then he himself makes no such explicit statement, either in the form of a problem or in that of a conclusion. The only passages which hint at any purpose, with regard to the reaction-experiments, are the following: "da es uns vor allem darauf ankam, die Resultateauf die friiheren Klarheitsmessungen nach der Schwellenmethode zu beziehen," etc.; and "wenu irgendwo, so scheint nun gerade fur die Abhangigkeit der Reaktionszeit vom Klarheitsgrade der Motivauffassung, die wir hier im einzelnen untersuchen wollen" etc. From these two incidental passages the reader is left to conclude for himself what the "entscheidende Hauptpunkt" of the investigation is; namely, as Wirth now says in his reply, but had not said before, "dass die Methode der (sensoriellen) Reaktion an der Hand der unter vergleichbaren Bedingungen gewonnenen Resultate uach der Schwellenmethode, die allem fur uns als Klarheitsmass gilt, darauf hin kontrolliert werden sollte, wie weit sich die Klarheitsverhaltnisse auch in dem Zeitwert wiederspiegeln." This implication was not observed by me, nor seemingly by A. A. Griinbaum, who lately published a more elaborate review of Kastner and Wirth's reaction-experiments. For Griinbaum the problem of the investigation is simply to find out "wie das Klarheitsrelief, das durch verschiedenartige Verteilung der Aufmerksamkeit erreicht wird, sich in den Reaktionszeiten wiederspiegelt." There is here no mention of a proposed comparison with the results of the Schwellenmethode. Nor does this problem occur to Griinbaum when he actually compares the results obtained by the two methods. He merely says: "man sieht leicht,