Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/610

598 from the perception of the stimulus to the pronunciation of the reaction-word. The latter frequently appeared with reflex-like regularity; 45 out of G's 91 irrelevant reactions took less than 1.5 sec., with an average of 1.2 sec. and a m. v. of. i sec. In all these cases the general pattern of consciousness was that of a sharp focus and a very vague background. A few times only a sort of "blank" was experienced, as it is described, for example, in the following record: "verbally repeated stimulus- word ('East-Side') to myself, then short, empty pause, empty staring, fixation of objects opposite me, but nothing clear in mind for short moment, muscular sensations from movement of eyes in easterly direction, and reaction- word ' New York ' came immediately ' ' (time, 2 .4 sec.) . The reaction-times for the "blank" experiences average about 2 sec. Sometimes expectation is so intense as to anticipate a stimulus- word before it is completely heard; e. g., "crisis" was expected to be "Christ," and "charity" to be "chariot." In such cases the expected word is usually given as the observer's reaction.

While with the insignificant words a great uniformity of the attentive state of mind thus prevailed, in the case of significant stimuli, the conditions were extremely labile. Here the observer was often unable exactly to describe his attitude; he ' ' felt lost, ' ' or was " in a state of suspense, " or he " had no memory or recognition of the stimulus- word until a reaction word occurred to him. " Several times G had prepared himself for certain "dangerous" words by thinking beforehand of a "safe" reaction. But at the proper time this preparation failed to work, because some other mental process, perhaps an image or a strong feeling, successfully interfered with or delayed the prearranged reaction. Quite frequently the stimulus- word was repeated, more and more automatically, so that it gradually dropped out of the focus into the background, while nothing else took its place. The consequence was a "blank," which may have lasted sometimes as long as a second. The recovery was very sudden; a new idea appeared and led to an almost explosive reaction. It is difficult to describe this state more fully without mentioning its contents, which will be done in the third section. As the experiments were never continued for more than 50 minutes, G never experienced any signs of fatigue.

As regards the mental processes which are indifferent to the presence of a "complex," it has already been pointed out that G was, as a rule, entirely oblivious to his surroundings. Only in 8 of the insignificant and in 3 of the significant cases did environmental stimuli, such as visual objects or sounds, influence him by suggesting reaction-words. As G