Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Experimental Psychology at Wellesley College (The American Journal of Psychology, 1892-11-01).pdf/7

270 through association with the appearance of the letter. The only positive exception which we find in which i is red, falls in with the more indefinite generalization of MM. Beaumis and Binet, that either i or a is black, white or red. We find also the following instances of apparent uniformity: In six cases out of twelve, a is blue; in five out of twelve, e is yellow, and in six out of thirteen, s is yellow. This last is the only instance of uniformity among consonant-associations.

Our recorded number-forms, of which there are forty-eight, are of most varied sorts, including single and parallel lines; lines horizontal and vertical; zig-zags, curves and one Greek border, One subject has “two forms, one for positive numbers to infinity, and another (extending in both directions from 0) including negatives, infinitesimals and fractions.” Not all changes of direction are at 12 or at 10. “Out of twenty- four, in which the lines are continuous,

About two-thirds turn toward the right. Several forms are in tri-dimensional space, and we have one elaborate description of a form stretching away from the subject, in which the more prominent numbers stand out like mountain-peaks and hide the intervening ones.

Our records include several cases of pronounced emotional association combined with a sort of dramatization of numbers or of colors. Thus, one subject writes, “1,2, 4,7 and 8 are reliable, quiet, well-disposed, but not brilliant numbers; 3 is a sharp, shrewd, noisy and disagreeable number, always making as much trouble as possible. For 13 I always had a great antipathy. It had all the disagreeable qualities of 3 added to a pertness and aggressiveness which made it repugnant to all the other numbers, with which it seemed never to associate. I never wanted to be thirteen years old.”

The circle is the most constant of the month-forms (occurring in eighteen out of fifty cases). Its plane is in most cases parallel, in one perpendicular, to the plane of the earth. In the forms for the days of the week, Sunday almost always occupies a conspicuous position. “When the plane changes, this day is higher than the rest, so that in passing from Saturday to Sunday, a step up is made.” To one person “the first three days of the week seem much greater than the last three. In vacation, I always plan to make visits, receive company on the first three days of the week; the other three seem crowded together and insignificant.”

No new explanations of the phenomena were offered or discussed. Only one affirmative answer, among twenty in the negative, was received to the question: “Can you compare your form with any