Page:Memory (1913).djvu/122

 of meaningful material in general depends will be brought to nothing.

The connection set up as a result of many repetitions between the immediately succeeding members of an idea- or syllable-series is a function of the number of repetitions. As a result of the investigations of Chapter VI, which were purposely directed to the discovery of this relation, an approximate proportionality, within tolerably wide limits, has been made out between the number of repetitions and the strength of the connections established by them. The latter was measured, precisely as in the investigations of the present chapter, by the amount of work saved in relearning the connected series after 24 hours.

If now, as a result of repetitions, connections are also set up between members of a series which are not immediately successive, the strength of the latter is naturally also in some way dependent upon the number of repetitions. The question arises in what form the different dependence occurs in this case. Does a proportionality exist here also? If the number of repetitions is made greater, will the threads of separate strength, which bind together all the members of a series learned by heart, increase in strength in the same proportion? Or is the nature and rate of their increase in strength a different one as is the case with the strength of the threads themselves? On the basis of our present knowledge neither the one nor the other of these possibilities can be declared self-evident

To facilitate an insight into the actual conditions I have instituted a few preliminary experiments in the following way. Six aeries of 16 syllables each were impressed upon the memory by a 16- or 64-fold attentive repetition. After 24 hours an equal number of derived series of the same length, which had been obtained from those already learned by skipping one intermediate syllable, were learned by heart to the first repetition. In order to make the investigations useful in other ways, the series were derived in this case by a method somewhat different from that described above. The latter method differs