Page:Memory (1913).djvu/74

 times,—namely, after about one third of an hour, after 1 hour, after 9 hours, one day, two days, six days, or 31 days.

The times were measured from the completion of the first set of first learnings, as a consequence of which no great accuracy was required in case of the longer intervals. The influence of the last four intervals was tested at three different times of day. Some preliminary remarks are necessary before the results obtained can be communicated.

Similar experimental conditions may be taken for granted in the case of the series relearned after a number of whole days. At any rate there is no way of meeting the actual fluctuations even when external conditions are as far as possible similar, other than by a multiplication of the tests. Where the inner dissimilarity was presumably the greatest, namely after the interval of an entire month, I approximately doubled the number of tests.

In the case of an interval of nine hours and an interval of one hour between learning and relearning, there existed, however, a noticeably constant difference in the experimental conditions. In the later hours of the day mental vigor and receptivity are less. The series learned in the morning and then relearned at a later hour, aside from other influences, require more work for relearning than they would if the relearning were done at a time of mental vigor equal to that of the original learning. Therefore, in order to become comparable, the numerical values found for relearning must suffer a diminution which, at least in the case of the 8 hour interval, is so considerable that it cannot be neglected. It must be ascertained how much longer it takes to learn at the time of day, B, series which were learned in "a" seconds at the time of day, A. The actual determination of this quantity presupposes more tests than I, up to the present, possess. If a necessary but inexact correction is applied to the numbers found for 1 and for 8 hours, these become even more unreliable than if left to themselves.

In the ease of the smallest interval, one third of an hour, the same drawback reappears, though to a less degree; but it is probably compensated for by another circumstance. The interval as a whole is so short that the relearning of the first series of a test followed almost immediately or after an interval of one or two minutes upon the learning of the last series of the same test. For this reason the whole formed so to speak, one