Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/622

604 from conversation, and so on. Dr. Granville does not recognize the motor-type, but gives a series of tests for distinguishing between an eye-minded and an ear-minded person, which, in brief, are as follows: Unknown to the subject of the trial, a slip of paper containing some eight or ten monosyllabic words, arranged so as to have no natural association, is prepared and presented to him to be silently read once only. He must then write as many of the words as he can remember. The same is repeated with an equivalent set of words read aloud once to the subject, which he attempts to repeat. A comparison of the errors in a number of papers prepared in this way will reveal whether the words are better apprehended by the eye or by the ear. By having a longer or shorter interval between the reading and the repeating, the sense by which the subject remembers more securely will be determined.

The test is good but insufficient; a reliable and complete estimate of the part played in one's mental life by the several senses can be gained only by a series of varied and mutually corroborative tests. A few such tests which I have tried and found satisfactory—and which will readily suggest others—will be here detailed.

The general principles on which I proceed are three: I. I test the limit of the capacity for receiving impressions by the eye, and a similar limit for the ear. The sense that has the largest capacity is the dominant one. II. I test the subject in a performance in which error is sure to occur, both by eye and by ear, and compare the amount of the error in equally difficult performances, as well as derive hints from the nature of the errors. III. I have two processes, one requiring the use of the eye, the other that of the ear, going on at the same time; and find which one absorbs the maximum of attention and gets best remembered. All of these principles admit of a variety of applications, both for immediate apperception as well as for remembrance after an interval.

I. The simplest test relates to the mechanical apprehension of form and sound. For this one can find the maximum number of nonsense-syllables that can be repeated after a single reading, and compare it with the number remembered after a single hearing. One can do the same with numbers, with words of a foreign tongue, with simple diagrams or colors and sounds, and so on. The "visionaire" remembers more of the seen; the "auditaire" of the heard. The next step is to use significant words, as Dr. Granville suggests. It is still more instructive and often amusing to take short sentences from the newspaper or a book and find the largest number of words in construction retained after a single hearing or a single reading. Another interesting test is to find the