Questions and Exercises
(1) State in your own words, and without looking at the book, why the psychologist has to do with meaning, and what meaning is psychologically. Illustrate from your own experience; find, in particular, a case of meaning carried by kinæsthesis, and a case of meaning carried in purely nervous terms.
(2) Draw diagrams to illustrate the typical perception and idea, and the various stages in its reduction to the skeleton-type described at the end of § 24.
(3) Qualitative perceptions undergo relatively little change. What changes have they undergone? How is it that these changes have not unfitted them to mean quality?
(4) A stereoscope and a set of slides prepared by the author may be obtained from the C. H. Stoelting Co., 3047 Carroll Avenue, Chicago, Ill. Explain the construction of the stereoscope, part by part; and work carefully through the slides, writing down what you see. It is useless to play with the instrument; take the experiments seriously.
(5) If you are touched with a pencil on wrist and chest, and try to retouch the places stimulated, you are more nearly right on wrist than on chest. Why? Try the experiment several times over.
(6) You have probably often heard the rising tone of a siren-whistle sounded by some manufactory or given as a fire-signal. Can you image it? If so, what is the index of change? If not, try to lay your finger on this index when you next hear the whistle.
(7) If tastes and smells have not the attribute of extension, how do you account for their apparent spread in space? If sounds are not spatial, how is it that we can localise them?
(8) Is there such a thing as a purely visual rhythm? How would you approach the question experimentally?
(9) Perform Aristotle’s experiment, by crossing the second over the first finger of the right hand, and pressing on a marble placed under the crossed joints, (a) Is Aristotle’s statement correct? Write out your observations. (b) Is sight decisive? Helmholtz said, on the contrary: “We are continually controlling and correcting the notions of locality derived from the eye by the help of the sense of touch, and always accept the impressions on the latter sense as decisive.” (c) Can you work out the perception of a thing or object, somewhat as the book has worked out the perception of distance?
(10) Can you suggest methods for the determination of imaginal type?
(11) Close your eyes, (a) Let an experimenter draw a blunt-pointed pencil at an even rate along the inside of your arm from the shoulder to the tip of the middle finger. The point seems to travel more quickly at some places than at others: why? Draw a diagram of the arm, and mark the places of apparent slowing and quickening. (b) Tie two pencils together with a bit of rubber between, so that the points are 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 in. apart. Let an experimenter set the two points crosswise on the skin at the shoulder, and draw them with even speed and pressure along the inside of your arm to the finger-tips. The points seem to converge and diverge: why? Draw a diagram as before.
(12) If a rough thread is drawn by an experimenter between your forefinger and thumb, at first quickly and then slowly, it will seem shorter in the first experiment than in the second. Why?