Читать книгу A Study of Association in Insanity - A. J. Rosanoff - Страница 9

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From the records obtained from these normal subjects, including in all 100,000 reactions, we have compiled a series of tables, one for each stimulus word, showing all the different reactions given by one thousand subjects in response to that stimulus word, and the frequency with which each reaction has occurred. [1] These tables will be found at the end of this paper.

[Footnote 1: A similar method of treating associations has been used by Cattell (Mind, Vol. XII, p. 68; Vol. XIV, p. 230), and more recently by Reinhold (Zeitschr. f. Psychol., Vol. LIV, p. 183), but for other purposes.]

With the exception of a few distinctive proper names, which are indicated by initials, we have followed the plan of introducing each word into the table exactly as it was found in the record. In the arrangement of the words in each table, we have placed together all the derivatives of a single root, regardless of the strict alphabetical order.[1]

[Footnote 1: It should be mentioned that we have discovered a few errors in these tables. Some of these were made in compiling them from the records, and were evidently due to the assistant's difficulty of reading a strange handwriting. Other errors have been found in the records themselves. Each of the stimulus words butter, tobacco and king appears from the tables to have been repeated by a subject as a reaction; such a reaction, had it occurred, would not have been accepted, and it is plain that the experimenter wrote the stimulus word in the space where the reaction word should have been written. Still other errors were due to the experimenter's failure to speak with sufficient distinctness when reading off the stimulus words; thus, the reaction barks in response to dark indicates that the stimulus word was probably understood as dog; and the reactions blue and color in response to bread indicate that the stimulus word was understood as red.]

The total number of different words elicited in response to any stimulus word is limited, varying from two hundred and eighty words in response to anger to seventy-two words in response to needle. Furthermore, for the great majority of subjects the limits are still narrower; to take a striking instance, in response to dark eight hundred subjects gave one or another of the following seven words: light, night, black, color, room, bright, gloomy; while only two hundred gave reactions other than these words; and only seventy subjects, out of the total number of one thousand, gave reactions which were not given by any other subject.

If any record obtained by this method be examined by referring to the frequency tables, the reactions contained in it will fall into two classes: the common reactions, those which are to be found in the tables, and the individual reactions, those which are not to be found in the tables. For the sake of accuracy, any reaction word which is not found in the table in its identical form, but which is a grammatical variant of a word found there, may be classed as

doubtful.

The value of any reaction may be expressed by the figure representing the percentage of subjects who gave it. Thus the reaction, table—chair, which was given by two hundred and sixty-seven out of the total of our one thousand subjects, possesses a value of 26.7 per cent. The significance of this value from the clinical standpoint will be discussed later.