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doi: 10.1037/h0056652pmid: N/A
A review of the literature since 1930 (87 titles) organized under the following heads: (1) apparatus and methodology: research apparatus, demonstrational units, stroboscopes, analysis of tones, clinical applications of the stroboscope, new methods of obtaining apparent movement; (2) experimental studies: autokinetic sensation, after-images, stroboscopic, gamma, and induced movements; auditory, tactual, and vibratory apparent movement, and with several senses; (3) theoretical formulations: concerning autokinetic sensation, movement after-images, stroboscopic, gamma, induced, and tactual apparent movement.
doi: 10.1037/h0054742pmid: N/A
A critical review of some ten types of circuits in use to-day and of their antecedents is presented in an informative manner. Bibliography of 36 titles.
doi: 10.1037/h0054939pmid: N/A
An outline of topics based on the location, nature, and complexity of the bodily structures involved in each function.
doi: 10.1037/h0050330pmid: N/A
Reviews the book Thorndike's Fundamentals of Learning by Clark L. Hull. This volume represents three years of experimental investigation by Dr. Thorndike assisted by the staff of the Division of Psychology of the Institute of Educational Research of Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Thorndike's chief collaborators were Dr. Ella Woodyard, Dr. Irving Lorge, Miss Mabel Wilcox, and Miss Parrish Little. In general, the magnitude of the experimental program arose from Thorndike's unusually persistent attempt to isolate and measure various supposedly basic conditions or "laws" of learning such as frequency, "belongingness", and effect. The task of isolation naturally proved to be extremely complex and difficult. It is this stubborn attempt at isolation of basic factors which makes the work of fundamental significance and gives a real appropriateness to the title of the book. This work of Professor Thorndike and his loyal corps of associates is truly monumental. It is fundamental, as its title promises. It displays an immense amount of combined industry and experimental ingenuity. If not always wholly convincing to biased critics, it is certain to prove extremely stimulating through its bold challenge to current views, modes of thought, and methods of experimentation. Already a considerable literature, largely experimental, has been evoked by it.
doi: 10.1037/h0051093pmid: N/A
Reviews the book Law and the Lawyers by E. S. Robinson . This is a book by a psychologist suggesting ways and means of improving the usefulness of the law and lawyers to human welfare. However, it spends little time or attention upon the psychological studies of testimony, tests of mental abilities, and mental pathology. Its concern is chiefly with the more fundamental psychology of the thought and action of legal scholars, judges, and lawyers. Moreover, its author uses psychology as a sample of science more than as a restricted body of facts and principles. Professor Robinson presents facts and refrains from making particular prophecies or recommendations, though he hints that clinics may replace criminal prosecutions and that declaratory judgments to prevent disputes and litigation about business matters may replace ordinary conflicts before a court. He also seems to favor replacing legal fictions by frank extensions and amendments of the law and of the meanings of words and phrases. The discussions of the legal mind and the methods and criteria which direct its action are illustrated, though rather scantily, by cases and decisions, familiar perhaps to lawyers but fascinating to psychologists.
doi: 10.1037/h0051460pmid: N/A
Reviews the book The Problem of Mental Disorder edited by M. Bentley and E. V. Cowdry . Acting as a committee for the National Research Council, Drs. Bentley and Cowdry have gathered papers from 25 fields which are directly or indirectly concerned with the problem of mental disorder. The first 5 papers are by psychiatrists, each of whom represents a different school of thought. The remaining 20 range from various minute branches of neurology to social anthropology and education. The task undertaken has been gigantic: to present a picture of current beliefs in psychiatry and an analysis of the possible contributions to psychiatry of every subsidiary field which is in any way relevant. To the credit of both editors and authors it must be said that the task has been completed in splendid form. Defense and derogation of isms have been relegated to their deserved oblivion, and if the book seems dull to those who thrive on polemic it will delight and thrill the student anxious to discover a broad and solid basis for his experimental or systematic study of mental disorder. In two particulars do these various writers diverge from one another. First, they emphasize different aspects of the disorders and recommend diverse techniques for their study; and second, they have different faiths as to essential etiology. The latter difference derives from the former and both probably result from fundamental differences in training and temperament.
doi: 10.1037/h0051020pmid: N/A
Reviews the book Adult Interests by Edward L. Thorndike . For more than 30 years, the contributions of Thorndike in the fields of psychology and education have attracted wide attention. We may look upon the book under consideration as a sequel to the volume on Adult Learning published in 1928. It is intended primarily for workers in the rapidly growing field of special or part-time adult education but should be of great help to all college teachers who, after all, work with students who may rightly be called young adults. Writing for this special group and for a rather definite purpose, the author has aimed at clearness and has achieved this result to a remarkable degree. As he himself states in the preface, While the admitted purpose of the volume is as stated above it nevertheless is of great significance to the psychologist: first, because it throws much light upon the general problem of interest; second, because it pioneers in the comprehensive study of adult interests; and third, because of the new and original techniques and devices reported as having been used or suggested for future use. Interest is then used primarily to signify that, because of the very nature of the human being, certain situations or happenings are more potent in initiating certain types of behavior than others, or that conditions can be created under which certain situations become more potent than before in initiating and sustaining responses.
doi: 10.1037/h0050802pmid: N/A
Reviews the book The Evolution of Modern Psychology by Richard Müller Freienfels . This history features the semi-philosophical rather than the experimental trends, and the temper of American psychology will give the book a somewhat scholastic atmosphere. The task of psychology is herein conceived to be an account of the "structure of the soul" and wherever possible an endeavor is made to point out the "totalitarian" aspect of the point of view under discussion. In the introduction is briefly sketched the developmental "strategy" of psychology, from primitive animism up to the scientific approach. There are six main "part" to the rest of the book. Part I considers psychology as the study of consciousness, a readable and impartial account of the men and doctrines. Part II deals with "Physiopsychology and Psychophysiology." Part III considers "Action and Conduct". Part IV is given to this "school." It has a motley membership- the testing psychologists, the phenomenologists, the personalists, the "understanding" psychologists, and the characterologists. The fact of the soul's supernatural existence is however further "demonstrated in Section V on "The Unconscious". In Part VI the totalitarian story culminates in "The Psychology of Superindividual Psychic Life".
doi: 10.1037/h0049492pmid: N/A
Reviews the book Studies in the History of Ideas, III edited by Department of Philosophy of Columbia (1935). This volume, which contains 13 individual studies of varying length, type, and value and which lacks both a general introduction and an integrating point of view, can scarcely be reviewed as a whole. Attention rather must be directed toward the separate contributions. The subject matter conforms to the pattern of philosophic problems, historically conceived, rather than to the history of ideas cast against the background of social history. Several studies give precedence to the technique of approach over actual subject matter, yet in the more distinguished contributions method and content are brilliantly fused. In striking contrast to the rest of the volume is McClure's "Greek Genius and Race Mixture." In his effort to account for the genius of the Greek people and to formulate an ethnological approach to Greek philosophy, the author has been seduced into eight and a half pages of twaddle and misinformation. To say that the "doctrine of the mean" rests on the dual constitution of Greek character, the contemplative and the warlike, becomes thoroughly supposititious, not to say ludicrous, when it is recalled that one of the author's "peaceful" elements was aggressively warlike and that one of his "warlike" elements displayed a great love of art
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