A  FIRST  EXPERIMENT

2 9

hole  or  any  part  of  the  brass  plate,  an  electric  contact
was  made  which  produced  a  click  in  a  telephone  receiver
which  the  subject  held  to  her  ear.  At  the  start  of  the
test,  the  subject  was  instructed  to  put  the  brass  pencil
into  each  hole  in  succession  until  she  heard  a  click  in  her
ear,  when  she  was  to  start  all  over  again.  The  speed  of
the  subject’s  movements  was  controlled  by  a  metronome
set  so  as  to  allow  thirty  trials  per  minute.  The  experimenter ­
  also  had  a  telephone  receiver  to  enable  him  to
follow  the  subject’s  performance.  The  holes  were  numbered ­
  1,  2,  3,  etc.,  to  9.  As  soon  as  the  subject  failed  to
put  the  pointer  squarely  into  a  hole  but  touched  the  brass
plate  and  produced  a  click,  the  experimenter  recorded
the  number  of  the  hole  at  which  she  had  failed.  This
constituted  one  trial.  Each  girl  was  allowed  fifteen  such
trials,  and  the  numbers  of  the  last  ten  were  taken  and
averaged,  the  first  five  serving  as  preliminary  practice.
For  instance,  if  a  girl,  in  her  first  trial,  reached  the  fourth
hole  and  missed  on  the  fifth,  the  number  five  was  recorded;
if  she  missed  on  the  sixth,  six  was  recorded,  etc.,  until
fifteen  numbers  had  been  taken.  Then,  the  sum  of  the
last  ten  trials  divided  by  ten  gave  the  average  performance
for  the  subject.  The  larger  the  average,  the  better  the
performance.  This  test  occupied  from  two  to  three  minutes. ­

8.  A  modification  of  the  Whipple  steadiness  test.  This
consisted  of  two  brass  bars,  about  12  inches  long,  set
so  as  to  form  a  long,  horizontal  V.  The  subject  was  asked
to  take  the  brass  pointer  and  pass  it  along  between  these
two  bars.  The  farther  she  went,  the  narrower  became  the
space  between  the  brass  bars.  As  soon  as  the  brass  pointer
touched  one  of  the  bars  it  produced  a  click  in  the  telephone ­
  receiver.  The  point  at  which  this  brass  pointer