Note 530 — Chapter XV · [512]

Curious discrepancies exist between the German and the American observers with respect to the direction of the error below and above the point of indifference—differences perhaps due the fatigue involved in the American method. The Germans lengthened intervals below it and shortened those above. With seven Americans experimented on by Stevens this was exactly reversed. The German method was to passively listen to the intervals, then judge; the American was to reproduce them actively by movements of the hand. In Mehner's experiments there was found a second indifference point at about 5 seconds, beyond which times were judged again too long. Glass, whose work on the subject is the latest (Philos. Studien, iv, 423) found (when corrections were allowed for) that all times except 0.8 sec. were estimated too short. He found a series of points of greatest relative accuracy, viz. at 1.5, 2.5, 3.75, 5, 6.25, etc., seconds respectively, and thought that his observations roughly corroborated Weber's law. As 'maximum' and 'minimum' are printed interchangeably in Glass's article it is hard to follow.