Types of reaction

The experiments reported in this article were carried out in the Toronto Laboratory in 1892-93. Three questions were set for research, all of them bearing on the question of the degree of relativity of reaction times: either the difference of a single individual's times, according as there were subjective (attention) or objective (qualitative stimulus) changes in the conditions of his reaction; or the differences of reaction times for different individuals under identical conditions. Subjects' sensory and motor reactions as well light and dark reactions to sound are discussed. It is concluded that the results indicate the existence of persons whose sensory reactions to sound are shorter than their motor reactions, and that there is in some individuals a difference between the length of the motor reaction, according as it is made in the light or in the dark, we may make some general remarks on the theory of these differences. These results should be compared with earlier ones, a matter which is made easier by reference to the concise summing up of the literature of the subject by Titchener in Mind (1895). The general result follows (if this hypothesis get acceptance) that the reaction-time experiment becomes of use mainly as a method. Distinctions supposed to be established once for all by various researches must be considered as largely individual results, inasmuch as the authors have not reported on the type of the reagent. But for that very reason these results may have great value, as themselves indicating in each case this very thing, the type of one single reagent, and in so far some of the general characteristics of that type. What we now desiderate in a great many departments, as, for example, in the treatment of school children, and in the diagnosis of complex mental troubles, is just some method of discovering the type of the individual in hand. If reactions vary in certain great ways, according to the types which they illustrate, then in reaction experimentation we have a great objective method of study. But before the method can be called in any way complete, there should be a detailed re-investigation of the whole question, with a view to the great distinctions of mental type already made out by the pathologists.