Review of Ueber die psychischen Alcoholwirkung and Ueber die Beeinflussung geistiger Leistungen durch Hungern

Reviews the articles, Ueber die Dauer der psychischen Alcoholwirkung by Ernst Ruedin; and Ueber die Beeinflussung geistiger Leistungen durch Hungern by Wilhelm Weygandt. The purpose of the first paper was to examine the effect of a single dose of alcohol upon simple mental processes like choice reaction, associations, adding, and committing to memory. The most important conclusions of the paper are: (1) The effect of a large dose of alcohol upon four different persons shows great diversities in reference to direction, strength and duration. (2) The effect of alcohol consists in general in slower adding, difficulty of committing, shortening of choice time with increase of error reactions and finally in an increase of associations, especially those resting upon speech forms. The second paper is devoted to a study of the influence exercised by fasting upon mental process. The most important conclusions of the paper are: (1) The capacity for perception or apprehension is not affected by hunger. (2) The conceivable connection in associative thinking is weakened; inner associations decrease; associations based upon use in speech increase; sound associations cease. The temporal flow of association is not changed. (5) Adding is measurably slowed. (6) The work of memorizing becomes continuously and clearly slower. This disturbance affects only attention and not the rapidity of speaking. (7) Choice reactions show a slight lengthening; the number of error reactions is somewhat increased in places. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)