Volume 1
A text-book of experimental psychology : with laboratory exercises / by Charles S. Myers.
- Charles Samuel Myers
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A text-book of experimental psychology : with laboratory exercises / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.
51/370 page 31
![indirectly communicate. But it is chiefly due to the inertia of the apparatus of the middle ear, which has to be overcome in order that the resting ossicles may execute their proper vibrations. Persons whose ossicles vibrate with difficulty owing to disease (whose auditory acuity is therefore sub¬ normal) may not be able to hear a loudly sounding tuning- fork until it has been held for several seconds before the ear. Such subjects can often hear distinctly better when they travel, or when they are in a room where noisy conversation is being carried on. Apparently the rattle of the carriage or the general buzz of voices stirs their ossicles into movement, so that the latter become more sensitive to auditory stimuli.] [.Auditory After-sensations.—Not only is there a latent period between the application of the stimulus and the de¬ velopment of the auditory sensation; there is also a period during which the sensation persists after the withdrawal of the stimulus. This, again, is in part due to the persistence of peripheral and central nervous processes ; but it also arises from the after-vibrations of the ossicles of the middle ear. Unfortunately the attempts hitherto made to determine the duration of these ‘ after-sensations ’ are of too unsatisfactory a character to be given in full detail here. The usual pro¬ cedure in such experiments has been to interrupt a given tone stimulus, or to alternate two different tone stimuli, so rapidly that a continuous (or an interrupted) experience is just produced. The varying results are partly attributable to different experimental methods. But the chief and most obvious objection to such experiments lies in the fact that the determination of any given after-sensation is complicated by the time occupied in the development of the following sensation. The course of each auditory sensation must be regarded as a curve, slowly reaching its maximum after the stimulus is first presented, and declining gradually after the stimulus has been withdrawn. When two such curves rapidly follow so as partially to overlap one another, it is clearly hopeless to endeavour to determine the duration of one com¬ ponent of one curve, if the duration of other components of the other be quite unknown.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3135984x_0001_0051.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
