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EYE AND EAR-MINDEDNESS. 79 
sentatives are here can make the people understand how deep a matter we 
rave In hand, how far into the life of their children and of all the after 
world this work tends, perhaps, then, from many quarters money will flow 
in to make possible, under the best scientific direction. a national bureau 
‘or child-study. 
Suppose such a bureau established, under the direction of our one 
greatest master, manned by a corps of experts in anthropology, in child- 
liseases, in the various departments of experimental psychology, in the 
mathematical treatment of results, and the like. Suppose then, under the 
direction of these, a little Gideon’s army of trained agents working every- 
where in schools, high and low, in the country and in the city slums. 
Suppose, finally, that an innumerable army of teachers and mothers were 
working as they were able under this direction. Whatever sane prediction 
we should make to-day of the outcome of such an enterprise for psychol- 
ogy and all the sciences and arts dependent upon it, would in a few years 
be surpassed. 
EYE AND EAR MINDEDNESS. 
REPORT OF TESTS MADE BY PROF. W. L. BRYAN, UNIVERSITY OF 
INDIANA. BLOOMINGTON, IND. 
Tre experiments of which I shall make a brief and partial report were directed mainly 
sowards the question of eye and ear mindedness. These tests were made by myself and 
wife, with the advice of President Hall and Dr. Burnham, of Clark University. Ex- 
periments were made in discrimination of shades of gray, and memory for shades of 
gray ; and in like manner discrimination in memory for length of lines ; discrimination 
in memory for pitch ; discrimination in memory for rates in metronome ticks ; then a 
series of tests in memory span, for figures seen and heard ; and then a series of tests, 
the general idea of which was suggested by Dr. Burnham, whose purpose was to deter- 
mine, if possible, whether associations are stronger between sensations of the same 
modality or sounds of different modality. There were forty-one tests in all, made upon 
each of about six hundred children. 
One thing that came out clearly by these tests was the very great individual variation. 
{n matters which seemed to be comparatively simple and to involve comparatively simple 
nental phenomena, the individual variation was so great that it is impossible to deter- 
mine whether there is a degree’s growth from the lower to the highest course. It is 
almost impossible, for instance, to determine whether the child of the ninth grade can 
discriminate shades of color better than the child of the fifth grade ; or whether children 
can determine pitch of tone better in the ninth grade than in the fifth grade. This 
simply points out the necessity for far wider investi gation, and gives a point for the plea 
which I make for further investigation. One thing is certain, that the advance, that the 
gross advances have been made when the child is still very young. The curve is upward 
and nearly straight. It may be that in many of these functions the rapid part of the 
curve has come before the child entered school at all, 
This suggests what seems to me to be one of the most important lines for investigation. 
We need to note in respect to this, and to that, and the other function which it is desir- 
able to cultivate, whether the period of rapid development has occurred already before