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Contents
- Introduction
- Experimental
- Experiment I: The Effect of Interfering Color Stimuli Upon Reading Names of Colors Serially
- Materials
- Subjects and Procedure
- Results
- Experiment 2: The Effect of Interfering Word Stimuli Upon Naming Colors Serially
- Materials
- Subjects and Procedure
- Results
- Experiment 3: The Effects of Practice Upon Interference
- Materials
- Subjects and Procedure
- Results
- The Effect of Practice on the NCWd Test Upon Itself
- The Effect of Practice on the NCWd Test upon the NC Test
- The Effect in the RCNd Test of Practice on the NCWd and NC Tests
- Summary
- Appendix A
Figures and Tables
Introduction
Interference or inhibition (the terms seem to have been used almost indiscriminately) has been given a large place in experimental literature. The investigation was begun by the physiologists prior to 1890 (Bowditch and Warren, J. W., 1890) and has been continued to the present, principally by psychologists (Lester, 1932). Of the numerous studies that have been published during this period only a limited number of the most relevant reports demand our attention here.
Münsterberg (1892) studied the inhibiting effects of changes in common daily habits such as opening the door of his room, dipping his pen in ink, and taking his watch out of his pocket. He concluded that a given association can function automatically even though some effect of a previous contrary association remains.
Müller and Schumann (1894) discovered that more time was necessary to relearn a series of nonsense syllables if the stimulus syllables had been associated with other syllables in the meantime. From their results they deduced the law of associative inhibition which is quoted by Kline (1921, p. 270) as follows: “If a is already connected with b, then it is difficult to connect it with k, b gets in the way.” Nonsense syllables were also used by Shepard and Fogelsonger (1913) in a series of experiments in association and inhibition. Only three subjects were used in any experiment and the changes introduced to produce the inhibition were so great in many cases as to present novel situations. This latter fact was shown by the introspections. The...