Study of Association in Insanity | Page 2

grammatical form of the stimulus word, the reaction is left unrecorded, and the stimulus word is repeated at the close of the test.
In this investigation no account is taken of the reaction time. The reasons for this will be explained later.
The general plan has been first to apply the test to normal persons, so as to derive empirically a normal standard and to determine, if possible, the nature and limits of normal variation; and then to apply it to cases of various forms of insanity and to compare the results with the normal standard, with a view to determining the nature of pathological variation.

�� 2. THE NORMAL STANDARD.
In order to establish a standard which should fairly represent at least all the common types of association and which should show the extent of such variation as might be due to differences in sex, temperament, education, and environment, we have applied the test to over one thousand normal subjects.
Among these subjects were persons of both sexes and of ages ranging from eight years to over eighty years, persons following different occupations, possessing various degrees of mental capacity and education, and living in widely separated localities. Many were from Ireland, and some of these had but recently arrived in this country; others were from different parts of Europe, but all were able to speak English with at least fair fluency. Over two hundred of the subjects, including a few university professors and other highly practiced observers, were professional men and women or college students. About five hundred were employed in one or another of the New York State hospitals for the insane, either as nurses and attendants or as workers at various trades; the majority of these were persons of common school education, but the group includes also, on the one hand, a considerable number of high school graduates; and on the other hand, a few laborers who were almost or wholly illiterate. Nearly one hundred and fifty of the subjects were boys and girls of high school age, pupils of the Ethical Culture School, New York City. The remaining subjects form a miscellaneous group, consisting largely of clerks and farmers.

�� 3. THE FREQUENCY TABLES.
From the records obtained from these normal subjects, including in all 100,000 reactions, we have compiled a series of tables, one for each stimulus word, showing all the different reactions given by one thousand subjects in response to that stimulus word, and the frequency with which each reaction has occurred. [1] These tables will be found at the end of this paper.
[Footnote 1: A similar method of treating associations has been used by Cattell (Mind, Vol. XII, p. 68; Vol. XIV, p. 230), and more recently by Reinhold (Zeitschr. f. Psychol., Vol. LIV, p. 183), but for other purposes.]
With the exception of a few distinctive proper names, which are indicated by initials, we have followed the plan of introducing each word into the table exactly as it was found in the record. In the arrangement of the words in each table, we have placed together all the derivatives of a single root, regardless of the strict alphabetical order.[1]
[Footnote 1: It should be mentioned that we have discovered a few errors in these tables. Some of these were made in compiling them from the records, and were evidently due to the assistant's difficulty of reading a strange handwriting. Other errors have been found in the records themselves. Each of the stimulus words butter, tobacco and king appears from the tables to have been repeated by a subject as a reaction; such a reaction, had it occurred, would not have been accepted, and it is plain that the experimenter wrote the stimulus word in the space where the reaction word should have been written. Still other errors were due to the experimenter's failure to speak with sufficient distinctness when reading off the stimulus words; thus, the reaction barks in response to dark indicates that the stimulus word was probably understood as _dog_; and the reactions blue and color in response to bread indicate that the stimulus word was understood as red.]
The total number of different words elicited in response to any stimulus word is limited, varying from two hundred and eighty words in response to anger to seventy-two words in response to needle. Furthermore, for the great majority of subjects the limits are still narrower; to take a striking instance, in response to dark eight hundred subjects gave one or another of the following seven words: _light, night, black, color, room, bright, gloomy;_ while only two hundred gave reactions other than these words; and only seventy subjects, out of the total number of one thousand, gave reactions which were not given by any other subject.
If any record obtained by this method be examined by referring to the frequency tables, the reactions