Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of Weber's Illusion: A Thesis
Although the occurrence of the illusion, since vveber's time, has often been verified, and although authors have not agreed as regards his explanation of it, the illusion has never received systematic study. It seems to involve not. Only differences in sensitivity of the skin, but also perception of movement on the skin, relative localization of two moving points, and estima tion of the distance between these points. We do not know whether the illusion is found on all parts of the cutaneous sur face, whether a discontinuous movement would produce it, what rate of movement is most adequate for it, etc.
It is, then, such a systematic study (with these suggestive problems before us) that we have undertaken.' We have explored the entire bodily surface for' the illusion, and we have compared our results with those of Weber. We have also undertaken a qualitative study of the various factors which condition the illusion, and a quantitative study by means of which w hoped to compare direct judgments of relative distance with the indirect judgments of the illusion. In our quantitative work we employed the method of equivalents, a method first used by Weber and Wundt, later worked out by Fechner, then improved by Camerer, and standardized as laboratory method by Titchener.3 It has recently received some criticism at the hands of Gemelli.' We have, however, adopted Titchener's form of the method, in the h0pe of obtain ing a set of results adequate to a critical examination from the methodological point of view.
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