of our instinctive fear of the unknown; it shows its derivation, with what was to us an unexpected plainness, in its unpleasant nature: the observers speak of creepiness, weirdness, peculiar discomfort.
Instances of the suppression of novelty by another mood (pleasure in the completed image, charm) will be given later. It is probable that the generally unpleasant character of the mood of novelty, in the records of the present experiments, was due in part to the fact that the observers were dealing, not with a continuous imagination, but with single, detached images, and in part to the fact that these images were suggested to them by words coming in from the outside rather than by the course of their own consciousnesses: cf. Titchener, op. cit., 207.
§IV. The Image of Memory and the Image of Imagination Compared
We have now to discuss in detail the introspective differences between the image of imagination and the image of memory. The initials P and V, in the following paragraphs, refer to the observers in Experiment X (daylight images). For other observations we rely mainly upon Experiment VII (dark room images).
i. Fixation
Imagination. Both P and V noted, without instruction given, that fixation was necessary if an image was to appear at all. V could never move her image, though she could duplicate it at some other point on the wall after renewed fixation. She reported that she could see the original image in its original place, by indirect vision, while she held the new image in direct vision.[1] P thought that he could move his
Both P and V, again, found that the image nearly always image, but was in fact never able to follow it in passage, and said of his own accord that he was not sure it was not a new
image, built up after renewed fixation.[2]
- ↑ Cf. Moore: op. cit.>, 302.
- ↑ All of our observers who could obtain images of visual imagination expressed their belief, when questioned, that they could move their images at will; we have noticed an instance under Exp. II. It seems, from the experience of P and V, that such movement is more probably a shift of fixation followed by the development of a new image; but the point demands further investigation. Cf. E. B. Huey, Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 1908, 32 ff.
P found that his images invariably tilted in position when he tilted his head; with great effort of attention he could sometimes right them. The same observer, who suffered from imbalance of the ocular muscles, was at times unable, towards the end of the experimental sitting, to hold a steady fixation; his images then 'rolled around' or 'turned somersaults.'
Both observers reported that they could follow the lines (e. g., the curved lines of a coiled snake) within the image, as one can follow the lines in a stereographic perception.
