Abstract

Presents an article by Troland, originally published privately in 1917. He cites the theory, generally held by psychologists in his time, that all human and animal behavior, however complex, could be explained in terms of a purely mechanical process involving the stimulation of a sense organ, transmittal of the stimulus to the brain, its processing there, and transmittal of excitation from the brain to the responding muscle or gland. Psychologists saw this process as continuous; psychical researchers would believe (as Troland expresses it) that gaps or breaks could occur in the response process and that psychical phenomena involved such discontinuities. The problem of psychical research was not to interpret such gaps by discovering what caused them, but to establish their existence as physical facts by rigorous experiment. The instrument Troland designed for this purpose (the first of its kind, so far as is known) was used in a "split reaction experiment" (in which Gardner Murphy participated) at Harvard University in 1916-1917. The construction of the apparatus, its operation, and the experimental procedures, are described in detail. Results of 600 trials indicated the existence of "negative telepathy," which Troland recognized as significant. He describes his technique as intended (a) to ensure accurate determination and reproducibility of experimental conditions, (b) to eliminate the personal equation of the researcher, and (c) to make the data amenable to mathematical treatment.