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Chapter - 03

Individual Methods Of Observation

One day the students in Privy Councilor von Liszt's seminar in criminal law were startled when two students suddenly became embroiled in an argument which disrupted the sleepy quiet of the room, and rapidly developed into a violent quarrel, coming to blows. Before the horrified eyes of the students one of the two drew a revolver from his pocket and shot his opponent.

Abruptly von Liszt turned to the students and asked them to write down an account of the incident. The encounter, of course, had been prearranged by von Liszt and played in accordance with his instructions. Aside from the two participants, none of those present was aware that the scene was not spontaneous.

In spite of the fact that the whole incident had occurred before the very eyes of young men startled into keen attention, almost all of the accounts of the scene were incomplete or incorrect.

What von Liszt wanted to prove through this experiment, and did prove, was the fact that most people have remarkably poor powers of observation. He had a second purpose in mind, as well, which was to point out that it is necessary to take extraordinary care in describing actual occurrences. Day after day witnesses on oath testify to events which they have seen at first hand, describing them according to their best knowledge; and times without number this testimony is false, because it rested on powers of observation which proved themselves, on cross-examination, to be unreliable.

Many judges who are not well-versed in psychology often overlook this point and are inclined to base their verdicts on such testimony, especially when it is given under oath. It seldom happens that the faulty powers of observation in a witness are proved in the courtroom itself. But here is a case in point:

In several countries, for instance in France, it is possible to appeal the decision and carry a criminal case through the courts a second time with the same witnesses, etc., repeating the procedure of the first trial before a different judge. In a criminal case of this sort, which was tried in the Court of Appeals, therefore for the second time, I was acting as counsel for the defense. The witness for the prosecution, on whose testimony the verdict was largely based in the first trial, had, according to her own assertions, caught but a hasty glimpse of the defendant at the scene of the crime, but she insisted emphatically that she could identify him. The accused categorically declared his innocence. The judge was inclined, like his predecessor in the first trial, to believe her sworn testimony.

When I asked her if her memory for faces was always so reliable that she could unfailingly depend upon it, she unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Now this witness had been the last to be interrogated in the second trial as well as in the first. Consequently the other witnesses in the case were already in the courtroom. But for several reasons, inconsequential to the present discussion, certain witnesses had been called in the second trial who had not been present at the first.

Immediately after the eye-witness in question had extolled her good memory for faces, I called on her to look at the witnesses in the room and, relying on her allegedly good memory, to tell which persons she had seen at the first trial and which she had not seen there. The answer to my challenge was so calamitously wrong that even the prosecuting attorney could no longer deny the possibility of error on the part of the witness in recognizing the defendant. The case was dismissed, due to the fact that we had demonstrated the faulty powers of observation of a witness before the court, although this witness had so highly praised her good powers of observation. This incident will suffice as proof of man's weak apperceptive ability and his poor powers of observation.

Aristotle, one of the wisest men who ever lived, asserted that the common house fly has four legs! This in itself would not be of much importance, but the statement was repeated in textbook after textbook up to the middle of the last century, in spite of the fact that it is really not difficult to see and prove that the common house fly has six legs.

But it is not enough merely to confirm the fact that powers of observation are faulty. It is more to the point to find ways and means of correcting them. In order to do this, we must recognize the importance of the five senses. On them depend our powers of perception. Our memories can retain only those impressions which have been made on our minds through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste or feeling. Of these five senses, sight and hearing play immeasurably greater roles than the other three.

The difference between the various brands of cigarettes or vintages of wine lies solely in taste. If we did not retain a memory of their special flavors, it would be impossible for us to make a distinction between the various brands, and the cigarette manufacturers as well as the wine dealers might as well stop advertising specific brands.

It is sight and hearing, however, which play the most important part in daily life. Let us look at these two senses for a moment in order to determine which of the two is the more important.

No doubt you have personal acquaintances who, years after they have left school, can still remember exactly where in their schoolbooks a certain passage is located. By that I mean that they can distinctly remember that the Battle of Lexington is at the bottom of a left-hand page, while the Fall of Rome is about in the middle of a right-hand page. These same people usually remember very little of the lectures they attended unless they took down copious notes. When studying a foreign language they do not learn much from hearing the words spoken; they need to write down the words themselves or at least to see them written or printed. These people depend upon eye impressions. They are the visual, or eye-minded type.

In contradistinction to them are those people who retain the gist of a lecture they have heard far better than the substance of a book they have read. Years later they can recall the very words used by their teacher or professor on a given topic, long after the impression of the printed page has vanished. When these people call absent friends or acquaintances to mind, it is the timbre of their voices rather than their outward appearance that they clearly and reliably recall. We call these people, whose memory is based on hearing, the acoustical, or ear-minded type.

Great musicians obviously belong to this type, while great painters, of course, belong to the eye-minded type.

Modern psychology recognizes a third type besides these two basic types—the motor-minded. But it is sufficient for our purposes to restate the fact that schools and colleges have failed in training both of the basic types. If we were logical and sensible we would classify all high-school pupils, or at least all college students, according to their types of memory, and urge them to plan their courses of study accordingly.

Of what value is a true knowledge of and differentiation between the eye-minded and the ear-minded types? The answer is: The acutely ear-minded student cannot do better than choose lecture courses, since what he hears makes the deepest impression on his memory. Furthermore, he should not take too many notes but confine himself to cue words. Attending lectures is without doubt more beneficial for him, as well as more time-saving, than studying from a book. The opposite, of course, holds true for the eye-minded. By reading, he can master his lessons in a fraction of the time that his attendance at lectures would consume. These are elementary matters that would result in a great reduction of time for the entire course of study, and up to now far too little attention has been paid to them.

To what type do you belong? It must be understood that no one is 100 per cent ear-minded or 100 per cent eye-minded. Nevertheless, either one or the other type of memory is sufficiently predominant in the individual to classify him definitely.

If, after reading the foregoing paragraphs, you are undecided about the type to which you belong, or you wish to classify your friends or children, try the following test:

Write down ten different words and then read them aloud to the person you are testing. He is to write down a different word suggested by each word you dictate. He should not make any special effort but should merely write down the first word that comes into his head after hearing your word dictated.

Now take his list of words and compare them with your list, which you read aloud to him. You will find that the eye-minded person has written down words that resemble yours visually, while the ear-minded person has written down words that have a tonal relationship with yours.

For instance, if you have read "wall," the eye-minded person writes down such words as picture, room, curtain, door, etc. But the ear-minded person writes ball, call, mall, or the like.

If you have read "sun/' the eye-minded individual writes heavens, moon, stars, light, etc.; the ear-minded, run, fun, ton, etc.

Naturally, in a book on memory training it is not sufficient merely to determine the type to which we belong; it is essential to attempt at once to effect an improvement. As a matter of fact, all the senses of man can be developed with relatively little effort. You will discover this for yourself in regard to the powers of observation, if you will practise the exercises which I have arranged for you. But remember that you must practise these exercises faithfully and not merely read about them.

Exercises In Sight Training

I. Take from 6 to 10 sheets of paper of the same size. On the first sheet draw 6 parallel, perpendicular lines of equal length. On the second sheet draw 7; on the third 8, etc., always adding one line to the new sheet. Be sure, however, to keep the same amount of margins between the first and last lines and the edges of the paper on each sheet, so that the total area of parallel lines takes up the same amount of space, regardless of their number. Then shuffle the sheets in a heap and take out one sheet after the other at random. At a glance tell how many lines are on each sheet. The errors that always are made in the beginning soon disappear with practice. But the point of the experiment is to do this exercise as quickly as possible and to recognize the number at a swift glance at the sheet.

2. After you have practised this exercise for a time you can extend it to the point where you can tell at a glance the number of windows in a house you have passed on your walk; or correctly estimate, at sight, the number of books in a strange library; or decide the size of an audience at a lecture by a quick survey of the hall. Of course, it is always necessary to choose only such experiments as can be checked for accuracy; for instance, the library of an acquaintance who knows exactly how many books he has, or who would willingly count them to prove your estimate.

3. Another exercise for training the eye, which, however, calls for considerably more effort, is the following: Hunt up a store window that has a good many items on display (not furniture, for the window would have room for only a few pieces). A window that has price tags on the articles is preferable. Look at the window display closely and carefully and take special note of any singularities. Then leave the window and find a quiet spot in the neighborhood and write down everything you saw in the window, sketching it if you can. If the individual articles had price tags on them, you should include them. Return to the window with your sheet of paper and compare what you have written with the actual articles, but do not correct what you have written during this comparison before the display. Rather, impress your errors on your mind and then make your corrections on your sheet in the spot you originally found at a distance from the window. Then go back and compare your list with the window again and, if necessary, correct it again as before. Do not be content until your list is correct in every detail.

Test yourself frequently in this way, with many different window displays, and you will soon have the satisfaction of finding that your mistakes in memory grow fewer and of less importance.

If you find it too difficult at first to remember the contents of a window display, start with attempting to remember in detail the furnishings of a room.

There is a still simpler form of this exercise—a game which is excellent for developing quick powers of observation in children. Take ten or twelve small objects, such as a watch, pencil, purse, eraser, etc. Place these articles on a table and let the children look at them for a short while. Promise a small prize to the child who can tell or write down the largest number of objects he has viewed. Such a game spurs the children to competition, since they are naturally competitive, and try to surpass one another in order to win the prize. At the same time their powers of observation are being stimulated. But be sure to gauge the number and complexity of articles with respect to the age of the children.

4. The following experiment is useful in training yourself to quick observation: Draw a square enclosing 25 smaller squares, like a chessboard. In each square put down the numbers 1 to 25, or letters of the alphabet—but arrange them haphazardly, not in sequence. Do not look at this chessboard for a day or two. Then sit down to it again and number or letter the squares in their proper order. This exercise in itself presents no difficulties; it is a question of ease and celerity. Therefore it is important for you to keep score of how many seconds it has taken you the first, second, third and succeeding times you have tried it. You can make the experiment more complex by numbering the chess squares with multiple digits or with two letters of the alphabet, or with a capital and a lower-case letter. Although such divergence in letters does not change them, it makes the game more difficult because it confuses the eye of the player.

Exercises In Hearing

1. Seated at home or in your office, countless small noises reach your ears. Some of them are house noises heard through the walls or ceiling; others, street noises. Try to distinguish between these various sounds and be sure of what you heard in each instance. You must, of course, pay attention to details. It is not enough to know that you heard footsteps outside your door. From the sound and manner of the tread try to determine whose step it was.

2. Now go out on the street. The sounds which the ear catches are more numerous, more irregular; and above all, less familiar. As many sounds are heard at the same time it is not easy for the beginner to differentiate between them.

But even here repeated practice will bring quick results. While it is wise, in the beginning, to choose unfrequented streets for this exercise, after a little while you will be able to go into busier thoroughfares, then to work your way into the center of town and into the thick of noises.

A similar exercise may be practised in the country, in the woods or fields. Here, too, there are constant small noises, the only difference being that here they are made by birds and small animals, instead of by automobiles, street cars and other noisy vehicles. The small sounds heard in the open are familiar to the man who lives in the country, but the city man will have to orient himself a bit at the zoo or an aviary before he can tell one sound from another.
For this reason, however, it is wise for the city man and farmer alike not to confine their exercises to their own communities. Try to alternate between city and country so that you will be able to distinguish between these completely different kinds of noise.

Practice these exercises in eye and ear training faithfully for a while and you will notice a great improvement in your powers of observation. Things you previously overlooked or forgot you will observe clearly and remember.

Here is a rather amusing problem, the solution of which rests entirely on close attention to wording. Try to solve it for yourself before you read the correct solution. Later you may wish to try it on your friends:

Two volumes of a book are standing in correct order next to each other on a library shelf. Each volume is 3 inches thick, including front and back cover, which are each 1/8 inch thick. A bookworm eats its way from Page 1, Volume

I, to the last page of Volume II. How far has it traveled? I have often used this problem in my classes and invariably get the answer 5 3/4 inches. This of course is wrong. To solve it correctly, you must visualize the two volumes. They are standing in their correct order on the shelf. If you cannot visualize them, go to a bookcase and look at any two-volume book. You will see at once that Page 1 of Volume I and the last page of Volume II are on the inside; that is, the two pages are separated only by the front cover of Volume I and the back cover of Volume

II. The correct answer, therefore, is 1/8 inch plus 1/8 inch, or 1/4 inch.  If you put this question, simple as it is, to a circle of friends, you will find out how few people can visualize the simplest matter, for instance the relative positions of the two volumes of a book.

Many leaders of industry are convinced that efficiency in their employees is often determined by their powers of observation. A furniture manufacturer who attended my lectures told me one day that it was his practice to give all applicants for positions tests in observation and perception. After asking the usual questions about training, experience and references, he tried the applicants out in some actual situation. For instance, if a load of lumber had just been delivered in the yard, he sent the applicant down to find out about it and report on it. If the latter returned with no further information than that the lumber was being delivered, he was considered unsuited to the job and sent away. The report which the applicant was expected to make ran somewhat as follows:

The shipment which is being unloaded is walnut from the Blank Company in C—, for which you placed an order. It is exceptionally fine wood. About two thirds of the shipment is unloaded and it will take an hour more to complete the job. The yard foreman is supervising the unloading. He gave orders to store the wood in Warehouse 3.

A report of this sort is comprehensive. It shows that the applicant was a close observer, and was resourceful in asking pertinent questions about points which did not come under his own observation.

This manufacturer declared emphatically—and I affirm it from personal experience—that a man's powers of observation are almost always indicative of his producing capacities.

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