What Was the Subject of Titchner's Doctoral Thesis?

Views and Feelings

Ed Chilton

If you ever have to interview candidates for a UI position, when you get each one seated in the interview room, ask each ith a graduate degree in Cognitive Psychology this question: What was the subject of Titchner's doctoral thesis? It'll be an interesting screening test.

The formal birth of psychology as a science is commonly ascribed to the establishment in 1879 of Wundt's research laboratory. If I recall correctly, Titchner left the U.S. to study with Wundt, and came home the first American with a doctoral credential in the new discipline of Psychology. What was the subject of the first dissertation by an American psychology student?: Why is reading faster than naming? Or roughly:



      Word            Detailed sketch
01. cow             of cow, response: "cow"  
02. mushroom        et cetera       
...                               
40. book            "book"           
STOP                              

Reading time=tr    Object Naming time=tn

First to be eliminated was the physical/logistical parameters of performing the two tasks, e.g. the effect of the size of the stimuli, the comparative presentation of the stimuli and so on. The phenomenon held up across other languages. Next to be eliminated was experience with reading. The ratio tr < tn was found to hold true for young children who had just learned to read. Hmmm (stroke goatee and pace to and fro, fro and to).

I contend that 115 years after this seminal research, psychology does not have an unimpeachable answer to the question Titchner addressed. We can pontificate more about the subject, perhaps even duplicate the experiment under PET scan, but, like weather, we can talk about it but not do much about it.

One can and should ask: So what?

Well, I find myself reflecting upon the Titchner dissertation when the screen of my computer, my window on the world, gets filled with bloody icons. I want to create two lists as above and compell GUI freaks, designers and users alike, to repeat an experiment 115 years old. I feel like creating a program that takes all icons which appear upon a set screen and randomly reposition them with reference to each other, each time that that screen appears, thus obliging people to depend upon genuine recognition of the now minuscule icons.

AT&T Bell Labs was a pioneer location in the development of computer human factors. Out of it in 1982 came the landmark work Human Performance Engineering and I'm glad it and Bob Bailey were my introduction to the field.

In my opinion, the use of icons in personal computers must be taken back to the historical roots, which I believe to lie in the case that for the last one hundred years persons who happily qwerty with speed and efficiency are persons who do the bidding of others, persons who sit down to pee, persons who earn less than those who dictate what to qwerty. Among males, skilled typists are tenors while hunt and peckers are baritones. You would not catch a bass within 10 feet of a, squirm, typewriter.

To oblige men working in offices to type with minimal accuracy in order to use a desktop computer was to introduce estrogen. To the rescue of their masculinity came the point and click graphic user interface. A computer with the female name of Lisa could be made to do whatever its boss wanted. In my opinion, the origin of GUI was the market problem of getting computers onto the office desks of men. Under assault was the subconscious association of computer useage with the effeminate chore of typing. That battle has been won. Now, females with superb typing skills, who could keystroke a computer command in 500 msec - keeping their fingers poised above ASDF JKL; - are removing one hand to play a male, gross motor, hunting targeting game using a doohicky.

And the use of a labor saving device to manipulate a labor saving device has caused a world wide catastrophe, a veritable epidemic of upper extremity pain and suffering that requires absence from work, the ministrations of concerned health care professionals and the writing (writing?) of big fat cheques.

I often imagine that, looking down upon our times from some bastion of immortality are deceased telegraphers and ship's radio officers who sent morse code and who made repetitive motor hand wrist forearm actions for hours and days and weeks and months and years and decades and generations who never developed symptoms of what is now termed repetitive strain injury, carpel tunnel syndrome, or whatever. Why? Were the upper extremities of our ancestors made of sturdier stuff?

I think the proper application of icons is along highways, informing a multi-lingual public there are motels and gas available at the next exit. My attitude is reinforced by the case that, though I am sighted, I count a half dozen blind persons among my friends and acquaintances. Graphic user interfaces decrease the accessability of computers to my friends.

Ed Chilton, Toronto; echilton@cml.com.

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Vol.28 No.2, April 1996
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