| Abstract: | Summary A translation is given of Baxt's pioneering paper on tachistoscopic perception (1871). Baxt showed how a stimulus can fail to be masked by a second stimulus coming after it, if a certain interval elapses between the two stimuli, an interval long enough, Baxt assumed, for the perception of the first stimulus to become conscious. Baxt showed how this interval varied with the intensity of the second stimulus, the complexity of the first stimulus, and the size of the first stimulus. It was also shown that the fainter the overall illumination, the shorter the interval could be, as would be expected from Fechner's Law.Translation and introduction by D.J. Murray, Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6 |
