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These publications are Nos. 1 and 2 of Volume 1 of a series organized in the various departments of the Catholic University of America, are edited by Edward A. Pace, the Professor of Psychology, with several collaborators for the purpose of embodying the results of research in psychology and psychiatry, and to publish “original research on individual topics, monographs of particular subjects and critical reviews of the literature on special problems,” such studies to be published at irregular intervals.
The monograph dealing with the “Psychology of Reasoning” includes a preliminary historical survey of philosophical and nonempirical theories, a review of the experimental work on judgment and inference according to the German school of Wurzburg, of Hollingworth, of Binet and Lindwursky and finally a short but comprehensive review of the theories of logicians including among several others, Jevons, Mill, Schiller, Spencer, and Wundt.
Part II presents the experimental work which consists of the studies on mental experiences during the acts of reasoning in the solution of various problems. The problems selected for this experiment consisted of actual legal cases which have on various occasions come before a judge and jury, the case being presented to the subject for solution and afterwards his results compared with the opinion of the judge in the case. The results of this investigation revealed many interesting points in the behavior of the reasoning processes and in many instances showed definitely the activities of unconscious as well as conscious mechanisms, and finally seemed to prove that much of the insight gained is of the nature of an intellectual nonsensory experience. The rǒles and relations of major and minor premises were also brought out in considerable detail. The bibliography should be of help to those who are interested in the subject and also will aid those contemplating similar research problems.