Smith Zimmermann Heritage Museum

The Human Nature Club

The Human Nature Club on of the home-study textbooks titled Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.   This textbook says The Human Nature Club is 'an introduction to the study of mental life.'  Published by the Chautauqua Press in 1900, the text attempts to explain that the brain does and how it works.  The following activity was taken from the 1900 edition of the The Human Nature Club.

Suppose, for example, you each day do ten examples in addition of this length.

94935
88789
67598
45678
98746
94937
89789
68598
56786
88986

After a while you will be able to add and talk at the same time.  You will also increase in speed, and find it after a while no effort.  In carrying on such and experiment, you should make out on cards about fifty examples.  When you add, lay the card on a piece of paper, and put your result beneath it, thus:

94935
88789
67598
45678
98746
94937
89789
68598
56786
88986
794845

You can then use that same card again and again on later days, and save the work of making out new examples.  You will need fifty or more cards, however, so as not to have the same example reappear often enough to be remembered.

On each day, or every second or third, record (1) the time it takes you to do four examples; (2) the number of mistakes made in these four, if any; (3) your ability to work while some one is talking to you, and (4) your ability to work and talk at the same time.  Two examples may be done under each of these conditions.  See how far these records show the formation of the habit.

Date
Time taken to do four problems.
Mistakes in four problems.
Time for two when disturbed.
Time for two while repeating poetry or singing.

 

         
         
         
         
         

You can write the correct answer on the back of each card, or you can number the cards and make out a key with the right answer for each number.  There will be hardly any labor in comparing the answer you obtain with that on the card or in the key and noticing how many figures, if any, are wrong.

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