What Is a Tachistoscope? Historical Explorations of an Instrument

Abstract

The ArgumentThis essay addresses the historiographical question of how to study scientific instruments and the connections between them without rigidly determining the boundaries of the object under historical scrutiny beforehand. To do this, I will explore an episode in the early history of the tachistoscope — defined, among other things, as an instrument for the brief exposure of visual stimuli in experimental psychology. After looking at the tachistoscope described by physiologist Volkmann in 1859, I will turn to the gravity chronometer, constructed by Cattell at Wundt's Leipzig institute of psychology in the 1880s. Taking Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances as a methodological suggestion to travel from one member to another to find out just how members relate to one another, I will investigate part of the family to which both the tachistoscope and the gravity chronometer turn out to belong. A detailed analysis of these instruments, using both historical sources and historical accounts of psychological instruments, may demonstrate that the instrument is not a standard package that, if well applied, will simply secure good results. Each package needs to be assembled again and again; the particular package that is assembled may differ on different occasions. Thus an alternative is developed to an understanding of instruments as univocally functioning material means.

Roles of Instruments in Psychological Research.

“…See, for example, Rand B. Evans's work on Edward B. Titchener (http:// vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/essays/data/art11/index.html). , 2002Rogers, 1995;Sokal, 1987;Zenderland, 1998) and focused more closely on the ways in which apparatus and the research practices centered around them have in certain important respects constituted psychology's history (e.g., Albert & Gundlach, 1997;Benschop, 1998;Benschop & Draaisma, 2000;Danziger, 1990;Derksen, 2001;Gigerenzer, 1992). Nonetheless, the number of such studies has remained relatively small.…”

Ultrahigh temporal resolution of visual presentation using gaming monitors and G-Sync

“…These studies built upon the development of new apparatuses for presenting visual stimuli briefly and in a highly controlled fashion (for reviews, see Bauer, 2015;Benschop, 1998). More specifically, brief stimulus presentation with these apparatuses for the first time fulfilled the quality criteria of temporal accuracy and precision, which are important prerequisites of visual experiments.…”

Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin

“…Nowadays, by far, most experimenters use computer monitors to present visual stimuli to their observers. This enables a computerized and thus fully-automated presentation of visual stimuli, which is more time-efficient, more flexible, and easier to replicate compared with classic mechanically-controlled presentation methods (such as the tachistoscope which required manual stimulus creation and presentation, e.g., Benschop, 1998, or mechanically clocked slide projectors).…”