card sort

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Hi, I'm a psychology major in queens colege and for my experimental class I'm currently writing up a lab which involved the use of a card sorting exercise. Do you know who first performed an experiment on reaction times using cards? I found the 1898 Jastrow article about construcing an apparatus, but he didn't use any references. Do you know who first showed that that the more categories to sort into- the slower the reaction time? if you could help i would greatly appreciate it. thanks

-- Joshua Haar (jdh35@aol.com), December 11, 2002

Answers

My search of PsycInfo turned up two 1894 articles by John Bergstrom (I'm not sure which of the spellings of the name is correct)--both abstracts indicate that card sorts were used:

Bergstrom, J. A. (1894). The relation of the interference to the practice effect of an association. American Journal of Psychology, 6, 433-442.

Berosrom, J. A. (1894). An experimental study of some of the conditions of mental activity. American Journal of Psychology, 6, 247-274.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), December 13, 2002.


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