A SPIRAL PROCESS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 123, 26 May 1928, Page 20

A SPIRAL PROCESS

LOST PEOPLE WALK IN CIRCLES. W,hen a blindfolded person walks in what he,thinks is a straight line, he is actually going in a more or less regular clock-spring spiral, Dr. A. A.Schaeffer, of the University of Kansas, reported recently in describing new experiments before zoologists of the- American Association, for the Advancement of Science, says the Washington "Daily Science News Bulletin." ■ Dr. Schaeflier made over 300 experiments with blindfolded persons on the open prairie of Kansas and Colorado, on the ice of a reservoir in Massachusetts, on a race track in Tennessee, and in a 160-acre field. The subjects walked, swam, rowed, and drove automobiles blindfolded, and in each caso they steered essentially the same kind of a curving path; ' Usually they started out with a straight stretch, and then began to turn in circles, and theso circles usually became smaller in diameter. A twenty-four-ycar-olil mental imbecile, with the mind of a four-year-old child, was tested, and the path he took was like that of a normal person, indicating that intellect does not play any large part in directing the spiralling mechanism. No connection between right and' loft-handeduess' and the direction taken by tho spiral turns could be found. There- is no doubt' that the same mechanism that produces these experimental spirals, when blindfolded, also makes one go in circles when lost,, the zoologist stated. To bo lost means that the orienting senses are not functioning. The spiralling mechanism appears to be located in the central nervous sygtem, and to operate when the mechanism that controls balance and orientation is not in normal control.