A Machine That Lays Bare All Secrets.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 11, 17 March 1909, Page 41

A Machine That Lays Bare All Secrets.

XPOSING UNTRUTHS. An instrument has just been perfected for probing and,' what is worse, laying bare the secrets of the soul. In touch with it you cannot tell a lie without detection. No matter how candid your air, how fearless your eye, how controlled your voice, the instrument will expose you. It will break through your flimsy barriers and reach down to the secret emotions behind, dragging them forth from their lair, recording them on a screen, and measuring them with mathematical accuracy. It is thus a gauge of truth, an automatic register of your innermost feelings. Every suggestion by which you are assailed, every wave of sensation that passes through you, the instrument will reveal and publish. By means of it the doctor will know whether his patient is telling the truth, the judge will have an exact index to the veracity of a witness, and the polios will be admitted into the hidden consciousness of the criminal.

The inventors of this instrument, the electric psychometer, are Dr. Jung, of the University of Zurich, one of the foremost psychologists of Europe, and Dr. Frederick Peterson, of New York, the founder of the famous Craig Colony for Epileptics, ex-president of the New York Neurological Society, ex-president of the New York State I .unacy Commission, exchief of clinic in the department for nervous diseases at Columbia University, the present Professor of Psychiatry in the same institution, a practising physician of the most distinguished skill and repute. HOW THE MACHINE WORKS. The electric psychometer is a galvanometer plus an apparatus for measuring and recording the fluctuations produced in the human organism by the emotions. The subject to be experimented on rests one hand on a zine and another on a carbon plate. An electric current is thus established, and by means of a lamp and mirror a beam of light is projected upon a glass scale or upon a measured screen, a beam that will move in sympathy with every emotional tremor. Dr. Peterson has recently been demonstrating in New York the effectiveness of'the invention he has helped to perfect. His method of examining subjects by the psychometer is that of word association. The moment the experimenter pronounces a word the subject is expected to respond with the first word that occurs to him. “Thus if the experimenter says “black” the’ subject might answer “white” or ‘hat” or any other word with which “black” has mental association for him. But a number of significant wands, words calculated to touch some emotion, are scattered through a list of indifferent words. EXPERIMENTS ON A THIEF. For instance, if the subject had recently stolen a watch, and the word ‘watch” was suddenly pronounced among a dozen non significant words he was responding to, the result in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred would be an emotional complex that would register Itself on the psychometer and cause the beam of light to dart forward. Psychologists have obtained extraordinary results merely from counting the time that elapses between the word spoken by the experimenter and the response of the subject. With the psychometer their deductions are checked, corroborated, and, as it were, visualised. Having obtained an association response to each word in his list, the experimenter goes through it again, asking the subject to repeat the same answers that he gave before. If he fails to do so au emotional complex is again disclosed. The first subject on whom Dr. Peterson experimented was a young criminal from a house of refuge, who volunteered for the ordeal on the assurance that nothing revealed would be used against him. He had been on parole for several months, and the points to be ascertained were whether ho had broken his parole by leaving New York, whether he had been arrested and released on bail under an assumed name, and whether he had been concerned in Stealing some shirt-

waists from one firm, a lot of rugs from another, and some jew Mlery from a third. The superintendent of the house of refuge told Dr. Peterson that the only hope of rescuing the boy from a life of er,me lav in his affection for his mother. The superintendent was the first to itake him in hand, “Have you te n under arrest sinee March 6?” “No. sir”—and the beam of light moved six inches. “Have you been under bail?” and “Are you now under bail’” were answered in the negative, and the beam remained stationary. “Have you been out of the city?” though answered with a ‘-No,” sent the beam forward another six inches. “Have you been in Philadelphia?” “In Boston?” “In Providence?” “In Buffalo?” “In Washington?'’ “In any other city?” The answer in each case w -’"No”; but the beam did not move at the word “Boston,” while at the word.; • Philadelphia” and "Providence - ’ it was deflected four inches, at "Buffalo” two in I es. at "Washington” one and a-haii inches, at "any other city” two inches. When he was asked, “Have yo.i li.d about it?” the response was m the negative, but the beam slid twelve imhe : , and another move of eight inches followed at once. THE ASSOCIATION TE. T. Then Dr. Peterson gave him the wordassociation test. To “steal" !:e answered “car,” after an interval of nine fifthseconds, the association being probably •the picking of pockets on a si eit car. and the beam moved twelve inciies. To “Boston,” after thirty i th - . omis, during which the beam trace. ,d eighteen inches, he answered "'Massac Im.- ei i “Pickpocket” brought. the re: pc me “watch” after fifteen fifth-seen: ds re itardation anj an eight-inch dell ■. t.on of the psychometer index. "Rug,” after twenty fifth-second- called forth “carpet,” and tli-e light beam moved twelve inches, sliding out again and again as the thought surged through the bi,. mind that a crime he had believed to b? undetected was known. To "shirtwaist” he replied "popular” after fifteen fifth-seconds’ retardation, and the beam was deflected first eighteen inches and then sixteen. HOW HE COMMITTED HIMSELF. The double movement was accounted for by the circumstances that the first word that came to his mind in a-soeiat : on with “shirtwaist” was the name of th • company he had robbed, the “Popular Shirtwaist Company,” and, the word having slipped from him unconsciously, hwas seized with a second internal spasm when the thought flashed upon him th it he had committed himself When Dr. Peterson put the word “mother” the psycliomet.er recorded the highest degree of emotion recorded the the entire examination, the light-beam moving twenty-six inches. In.another experiment Dr. Peterson ascertained by means of the psy< houielei which one of three men whom he had never seen before was in possession of certain information imparted to only one of the three by another person. The man with the information c.une prepared to resist- every effort to extort the secret from him. But it was to no purpose. At all the significant words propounded by Dr. Peterson the Iglitbeam moved from three to six inches; at the indifferent ones it never niov.il m re than two inches. Of the two men who were mt in the secret one only twice deflected the i'.d.w as much as three inches, and then not at the significant words; while the other onlv once produced a movement of the light-beam greater than an inch. SYDNEY BROOKS.