e pictures and the
advertisements were chosen with reference to their being easily
understood and quickly grasped, an average time of more than seven
seconds for each of the four offerings on the page was ample, even for
the slow reader. Of course the time would not have been sufficient to
read every detail in the advertisements, but no one had any interest
in doing so, as they were instructed beforehand to keep in mind
essentially the advertised article and the firm, and in the case of
the pictures a general impression of the idea.

As soon as the twenty-four pages had been seen, every one was asked to
write down the ideas of five of the funny pictures within three
minutes. The results of this were of no consequence, as the purpose
was only to fill the interval of the three minutes in order that all
the memory pictures of the advertisements might settle down in the
mind and that all might have an equal chance If we had turned
immediately to the writing down of firms and articles, the last ones
seen would have had an undue advantage. But when the three minutes had
been filled with an effort to remember some of the funny pictures and
to write down their salient points, all the mental after-images of the
pages had faded away, and a true memory picture was to be produced. In
the presentation care was taken to have the twenty-four pages follow
in irregular order, the pages of straight advertising mixed with those
of the double content. After the three minutes every one had to write
down as many names of firms with the articles as his memory could
reproduce. The time was now unlimited. Nothing else was to be added;
the reference to the particular advertisement was entirely confined
to the firm and the object. Where they knew the firm name without the
object, or the article without the advertiser, they had to make a dash
to indicate the omission. The aim was to discover whether the
thirty-two advertisements on the mixed pages had equal chances in the
mind with the thirty-two on the straight advertisement pages. In order
to have an exact basis of comparison, we counted every name 1, and
every article 1. Thus when firm and object were correctly given it was
counted 2.

Of course there were very great individual differences. It is evident
that a person who would have remembered all the sixty-four
advertisements on this basis of calculation would have made 128
points. The maximum which was actually made was in the case of two