CODE SESSION PROVES COLLEGE MEN'S ABILITIES

For two hours ever day, passers-by in Boylston Hall are apt to hear an enormous quantity of dots and-dashes streaming out of a room on the top floor. What they hear isn't the last remnants of a frustrated Pall-Mail advertisement, but rather the results of an interesting and constructive project being carried out by the Psychology Department.

Working on thirty undergraduate guinea pigs, the Psychology Department is conducting a series of experiments trying to determine who can learn the International Morse code, and who can't; under what conditions it's learned best; and whether or not success or failure can be predicated in advance. The thirty guinea pigs are more than willing subjects, for during the ten-week course they'll all attain speeds of close to thirteen words a minute in receiving code, enough to win them their amateur Radio Operators' license.

Headed by Donald M. Taylor, teaching fellow in the Psychology Department, the course now under way is the second of its kind to be given during the past few months. The first one, conducted for twelve weeks during Summer Session, yielded some interesting results which Taylor hopes to expand in the present course. It showed, first of all, that Harvard students' ability to learn the code far exceeds the average expected by the Army and Navy. The latter puts forth 130 hours of practice as the amount of time required to reach a receiving speed of 13 words a minute; over half of the Summer Class reached that speed in less than 45 hours of practice.

One of Taylor's prime objectives in giving the course is to make up an accurate test to determine in advance how successful a man will be in learning the code.