Tsuruko Haraguchi

Haraguchi entered the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1907 to complete a doctorate in psychology.[1] She focused on experimental psychology and pedagogy, and was taught by Edward Thorndike, Robert S. Woodworth and James McKeen Cattell.[3] Her doctoral thesis, titled "Mental Fatigue", was completed under Thorndike's supervision.[1][2] Her research on fatigue explored topics such as the influence of mental work on physiological processes and on the changes in mental efficiency. The dissertation was compiled of four studies, three of which she was the only subject.[4]

In Experiment 1, she mentally multiplied four-digit numbers for up to eleven hours straight for several days, only pausing to record how long each problem took to complete and to eat.[4] Before and after the multiplication test, Haraguchi also made a test for transferred fatigue, in which she translated German words into their English equivalents. She recorded how long it took her to correctly recall the translation. In Experiment 2, she repeated the procedure in Experiment 1, but also recorded her pulse, her state of feeling and health. This experiment lasted 78 days. In Experiment 3, Haraguchi translated sentences from John Dewey's writing into Japanese, and recorded the time taken to translate each page. She also measured the temperature under her tongue. Experiment 4 was the only experiment to have multiple subjects. Her 26 subjects carried out numerous tasks, consisting of: memorising nonsense monosyllables; adding columns of one-digit numbers; association work; and mental multiplication. Their pulse was measured after each test.

Haraguchi’s results indicated a relationship between fatigue, efficiency and transferred fatigue.[4] She found that mental fatigue could be transferred from task to task, and found a positive correlation between fatigue and transferred fatigue. She also found that efficiency increases after continuous work, illustrating the effect of practice. After five years of research, Haraguchi earned her doctorate on 5 June 1912, becoming the first Japanese woman to attain a PhD in any field.[1][2] She was married that same day.[1]

Haraguchi returned to Japan, where she expanded her doctoral thesis and translated it into Japanese. It was published under the title Studies on Mental Work and Fatigue in 1914.[2] She lectured at Japan Women's University occasionally and was involved in the establishment of an experimental psychology laboratory at the university.[1][3]

She also wrote a memoir, Tanoshiki omohide, "Pleasant memoirs", in 1915, in which she drew from her experiences studying at Columbia University to advocate for women's education and value.[5]