Basic Biographical Information
Born: August 22, 1893; Died: March 4, 1977.
Miles Tinker got a late start on an academic career after service during World War I. Ultimately he became associated with the University of Minnesota and had a nearly 50-year career there.
Major Accomplishments/Contributions
His work was uniformly experimental and quantitative: One of his earliest studies involved variations in hand-drawing regression lines (Tinker 1923). At Stanford for the Ph.D., where his mentors were Terman and Miles, Walter R., he continued his interests in mathematics and measurement. His doctoral work (Tinker 1927) was a comprehensive study of the legibility of mathematical formulae utilizing Miles’ modifications of Dodge’s tachistoscopic apparatus. Tinker published several articles on this work (e.g., Tinker 1926; Tinker 1928) and, after joining the faculty at Minnesota, he dedicated much of his career to working out the details of legibility. He continued to develop modifications of...
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Foster, W. S., & Tinker, M. A. (1929). Experiments in Psychology (Revised Edition). New York: Holt.
Paterson, D. G., & Tinker, M. A. (1940). How to make type readable: A manual for typographers, printers, and advertisers. New York: Harper and Bros.
Saenger, P. H. (1997). Space between words: The origins of silent reading. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Tinker, M. A. (1923). A preliminary study of the psychology of mathematical adjustment. The American Journal of Psychology, 34, 112–117.
Tinker, M. A. (1926). Reading reactions for mathematical formulae. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 9(6), 444–467.
Tinker, M. A. (1927). An experimental study of legibility, perception, and eye movement in the reading of formulae. Ph.D. thesis, Leland Stanford Junior University.
Tinker, M. A. (1928). A photographic study of eye movements in reading formulae. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 3, 65–182.
Tinker, M. A. (1932). Wundt's doctoral students and their theses. The American Journal of Psychology, 44, 630–637.
Tinker, M. A. (1938). Susceptibility to optical illusions: specific or general? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22(6), 593–597.
Tinker, M. A. (1953). History of the Minnesota psychology department. Unpublished MS: University of Minnesota Archives.
Tinker, M. A. (1963). The legibility of print. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Tinker, M. A., Thuma, B. D., & Farnsworth, P. (1927). The rating of psychologists. The American Journal of Psychology, 38(3), 453–455.
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Devonis, D.C. (2012). Tinker, Miles A.. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_121
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