obtained on this theory are of doubtful significance.
Questions and Exercises — I. The Reaction Experijnent. — The instrument represented in Fig. 16 is Professor Sanford's reaction-timer. It is constructed as follows.
Two brass pendulum-bobs, a and a' ^ are suspended by inelastic threads from the bar, b. The threads (the one of which is red, and the other white) are knotted through two holes bored in the bar, pass through similar borings in the bobs, and are held fast by the two set-screws, c and c'. They are prevented from spread- ing by being laid in four grooves cut in the upper right-hand surface of the bar. The pendulums can be lengthened and type.
Questions and Exercises shortened at pleasure, by clamping the set-screws at different parts of the threads. — On the right of the cast-iron base, d, are placed two keys, e and e'. The lips of the keys, on the side towards the bobs, close so far as to grip tightly the shaft of a light brass-wire hook. One of these hooks, f, lies in the Figure upon the base of the instrument.
Counter-hooks are fastened to the pendulum-bobs. Pressure upon the buttons of the keys uncloses the lips, so that the brass hooks are released. — It will be noticed that the keys stand at different levels upon the base, and that the pendulums are of correspondingly different lengths.
The instrument is tested in this way. See that the bobs hang evenly in the middle of their threads. Place the hooks between the lips of the keys, and hook the bobs into them by the counter-hooks. Now (i) release the nearer, longer pendulum by pressing the button of the lower key. Count the swings of the pendulum (beginning from zero, not from ^ one ') by help of a stop-watch. Note how many full, i.e., back-and-forth swings occur in i min. Divide the time by the number of swings, and you have the duration of one total swing. We will suppose that this is 0.8 sec.; that the pendulum returns to the position from which it started in 0.8 sec. (2) Release the farther, shorter pen- dulum, by pressing the button of the upper key. Take the time of swing in the same way. We will suppose that it is 0.78 sec. It is clear now that the long pendulum makes 39 full swings while the short one makes 40; that the shorter gains a full swing on the longer in every 40 of its swings. The unit of the instru- ment is, therefore, 0.8 sec. -^ 40, or one-fiftieth of a second. That is to say: the long pendulum loses, the short gains, 0.02 sec. in every full swing. (3) Test this result by letting the two pendulums swing together, and counting the number of swings of the long pendulum that elapse between coincidence and coincidence of the four threads, i.e., between the times of their lying in one and the same plane. If your previous counting 184 The Simple}' Forms of Action was correct, the coincidences should come at the 39th, 78th, 117th, etc., swings.
(i) We are now in a position to take a reaction-time. Let it be the time of reaction to a sound stimulus. The base of the instrument is clamped firmly to the table. The pendulums are hooked to the keys, and the hooks adjusted till the four threads lie in the same plane. The experimenter places himself squarely before the apparatus, so that he can accurately gauge the position of the threads. The subject sits with closed eyes, the forefinger of the right hand laid lightly upon the button of the higher key. The experimenter says " Now! '' and, after an interval of 1.5 — 2 sec, raps sharply upon the button of the lower key, thus releasing the long pendulum. On hearing the sound, the subject presses the button of his key, and releases the short pendulum. The experimenter counts the swings of the long pendulum, from the time of'its starting to the time of the first coincidence of the four threads. If the two pendulums are together at the sixth swing, the reaction-time is 6 x 0.02 sec, or 0.12 sec. (muscular reaction); if they are together at the eleventh, the time is 0.22 sec. (sensorial reaction). It may sometimes happen that the two pendulums seem to be in exact coincidence during two swings, say, the tenth and the eleventh: in that event the time must be counted as 10.5 x 0.02 sec, or 0.21 sec. But this will not happen after the experimenter has had a little practice in observation of the threads.
(2) If the reaction is reaction to pressure stimulus, let the subject lay the forefinger of his right hand upon the upper, and the forefinger of his left hand upon the lower key. The experi- menter then presses upon the latter finger (stimulus is given), and the subject reacts by pressing down his own right-hand finger, as before. — (3) If the reaction is to sight^ the subject keeps his eyes open, and presses the button of the upper key when he sees the experi- menter's finger move in the act of pressing that of the lower. Or the experiment may be made by help of the '- side wire,' fur- nished with the instrument, as follows.
A piece of stout wire, bent to the shape shown in Fig. \'] a^ is attached to the upper part of the key, ^ just above the large screw which forms the axis of the key. When the lips of the key are closed, the upper end of the wire inclines inwards, toward the pendulums. When the button is pressed, the wire moves to a Questions and Exercises vertical position. The wire is slit at its upper end, to take a small disc of white cardboard. Between the keys, e and e\ must be set up a screen of black card, having a circular opening which allows the white cardboard to be seen when the wire stands vertically, but not when the lips of the key I are closed. The opening should be somewhat smaller ot than the white disc. — The subject fixes his eyes upon this opening, before the ex- periment begins, and reacts when he sees the white card appear behind it. This happens, as we said, when the experimenter presses the button of e. To avoid the click produced by the strik- ing of the button of the key upon the platform below, it is well to pad the latter with cotton-wool, and to encase the metal parts and the pad with a piece of rubber tubing (Fig. i"]U).
(4) In the association reaction (sound stimulus), the experi- menter calls out the stimulus word as he opens the lower key. Suppose that a ^ whole 'is to be called, and some ^ part 'to be associated to it by the subject. The experimenter calls out " Fish! " — pressing the button of the lower key at the moment he utters the word; the subject presses his key when he has thought of ^ fin ' or ^ tail.' In such cases it may happen that the long pen- dulum makes a full swing before the short one starts. This must be noted by the experimenter, and the 0.8 sec. added on to the time (taken in 0.02 sec. units) during which the two pendulums are swinging together. — In visual experiments, printed words replace the white disc held by the side wire. The reaction- movement is made after association to the word stimulus.
The following points may be noticed: (^) The subject should write out an introspective account of each experiment, stating whether or not he has obeyed orders as regards direction of the attention, whether or not his reaction was disturbed by chance noises, etc., etc.
{b) Not more than 15 or 20 experiments should be made at a single sitting. Otherwise the subject becomes fatigued.
1 86 TJie Simpler Fo^^ms of Action (c) Practice is not complete until the average difference between the separate reaction-times and the average time of the series has fallen as low as one-tenth of the average time. Thus the series .255,.275,.290,.265,.300, is a good visual sensorial series. The average time is.277^ and the average difference between this and the separate times.014, — not much more than one-twentieth of .277. On the other hand, the series.200, -'hZ^').210,.265,.380, is worthless. The average is again.277; but the average differ- ence between this and the separate times is.062, — an amount that lies between one-fourth and one-fifth of.277. Practice is here incomplete.
2. Define instinctive action.
3. Give instances of ideomotor action from your own experi- ence.
4. Make a Table, in the form of a genealogical tree, of the various kinds of action discussed in this Chapter. Give an exact account of the composition of the motive in every case.
5. Name some of the principal reflexes.
6. Rudimentary organisms do not possess a ^ brain ' with a * cortex.' How do you reconcile this fact with the statements made above in regard to Fig. 13?
References James, Textbook^ chs. xxiii., xxv.; pp. 415-428, 120-124, 126-128.
Sully, Human Mindj vol. ii., ch. xvii.
Wundt, Lectures, Lects. XV., XVIIL, XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII.
Wundt, Outlines, § I4» CHAPTER X Memory and Imagination § "J J. The Two Kinds of Memory and Imagination. — Some com- Til GXP S P^ I'P The reader will remember that we drew a distinction, formed in in Chapter V., between passive and active attention, the state of ^ ^ passive, In passive attention, some one idea dominates con- others in sciousness with an unquestioned authority; m active attention. attention, there is a struggle of several ideas for the All the complex processes that we have examined so far — the assimilation, the train of ideas, the emo- tion, the impulsive action — are processes that take shape in the state of passive attention. There are other, and very important processes, which can take shape only in the state of active attention. Thought and creative imagination, the sentiment of beauty or of truth, deliberate and purposed action, — these are wholly foreign to a mind that has not risen above the level of primary passive attention; they are the crown and flower of mental evolution. It is natural, then, that we devote our final Chapters to their consideration.
Our business with the passive side of mind, how- 'Memory' .. and ' imagiever, is not quite over. There are certain processes, nation' may composed chiefly of perceptions and ideas, and occur- ^^ ^^^^^^ ■> ^ ^ active or ring in passive as well as in active form, that we passive. have not yet touched upon: the processes which are grouped under the headings of memory and imagina- 1 88 Memory and Imagination tion. We could not treat of passive memory and passive imagination in Chapter VII., although both of them are put together by way of simultaneous association, because both are made up in part of a peculiar moody and moods could not be discussed until we reached Chapter VIII. Comprehension of the laws of mental connection would be a much easier matter than it is if one could take in three chapters — sensation, affection, attention; or associa- tion, emotion, impulsive action — at a single reading. In the present Chapter, then, we shall describe both the passive and the active forms of memory and imagination.
§ 78. Recognition and Memory: Passive. — Most of our perceptions and ideas are familiar to us. We have seen that they are mental short cuts to know- ledge of the outside ^world (§§ 41, 50), — symbols rather than copies of things, tags of meaning rather than the complex processes that they were in the minds of our remote ancestors; we have seen, i.e., that they are familiar in the objective sense, in the sense that they have long been employed and are easily handled. But they are also familiar in J:he subjective sense; we realise^ when they enter a con- sciousness, that they are familiar; they have upon them a mark or sign which, as it were, says to us: **This is your old friend, the perception that you had then^ or the idea that you gained at such and such a time." Passive When a perception or group of perceptions has and memory, this mark of familiarity upon it, we speak of recognising someone or something. When it is an idea or group of ideas that bears the mark, we speak of remembering someone or something. ^^ I've been here before!" '^I'm sure I know that face!" '*Why, who'd have thought of seeing yoitV — these phrases are all expressions of recognition; the perception is familiar. '' Oh yes! he came here the year the so-and-so's were married;" ''It was in 1870, in October, — I read about it at the same time that news came of the capitulation of Metz; " '' No! it's the male bird that has the yellow; the female is white" — these are expressions of memory; the idea is familiar.
The first thing that we have to do, then, in investi- The mark of gatmg passive recognition and memory, is to find out what precisely the ' familiarity mark ' is; of what processes it consists, and how it becomes attached to perceptions and ideas.
What we said in § 50 about memory-types may have led No idea is the reader to think that some^ if not all ideas are intrinsi- i^^^i^s^^^i^y ^ a memorycally memory-ideas; that when we have an idea, we ipso idea. facto have a memory. This is not the case. No idea is a memory in its own right; it must have the memory label affixed to it. We speak of ' memory-types ' rather than of ' idea-types ' simply because memory is the use, so to say, for which ideas are intended; it is in being remembered that ideas get their practical value. But the phrase ' idea- types ' would be really more correct: since a ' memory ' is a marked idea, a mind whose ideas are of a certain type naturally ' remembers ' in ideas of that type.
means § 79. The Mark of Familiarity. — When you recog- Familiarity nise a figure in the street, two things happen. In the first place, the perception is supplemented by a Memory and Imagination association and the mood of confidence.
number of ideas: perhaps the name of the person comes up, perhaps the circumstances under which you last saw him, perhaps some business that you have or have had with him, perhaps a question that you wish to ask or a story that you have heard about him. There is no before and after in the experience; as soon as you see your acquaintance, these ideas are present in consciousness: it is a case of simultaneous association. True, the simultaneous association may form the starting-point for a successive association, for a train of ideas; but in the recognition itself the association is simultaneous. In the second place, you are thrown into an agreeable mood, the mood of ease or confidence, of ' at-homeness '; you feel familiarly towards the figure. On the other hand, the passers-by whom you do not know, do not recog- nise, are perceived merely; they have no power, as personalities, to awaken associated ideas in your mind: and you feel indifferently towards them; they do not affect or ^ concern ' you. Of course, a * striking ' face or costume may compel the passive attention (§ 31); but such perception is not recog- nition.
The same thing holds of memory. When ^ou remember something, whether it is a scene of your childhood or the date of Julius Caesar's assassi- nation, the idea of that something is supplemented at once by a crowd of other ideas; and, as. these ideas cluster round it, the at-home feeling comes too.
These two groups of processes, then, — the associ- ated ideas and the mood of confidence, — together make up the mark of familiarity. They attach to a perception, in every case of recognition; they attach to an idea, in every instance of memory.
There are three points to notice, in regard to the famih- arity mark.
(i) The mood of at-homeness or confidence is a weakened Recognition form of the emotion of reHef. Fear of strange things and "^eans relief strange people is instinctive with man (§ 75); and it is a sur- vival of fear unfulfilled, of relief, that we experience when we recognise. (2) The mood is, however, a very degenerate form (but a greatly of this emotion. The ' body ' of every complete emotion is a weakened vivid and complex feeling (§ 59). In. the mood of at-homeness ^^^^ there is no trace at all of this central feeling, no attention to a * situation '; the mood consists solely of a pleasant aifection and of the organic sensations set up by an easy and careless bodily attitude. (3) It follows from (i) that every recognition is in- and is inher- herently pleasant. Oftentimes, it is true, the pleasantness of the ^^^ly pleas- at-home mood is outweighed by the unpleasantness of the associ- ated ideas: we may recognise a person whom we particularly want to avoid. But this does not impair the previous state- ment: in itself, recognition is pleasurable.
It is exceedingly important to understand the Psychoiogi- psychology of recognition, for the reason that recog- jng; nition brings out, perhaps even more clearly than perception (§ 38), the part that meaning plays in the shaping of mind. A perception is a group of sensations, and yet is not accurately described when these sensations are accurately described. For it is formed under stress of biological necessity, — at the bidding of external nature; it must mean some natural object, if it is to hold together; and, unless we state this, its description is incomplete. Recog- nition illustrates the same fact from a different point of view: it shows us that, when a complex process holds together, it has a meaning.
For consider. We say that certain associated ideas 192 Memory and Imagination and a certain mood make a * perception ' a * recog- nised perception.' *'Very well," you may reply: ** but how do we recognise the ideas and the mood? They cannot help us to recognise anything, unless . they are themselves recognised." The answer to the objection is this. The grouping of associated ideas and mood round a perception means that that per- ception has occurred in our experience on some pre- vious occasion. But the * recognition ' of a perception means this, too. * Recognition,' then, simply sums up in a single word 'grouping of associated ideas and presence of mood.' These processes do not them- selves need recognition: they are recognition. They would fall apart, unless they meant something; and their meaning — a meaning implanted in them by external nature — is: '^ You are safe: this thing has been here before.".
Recognitions § 80. The Degrees of Recognition and of Memory. — ries ^fferTn ^^ havc now auswcrcd our first question; we know definiteness. what the * mark of familiarity' is. But while all re- cognitions and memories are alike in general outline, so to speak, — all being instances of simultaneous association, all containing the same mood, and all having the same practical meaning, — they differ very greatly in definiteness. We said in the last Section, that the perception (in recognition) or the idea (in memory) is supplemented by ^ a number,' * a crowd ' of other ideas. This is true in cases of complete or definite recognition and memory; it is not true in all cases. We find every degree of definiteness, from a vague and shadowy acquaintance, with perhaps a § 8 1. Recognition and Memory: Active 193 single associated idea, to clear and perfect knowledge, with a whole consciousness-full of associates.
Suppose that a number of different people are shown a photo- Instances, graph of the same painting. They would all recognise it as a photograph, and probably, if they looked at all closely at it, as taken from a painting. But beyond this point their recognitions might show all degrees of definiteness. One might say: "I don't know it: it is evidently a sacred picture, but that's all I can say." Another: '^ It must be a Raphael; but I don't know which." Another: " It's one of the famous Raphael Madonnas; it seems familiar to me, and I'm sure I've seen an account of it somewhere, but I can't remember now where it was." Another: " Oh yes! It's the Sistine Madonna, — Raphael's." Another: " Of course: that's the Sistine, — stands in the little room in the Dresden gallery, where the Holbeins are." Another will know this, and will be able to give in addition the complete colour- scheme of the picture; and another will be acquainted with its history, — and so on. Here we have various stages of recogni- tion, rising from great indefiniteness to great definiteness. The principle is the same throughout.
So with memory. Ask a number of people who read the same book at about the same time what they remember of it. Some will have "forgotten the plot: but it was a good story." Others will tell you, in a sketchy way, what w^ere the chief incidents in the tale. Others will recall it in greater detail, and will give you certain scenes quite vividly. Others, again, will remember ^ali about ' the book: what the story is, and why it was written, and what effect it had on the public, and what the author's life- history was, and so on.
The less definite the associates, the less strong is the mood of confidence. But some associate — if it is only the bare thought ''I know!" — and some trace of the mood are present in our dimmest mem- ories and blankest recognitions.
§81. Recognition and Memory: Active. — The pro- cesses of remembering and recognising are always the same, and always occur in the state of passive o 194 Memory and Imagination attention. But they may be preceded by a state of active attention; we may not recognise a thing till after we have actively attended to a number of per- ceptions, — and we may not recollect a name till after we have actively attended to a long series of ideas, w^hatis In other words, the state of passive attention in 'Active '"^ which they occur may be that of secondary passive recognition attention. Cascs of this kind show us recognition and memory.
and memory in their ^ active ' forms.
« Instances. Suppose that you are trying to find your way along a little-used forest path, which you have travelled only once or twice before. You come to a doubtful place: the tree looks right, but you are not quite sure: there ought to be a big stone a few yards on, and then a swampy patch. If the stone and the bit of marsh show themselves, you^ recognise ' the path: active lapses into passive attention. If they do not, you go back to the tree, and scrutinise the ground again. On a familiar path, the associates and the mood of confidence are present from the beginning. — Recognition is made up of just the same processes in both cases; but in the first case it is preceded by active attention.
Or suppose that you are trying to think of the name of someone whose face is familiar to you. You " know his name as well as you know your own "; but the word obsti- nately refuses to come. You now attend actively to a num- ber of ideas, some one of which you hope may be strongly enough associated to the required name to bring it up: you think of the scenes in which you have met the possessor of the name, of his usual occupations, of his friends' names, — you run through the alphabet, recaUing the names that begin with the different letters, and so on. At last you get the name, or get some idea that brings the name with it: the name is supplemented by all sorts of ideas (instances of its use, times and places), and the mood of confidence arises with a touch of real relief in its composition. — Again, the § 82. Physiology of Memory and Forgetf Illness 195 m memory is precisely like passive memory, except that a stage of active attention has preceded it.
The term '- memory ' is sometimes employed in a narrow sense to mean ^ passive memory/ and active memory is expressed by the word ^recollection.'
§ 82. The Physiology of Memory and Forgetfulness.
— Since all our memories are formed by way of simultaneous association, the law of memory will be the same as the law of association: all the connec- tions set up in a consciousness tend to persist (§ 54). Fortunately, however, in memory as in association, only part of these connections do persist in actual fact. In association, it will be remembered, some one sensation in the complex perception or idea suggests another perception or idea; it is not the whole idea that calls up another, but only some particular side or aspect of it (§ 57). If every sensation in every idea were equally ready to call up associates, con- sciousness would be a mazy tangle of processes, and definite meaning would be impossible.
So it is with memory. If we are to remember Forgetfui- usefully, we must forget a great deal. If we remem- Jl^n of Ae bered every incident of every day, — at what time usefulness of memory.
we got up, what letters we received, what we had to eat and drink, what exercise we took, what work we did, — we should be lost in the wealth of our own ideas; we ' should not see the wood for the trees.'
The course of association can be explained, as The law of we saw, by the law of habit: the more habitual the co-excitation in the brain, the more certain the asso- ciation in consciousness. Remembering and forget- ting may be explained in precisely the same way.
Memory and Imaghiation The different levels of habit.
Habit means past atten- tion.
Cramming.
Habitual associates are remembered; accidental asso- ciates, forgotten.