Mental Development in the Child and the Race
Chapter 15: The Origin of Attention
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§ 1. Voluntary Attention
THE foregoing examination of current theories of development has served to throw into relief the elements of the problem. It has also shown that a theory of adaptation must have reference to the repetition of stimulations, fundamentally, not of movements; the theory developed above -- based as it is upon the work of Darwin and Spencer -- is consciously drawn to supply this want.
The three psychological stages or levels at which we find consciousness getting new accommodations have already been pointed out, [1] and the claim made that the 'law of excess,' enunciated above, applies to each and all of them. We have already considered the two lower stages and now come to the third. The question is now, accordingly, How is the conscious person able to perform a new movement voluntarily and with attention?
The first remark is this: To make any movement voluntarily, the attention must be fixed upon some kind of an idea which represents this movement. I do not care to repeat the analysis which I have published elsewhere, [2] and which James has also made, much more forcibly, [3] of volition back to its last citadel -- voluntary attention to an idea. Everybody, it seems, now admits it. If the object of volition, then, is a
(429) movement, an idea that means the movement must be attended to.
But In the case of learning a thing for the first time the movement required is not an old, but a new one: [4] hence it cannot be a mental image or memory of the movement, to which the attention is directed; it must be an external movement or event, of some kind, which yet in some way manages to send its dynamogenic influence into the motor channels required.
Now to acquire a movement seen, or in some other way externally set up, -- this is exactly conscious imitation. The problem then reduces itself to the process of persistent effortful imitation; and we have to ask how attention to a movement seen, for example, enables the child or man to come to perform this movement himself.
The process of persistent imitation, as far as its mechanism is concerned, has been depicted and figured above. [5] The point essential to our present topic has also been casually mentioned, i.e. that the difference between 'simple' and 'persistent' imitation of the try-try-again type, is that, in the former, an earlier muscular movement is repeated without variation, while in the latter, the earlier movement is modified in such a way as to approximate, more and more closely, the movement-copy attended to.
In persistent imitation the first reaction is not repeated.
(430) Hence we must suppose the development of a function of co-ordination by which the two regions excited respectively by the original suggestion and the reaction first made, coalesce in a common more voluminous and intense stimulation of the motor centre. A movement is thus produced which, by reason of its greater mass and diffusion, includes more of the elements of the movement seen and copied. This is again reported by eye or ear, giving a new excitement, which is again co-ordinated with the original stimulation and with the after-effects of the earlier imitations. The result is yet another motor stimulation, or effort, of still greater mass and diffusion, which includes yet more elements of the 'copy.' And so on, until simply by its increased mass, including the motor excitement of attention itself, -- by the greater range and variety of the motor elements thus innervated, -- in short, by the excess discharge, the 'copy' is completely reproduced. The effort thus succeeds. (See Fig. XIV., above.)
This, it is evident, is the principle of 'motor excess,' and it is natural to find in it the origin of the attention. The attention is the mental function corresponding to the habitual motor co-ordination of the processes of heightened or 'excess' discharge. The exact elements which it includes have already been pointed out, and they will be spoken of again.
Let the child once withdraw attention from his copy, let him be distracted by bird or beast, and woe to his chance of learning the new movement. The whole conglomerate conscious content falls to pieces and he goes back to be a creature of suggestion. But let him keep on attending -- strongly, faithfully, well -- and note his actions. His whole physical personality gets concentrated in conjoint, then allied, then unified, then convulsive discharge upon the member which, by habit or previous use, is nearest to the copy requirement.
(431) He rolls his tongue, bites his lip, sways his body, works his leg", wink" his eyes, etc., until every scheming nerve and tendon bends to do the task. His blood-vessels, even, fill toward the hand he works with. This occurs only in attention, and this is the excess wave by which here in the highest consciousness, as there in the lowest organism, accommodation to new stimulations is secured. [6]
A direct examination of the infant's earliest voluntary movements shows the growth in mass, diffusion, and lack of precision which this theory requires. In acquiring the associations of elements involved in successful handwriting, [7] the young child uses hand, then hand and arm, then hand, arm, tongue, face, and finally his whole body. In speaking, also, he 'mouths' his sounds, screws his tongue and hands, etc. And he only gets his movements reduced to order after they have become by effort massive and diffuse. I find no support whatever in the children themselves, for the current view of psychologists, i.e. that voluntary combinations are gradually built up by adding up earlier voluntary movements, muscle to muscle, and group to group. This is true only after each of these elements has itself become voluntary. Such a view implies that the infant, at this stage, has a kind of separate consciousness of the different muscles, including those which he has never learned to use, which is false; and is able to avail himself of muscles which he has not learned to use, which is equally false -- not to allude to the fact that it leaves suspended in mid-air the problem as to how the new combination, intended and dwelt upon by attention, or no longer held in the attention, [8] gets itself actually carried out, in the muscles.
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When muscular effort thus succeeds, by the simple fact of increased mass and diffusion of
reaction, the useless elements {all away because they have no emphasis. [9] The correct
elements are, on the contrary, reinforced by their agreement with the 'copy', by the
dwelling of attention upon them, by the pleasure which accompanies success. In short, the
law of survival of the fittest by natural, or, in this case, functional, selection,
assures the persistence of the reaction thus gained by effort.
We may merely note in passing, also, that this theory of the process of voluntary attention is not open to the objections commonly urged against earlier views. How can we conceive the relation of mind and body ? The alternatives commonly recognized are three: either the mind interferes with brain processes, or it directs brain processes, or it does nothing; these are the three. Now, on the view here presented, none of these is true. The function of the mind is simply to have a persistent presentation -- a suggestion, a 'copy.' The law of motor reaction, plus the accumulated excess, does the rest. The muscles express the influence of the central excitement; this sets inwards as more excitement, which we call attention and emotion, and this the muscles again express; and so on, until by the law of lavish outlay, which nature so often employs, the requisite muscular combination is secured and persists. In the words of Ziehen, "the appearance of the concomitant psychical processes themselves is the only fact that needs explanation.... The fitness of actions is quite conceivable as the result of natural laws." [?]
(433)
Besides the general fact that this view makes the stimulus or copy the essential thing for
reproduction' it takes another step as necessary for psychology, I think, as the former is
for general biology: the identification of voluntary attention with motor reaction, at
once habitual, in the main, but yet 'excessive,' in part, in the centres of highest
co-ordination. Attention is essentially an accumulation, [11] due to continued selection
in racial evolution.
This is considered a grave question by many who forget that whatever the voluntary life is, every child has to pass into it from the involuntary life, without a miracle; and it may be well to present some general considerations in addition to the facts of infant life now mentioned.
I. It should be remembered, I may repeat, that the problem of accommodation is really the problem of selection. How does an organism select the stimulations which are profitable to it? It is in answer to this question that the 'excess' function is postulated, and has been in the 'increased nervous discharge' of biological theories of the Spencer-gain type. Now in attention we have, undoubtedly, the one selective function of consciousness. Who claims anything else ? Whatever attention may do besides, all the selections which consciousness makes are due to it. We have, therefore, the requirement that these two things should be connected in theory, i.e. the adaptations of lower organisms, and the selections of consciousness. Now it only gives further strength both to the theory of the biological selections of the lower organisms, and to that of the conscious selections of the higher, if we find that one psycho-physical principle -- such as
(434) 'selection from overproduced movement' -- runs through the entire development.
2. Again, the conscious value al a stimulus to the organism is, on the whole, its pleasure-pain effect. This we have identified with some form of psycho-physical process, in the nervous centres, which tends to discharge in the excess wave. In this again, as has been said, we are following the best theories of the past (Darwin, Bain, Meynert). If now our proposition concerning attention be true, it would follow that in the higher representative processes, attention is the great locus of hedonic consciousness. It is only necessary to reflect upon the conditions of 'ideal tone' -- the pleasures of the intellectual and emotional life -- in the exposition, for example, of Ward and the Herbartians, to be convinced that this is true. Developmental considerations enter here to complicate the case; [12] but it is sufficient to note in this place, that pleasure is, in lower organisms, a sign of vital profit, and, by its discharge in the excess wave, an agent of adaptation; and the same is true of intellectual and sentimental pleasure and profit. They indicate conscious adaptation by the phenomenon of attention, which is the genetic channel of an excess wave the same in kind. All the evidence which goes to show that no movement can be made unless the attention gets fixed upon some idea that represents this movement, and that no movement can be prevented upon the representation of which (itself or by proxy) the attention is fixed -- all this evidence shows also, that attention is some kind of generalized motor phenomenon. Generalized, because it bears equally on all presented contents. All initiation of voluntary movement is a matter of attention, and all voluntary inhibition or control of movement a matter of withdrawal of attention. Now this is just what the excess wave ought to do -- come to the aid of
(435) that which claims it by the right of accumulated selections, that which, by this aid, is again selected, and by its withdrawal prevent that which should, by the same tests, be neglected and eliminated.
Endnotes
- Above, Chap. VII., § 1, ad fin.
- Handbook, II., Chaps. XII., XV
- Princ. of Psychology, Vol. I., Chap. XI.
- Unless, indeed, it has been accidentally performed before. It may be admitted that many useful acts are acquired by such happy accident, and one may say that the 'excess' discharge is of use largely in increasing such happy hits. But no one will deny that the ' hits 'occur mainly through the child's imitations in cases of complex action, such as speech, writing, sewing, etc. It has been shown, however, that the former movement must have been innervated from the centre (that is, produced by the person him. self), not merely mechanically produced. Cf. Bair in Psych. Review, VIII 1901, p. 474.
- Chap. XIII., § 3.
- A similar view may now be found in Professor Lloyd Morgan's Habit and Instinct, p. 162.
- See the details given above, Chap. V., § 2.
- This is in brief the answer to the criticism made by some (e.g. Royce) that the theory gives no positive inhibition of the elements that are not selected.
- Physiol. Psychology, p. 274. Ziehen recognizes the essential sameness of the selecting process for reflex (phylogenetic) and voluntary (ontogenetic) selections. He says: "In both cases the process of selection is the essential factor in the development of this fitness. In the case of reflex action . . . this selection is essentially a phylogenetic process: in the case of [voluntary] actions, it is an ontogenetic process."
- A footnote is referenced at this point. There is no note in the reproduction of the third edition used to generate this document.
- This gives a mass of 'funded' process or internal congenital function which all new learning starts with. This is put in evidence by Jennings (Behaviour of Lower Organisms, 1906). The position taken here fully allows for this as against the 'simple reflex' process of a more mechanical theory.
- See below, § 3 in this chapter, on the 'Development of Attention.'
§ 2. Reflex and 'Primary' Attention
I have elsewhere argued for the view that reflex attention is an affair of motor association. The facts so evidently show that there is no mental initiative in the case of a violent drawing of attention -- as by a clap of thunder, or a flash of light -- that the problem is, not to prove that the entire psychological phenomenon is a change in the content of consciousness, but merely to determine what kind of a change it is. I have proposed to call consciousness when occupied with such reflex attention 'reactive,' since the essential thing about reflex attention is the attitude or reactive condition in which one finds himself as soon as his surprise -- after such a clap of thunder -- allows him to ask himself the question. Certain muscular tensions, varying somewhat with the kind of sensation or image to which his attention is drawn -- this seems to be all he finds. It seems quite in the line of fact, therefore, to say that reflex attention is a consciousness of a group of muscular and organic processes fixed in certain forms by habit.
The earliest form of attention, however, is that brought out in low organisms by sense stimulations. It may be called 'primary attention or conation,' in the phrase of late writers (H&ouldffding, Ward), considered as the active side of consciousness. It is by indulgence only that the term 'attention' is used for it, since when we use that word we have in mind so distinctly the exact tensions and contractions habitual in our developed lives of attention. But if the general view
(436) now advocated be true, we should expect to find, in all consciousness, the presence of such a motor element; and while in any particular case the ' motor associates ' may not be special enough to give well-marked tone to the content, yet it should, in its real nature, be called a phenomenon of attention. The place of this early attention may be made plainer in the next paragraph.
§ 3. The Development of Attention: Sensori-motor Association
Assuming the answer now given to the question of the mechanism of speech, considered as a typical voluntary function, some additional considerations arise which bring us back to our problem of the development of attention. [1]
In the first place, I find in my own case and from experiments with others, that the presence or absence of elements of movement in the consciousness of a word depends in many individuals largely upon the direction of the attention. [2] If the attention be directed to the vocal organs, -- either one's own, or some one else's, -- movements of the tongue, lips, and larynx are clearly felt in the organs, sometimes also by touch, and may be seen. If, on the other hand, the attention be directed to the ear, and the words be thought of as sounds, these muscular sensations fall perceptibly away or disappear. This indicates that there are two great speech types, a motor type and a sensory type, according as the attention is given in one direction or the other -- a distinction of types now familiar in connection with reaction-time experiments.
The reaction time is, in a great percentage of cases, shorter
(437) when the attention gives a so-called 'motor' reaction, i.e. is directed to the reacting member, rather than to the signal. I have experimented to some extent with a view to finding in what per cent. of individuals one kind of hand reaction is normal as against the other kind. The results show that, among uninstructed groups of students, reacting for the first time in the laboratory, about one-quarter of the entire number, when questioned immediately after giving a series of sound-hand reactions, were clearly conscious of having paid attention to the movement of the hand. The average time of their reactions is considerably lower than the general average. This result shows clearly, not only that the difference in time of the two kinds of reactions is a real difference in many persons, but also that there are individuals who normally react most readily, and most effectively, in one way or the other. One of the bearings on speech is this: it becomes at once evident that the most rapid speakers are generally, ceteris paribus, 'motors' in their type. The direction of the attention serves to arouse the organs of speech in advance, by an influence the nature of which is still to be explained. [3]
Now certain questions arise here which are directly pertinent to our present topic: Is a person motor, visual, or auditory, in his speech, and in his reactions generally, because he has strengthened a particular-kind of memories by the prevailing concentration of his attention upon them? Or does he give motor or sensory attention and reaction, because of the predominant strength of a certain class of his memories? Probably both of these positions are true; and each of them is of great importance in the education of speech, and other motor functions, as well as for the theory which is here
(438) developed. The case seems to be the exhibition, on a large scale, of what we find to be true of the relation of attention to sensations generally. Increased intensity of sensation tends to draw the attention; and the attention increases the intensity of sensations. It is one of those processes of 'reasoning in a circle' which characterize the growth of body and mind together. Another instance is this, for which we have already seen some probable reasons: pleasure arises from healthy function, while healthy function is directly assisted by pleasure.
The relation which we have now discovered, however, between a person's 'type,' and the movements and habits of his attention, is capable of a clear psycho-physical explanation.
We know that increasing intensity of sensation liberates energy increasingly toward the motor centres. A strong sensation tends to excite more movement than a weak one. It is probable, therefore, that a given degree of intensity of each particular sense-quality involves a motor ingredient, as an element in its conscious value -- be it in part due to a setting back process from the motor centres themselves, or in whole to the stirring up of revival processes in the kinaesthetic centres. The distinction between sensory and motor consciousness is largely logical; all consciousness is both. Every sensation reverberates outwards in the muscles, and this muscular resonance reacts back upon the sensory factor. But it is clear that the largest amount of the motor 'ingredient' attaches to the most intense sensation.
Now we also know that the exercise of attention involves a large amount of motor process; its constant and necessary accompaniments are motor. Consequently the rising tide of motor incitation due to the rising intensity of sensation is an increasing stimulus to the attention, by a radiation of pro-
(439)-cesses in the centres of movement. So we have a valid reason for the general fact that an increase of intensity of sensation tends to draw and hold the attention.
On the other hand, the ordinary opinion is true, that the idea of a movement is already the beginning of that movement. In the light of this principle it is easy to see that, when I turn my attention to a sensation, I in so far start into more vigorous existence the motor ingredients and associations of that sensation. This in turn tends to bring out more intensely the sensory ingredients, and so the second aspect of our 'reasoning in a circle' is made clear; i.e. that attention heightens the intensity of sensations. [4]
This process of radiation, or mutual overflow, among the different motor centres -- if they be different -- is not hypothetical. All theories demand it. It is simply a question, in any special case, as to how far the circle of influence of one motor process may extend to neighbouring fibres and cells. And if the theory be true that attention is just the most habitual of all forms of motor reaction -- because extending far back in the race history of organic accommodation -- then the direct arousing of the attention by changes in mental content is fully explained in the way supposed.
To put the matter in a nutshell -- just in so far as the motor ingredient of a mental content of any kind is large, that is, in
(440) so far as the sensory ingredient is intense, just to this degree will the direction of the attention be secured, and to this degree also will both the ingredients be intensified by this act of attention. The two facts, therefore, that intensity draws attention, and attention increases intensity, may be stated in terms of a single principle which I venture to call, in view of the doctrine of association already explained, the 'law of sensori-motor association,' i.e. every mental state is a fusion of sensory and motor elements, and any influence which strengthens the one, tends to strengthen the other also.
The reflex attention which follows upon increased intensity of sensory excitation may be considered, therefore, in conformity with what has already been said, the return wave of revived motor associates; and the increased intensity which follows the direction of the attention is due to the presence of this return wave, by the reverse association. [5]
This principle also goes far to explain the relation to each other of the two so-called laws which are usually stated independently in connection with reaction times: (I) greater intensity of stimulus diminishes the reaction time, and (2) motor reactions are generally shorter than sensory. Both are ready deductions from the 'law of sensori-motor association.' As for the first law, that more intense stimulation gives a shorter reaction than less intense, the reason of it is now evident. It is because the more intense stimulus arouses
(441) more and stronger motor associates; or, put physiologically, because it has greater dynamogenic effect, and so facilitates motor discharge, both directly into the reacting muscles, and indirectly by its readier influence in getting the attention.
Now as for the second fact, which holds for the majority of people, its explanation also follows. Experiments show that the reaction time is shorter when the signal is foreknown and the attention is consequently not drawn to it, but is left free to seek some further facilitating cue. This cue is found, of course, in persons accustomed to depend upon their motor memories for various voluntary actions, in the thoughts of the movements actually to be made in reacting. And so the 'motor reaction' is directly prepared for. In these cases, a particular kind of motor association is emphasized by the direct act of attention. The motor associates are pictured, dwelt upon, emphasized beforehand, the motor centres are put into a state of high potential, the stimulus is left to discriminate itself without attention -- and thus the reaction time is shortened. It is evident that in the sensory reaction, part, at least, of the dynamogenic influence of the stimulus goes with the attention, for the discrimination of the signal, etc.; while, in the motor reaction, it all goes into the reaction, which is already prepared for by motor attention. [6]
It is an evident corollary, also, that only in persons of the motor type would the motor reaction be shorter than the sensory; for it supposes a ready habit of using motor memories mainly in voluntary movement. Persons trained, however, to use auditory and visual memories as the instrument of
(442) attention, find their reaction time lengthened [7] when they come to pay close attention to the movements which they ore about to make.
Applying this thought to the rise of speech and its method, we find abundant reason for the variety of types found among adults. Visual, auditory, and motor memories of words date back to early childhood, and do not arise synchronously. Visual pictures of figure arise and get comparatively fixed in childhood some months before the child begins to speak or write, as is shown by its recognition of simple figures, animals, and later, letters. Auditory images, also, date very far back; this is seen in the very early recognition of words heard. Special graphic memories, on the contrary, are the latest of all. The ability to trace outlines which have been already recognized, [8] arises only after considerable progress has been made in speaking, and the progress in speaking is, in turn, relatively much later in its rise than visual and auditory recognition. So the probable order in which these different elements of the speech faculty would come under the jurisdiction of the 'law of sensori-motor association' is about this: auditory, visual, speech-motor, hand-motor (writing) memories. And a similar genetic analysis might be made out for other complex activities, if the facts were carefully observed.
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This means that auditory and visual memories get a good ' start ' on the other varieties
in the genetic process, They acquire considerable influence over the attention, which is
largely reflex at that early period, and they become in turn relatively easy of revival,
before the specific motor memories are well begun. Here is sufficient reason -- quite
apart from congenital tendencies which may be the controlling factor -- for the existence
of auditory and visual speech types. Habits thus arise which, on the mental side, express
the readiest sensori-motor associations. They amount to what some have called
'pre-perceptions,' or better, perhaps, 'pre-apperceptions.' On the physical side these
habits represent preferential dynamic tensions among those paths of discharge whose
functions merge, in common, in that of the attention. The law signalized above tends, of
course, as life advances, to consolidate these particular sensori-motor couples; and so
one particular kind of attention tends to become a permanent trait of the mental life,
unless the other connections which are subsequently brought into use, be of sufficient
strength to supersede that originally most used. This latter, however, may happen in any
of several instances: either from inherited tendency, or from the strength of other motor
habits; or, in course of time, by dint of continued practice in one selected kind of
attention.
It would seem, accordingly, that the ' auditory speech ' type should be found most frequently among unliterary people, and among those who have not had extended linguistic training, or large practice in writing and reading. The particular influences which are lacking in this type are present in the training which the attention gets in people of the 'motor type.'
We have now reached, by the psychological and genetic analysis of speech, a result which, it is evident, confirms our
(444) general theory of attention. The law of 'sensori-motor association' is a generalization on the side of consciousness, from particular cases of dynamogenesis, each of which shows, on the nervous side, the working of the law of 'functional selection.' It is just by and for this, as we have seen, that attention has developed. It is a reaction of motor character upon sense qualities and mental contents generally, varying in its degree of ease and effectiveness, according to the amount of habit and structural growth. On the other hand, the law of 'functional selection' of movements is a generalization of the nervous process by which each of such habits gets started, as representing a new accommodation of the organism.
Closer observation of states of attention also leads us to note some more facts and their explanations. We find on examining consciousness, that attention is not a fixed thing, a faculty, any more than are memory or imagination. Yet in much of the literature of late years, in which the 'faculties' have been scouted, I know of no author who has applied his own criticisms consistently to the attention. Attention is still treated as a constant quantity, a fixed thing, the same for all the exercises of it, and for all the contents to which it gives its reaction. Memory, on the contrary, is now known to be a function of the content remembered; and not a faculty which takes up the content and remembers it. So we have no longer one memory, but many: visual, auditory, motor memories. Yet the very same thing is true of attention; we have not one attention, but many. Attention is a function of the content, not a faculty that takes up the contents; and it is only as different contents attended to, overlap and repeat one another, that they have somewhat the same function of attention.
It is easy to see, however, why it is that attention has been left largely untouched in the recent reduction of mental
(445) functions to changes in content. It is for just the same reason that the notion of self has been left over by criticism likewise, as was intimated above. [9] The reason is a genetic one. It is evident that here, as in many other cases, we have to note the tendency of many sensory stimulations to discharge themselves through common motor channels. The contrast between pleasure and pain tends, of course, to make a great line of division between the motor associates of some contents and those of others; such as that between reaching and withdrawing movements. As the senses develop, further divisions arise. But it nevertheless remains true that a balance of motor contraction, reverberation, effort, is common to all contents, and so becomes part of the fixed expression of all definite states of consciousness. This fixed grouping of motor elements is, in its reaction upon the content which arouses it, the fixed element in attention (certain tensions of brow, jaws, skin of head, etc., -- the A element in the formula given above for attention [10]); and this makes attention seem to be a faculty of constant value. So it is that certain organic and muscular feelings contribute a certain sameness to the sense of self.
But this is not all. The actual content of attention feeling is half different, more or less, from sense to sense. We have -- i.e. I have -- a feeling so different when I attend to a sound from that when I attend to a light, that it is with the greatest difficulty that I find any strains or stresses in head, body, or limb quite the same in the two. And when we come to the difference between attention to any such sense content and attention to an ideal content, -- even though the latter be the memory of the very same sense-
(446)-thing, -- the whole feeling of attention is again extraordinarily changed. In all these cases the content felt as attention is motor; but it is yet as varied as all the other habitually varied motor responses which have been found useful in the race history of the organism. Its variable elements are the a+<MATH>&alpha</MATH> values of the formula A + a + <MATH>&alpha</MATH>.
Very cursory observation of certain animals shows these facts in forms fixed by their varied habits of life. One has only to ride an intelligent horse regularly to be convinced not only that most of his mental processes may be conducted through his ears, -- an effect exaggerated, perhaps, by the 'blinders' which are put over horses' eyes when in harness, -- but that his attention is then auditory. He shows his hopes, fears, expectations, curiosities, etc., by ear movements. In the rabbit and other animals in whom the olfactory lobes are largely developed for purposes of utility, a distinct type of memory and attention is probably developed in connection with smell, an olfactory type. The constant movements of the tip of the snout in many such animals when exploring for food, etc., by smell, shows the development of delicate smell-motor reflexes analogous to our eye-motor reflexes and the horse's ear-motor. Attention in these cases is probably reactive largely, but for that reason its connection with one sense is all the more simple and striking.
Cases from pathology, also, show the actual dependence often of a particular motor function upon the single sense which trained the attention in the learning of this action. Bastian [11] quotes the case of an aphasic patient, who spelt aloud a word wrongly as he wrote it (candd for cat), but at the same time pronounced it correctly, as he heard it. This means that his spelling movements, letter by letter, had been learned in association with the making of the letters
(447) and the sight of them, while the learning of the word pronunciation, as a whole, had been in connection with its sound.
But further still, in the same line. I do not think that we ever -- even in successive attentions to the very same thing under the most uniform conditions -- have exactly the same attention feeling twice. Why should not attention, like everything else, be subject to the changing effects of habit and accommodation? Indeed, it is the very outcome and exponent of these principles, as I have just been arguing. And then, too, dynamogenesis, the basis of all the excess energies which are crystallized into habits, still works on, and is working on in every attentive reaction which we make. For all these reasons, we see that no two acts of attention can be just the same. [12] And the variable element is the <MATH>&alpha</MATH> of the formula.
One additional point may be merely noted here; it has had some enforcement in earlier chapters. We should expect this change in motor reaction, from act to act of attention, to have some equivalent in consciousness; some equivalent apart from change in the particular content itself which stimulates the attention -- some generalized, vague, unanalyzable feelings. And so we have found. Recognition is one such feeling, and Belief is another. I have argued independently over them both -- apart from the genetic aspect of the case -- and found them to be just this, felt attitudes toward particular contents. [13]
Endnotes
- See the article already mentioned in the Philosophical Review, II., 1893, pp. 385 ff., for the statement of some of these points, with observations.
- Paulhan notices this influence of the attention (loc. cit., p. 43), but does not inquire into it.
- To quote my own case again -- I find it impossible to think of a French sentence without keeping my attention on the visual picture of the printed signs; but I can follow a German sentence by memories of speech movements with no trace of visual attention.
- On the original publication of the article containing this position, Professor Höffding, in a private letter, called my attention to the following quotation from his Outlines of Psychology (p. 316), which clearly takes the same general ground as to the cause of heightened intensities when attention is aroused: "It is possible that impulses return from the centres with which the voluntary concentration of consciousness is linked, to the centres of sensuous perception (as in other cases to motor centres), in which way their effect may be strengthened. This would be the physiological form of the psychological fact that an idea becomes clearer if we give ourselves up to picturing it " (italics mine). See also his reference to Wundt (Physiol. Psychologie, I., pp. 233 f.).
- Wallaschek (Zeit. für Psychologie, VII., Heft I, March, 1894, p. 67) criticises this view on the ground that only in persons of the motor type -- of speech, for example -- would there be the necessary 'motor associates.' But this is the reverse mistake to that made by Fere, noticed above in another connection, who says that the law of dynamogenesis makes it necessary that all should be 'motors' in type. Both fail to distinguish between the general dynamogenic influence of a stimulus, which, by the law of 'sensorimotor association,' implicates the attention, and, on the other hand, the kinaesthetic motor images of memory, which represent the particular movements, easy attention to which marks the 'motor type.' See also Appendix C, II.
- It is only what we would expect that, when the stimulus (signal) is not intense enough to carry its own discrimination, either the reaction takes place upon a false stimulus, or the attention shifts from the movement to the stimulus, and the time is lengthened.
- Cases in which the sensory time was shorter than the motor have, in fact, been reported by Cattell (Phil. Stud., VIII., 1892, p. 403), Flournoy (Arch. des Sci. Phy. et Nat., vol. 27, p. 575, and vol. 28, p. 319, quoted in Rev. Philos., April, 1893, p. 444), and Baldwin (Medical Record, April I5, 1893, p. 455). See also Titchener, Mind, October, 1895, and April, ~896; Angell and Moore, Psych. Rev., May, I896; Flournoy, Quelques Types de Réaction Simple, 1896. The explanation given in the text was proposed by me in the paper cited. See my extended report of results with discussion of those of Cattell and Flournoy, and a review case, in The Psychological Review, II., 1895 ('Studies from the Princeton Laboratory,' p. 259), and a defence of the 'type theory of simple reaction' in Mind, January, 1896.
- What is called 'tracery imitation' above, Chap. V., § 1.
- See above, Chap. XI., § 3. The chapters of James and Bradley (Appearance and Reality, Chap. IX.) are remarkable exceptions, however.
- Chap. X., § 3.
- Brain as Organ of Mind, pp. 60-62.
- I think it would not be difficult to test this theory of attention by the dynamogenic method of experiment suggested by Münsterberg, The Psychological Review, 1894, 441 ff.
- Cf. Chap. X., § 3. On Belief, see my Handbook, II., Chap. VII., the genetic theory of belief is worked out in the later work, Thought and Things. The doctrine of Recognition, based on the law of 'sensori-motor association,' was published in the Philos. Review, July, 1893. Professor Höffding, in a private communication, makes the criticism that, on my view, we would confuse two qualities which had been repeated the same number of times. This would mean that we have no differences of attention for the different sense qualities. But it is evident that that is not true, if I am right in saying that the actual motor content, a, is different for each quality, and that we so have different attentions, just as we have different memories, etc. His criticism shows -- what I said above -- that even the best psychologists still look upon attention as a relatively fixed 'faculty,' rather than as a shifting function of content.
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§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control
We are now in a position to see that voluntary movement has three distinct stages of development in each individual. We find the mind at first occupied with an object, presentation, or stimulus, which starts a muscular reaction, either native, acquired, or at random. Then a little later we find the mind occupied with a presentation or idea of the movement thus made, which, with its associates, tends to stimulate the corresponding motor processes, and thus to bring about the same movement. And at last we find the mind occupied with an object again, for the attainment of which the movement is a necessary but now a subconscious means.
The original 'end' of volition, therefore, is simply the image or picture which starts the imitative reaction. Suggestion turns out to be an original motor stimulus in volition, as truly as in the lower activities. The child attempts to speak, for example, with no attention to his organs of speech. He then learns that it is by muscular effort, by persistent imitation, that he must proceed. Accordingly, the muscular movement now becomes his end. He strains to set his vocal organs properly. His efforts to control the organs, however, throw him, at first, into great confusion and failure. But after more muscular control is acquired, the third stage gradually follows, as the movements become habitual. The
(449) end is now again a picture or object, and the muscular consciousness falls into the background' as, for example, in our developed adult speech, when we think only of the ideas which we wish to express
The theory of motor development now worked out throws light also, I think, on the vexed question of muscular control -- the regulation of movement in amount and direction, and its suppression, etc. It is easy to see that the material of volition, the ideas or copies attended to and imitated, are the means of holding the course of each movement in check by association. I can repeat a movement only because I am able to reinstate in memory the feeling of it, the copy elements of it. But by association, as we have seen, other elements, such as visual, or auditory, or touch, memories, may stand for the muscular memories. The whole management of a movement, therefore, depends upon the getting hold by the attention of the series of positions desired for the limb moved, and this can be done only by filling up the attention with the proper copy elements of sight, hearing or other, which release the proper series of motor discharges, and these discharges only.
The current theory of 'control' lends itself directly to this view, hinging, as it does, upon the matching, term by term, of the movements being accomplished with a remembered series, whether of sight, sound, or what not. The control of handwriting described above is a good instance. [1] The current theory, however, neglects the process by which the series to be matched is vividly held up for voluntary reproduction.
This lack we have attempted to supply. The view of attention given in what precedes, teaches us that the motor reaction of attention is a function of the content attended
(450) to, on the one hand; but, on the other hand, it is a part of the motor process in which the whole content finds its dynamogenic expression. The office of attention, therefore, is that of fixing the content steadily, on the sensory side, and at the same time of releasing the associated discharge movements, on the motor side. Attention has, in each case, as we have seen, grown up in exactly this way, both as an expression of motor reverberation from typical and constant accommodations, and also as itself the very beginning, by the law of 'excess,' of the useful discharges which are, in their acquisition, associated with the content in question.
Attention is the go-between between the copy imitated, and the imitation which copies it. It is, therefore, the central and essential fact in all voluntary muscular control.
A further application suggests the basis of a theory of inhibition. The inhibition of movement is of two kinds, positive and negative. Positive inhibition we have already found in many cases in the suppression of movements through pain. This is the basis of the direct intentional suppression of movements, even when pain does not attach to the movements as such; for with higher stages of mental development inhibition has become a generalized selected function though derived from particular adaptations secured under the stimulus of pain; just as is the case with positive movement which no longer has to be actually pleasurable. Negative inhibition, on the contrary, is just the absence of that attention which is necessary for the selection and preservation of a movement. Diffused excessive movements, which serve no purpose, are killed by the denial to them of that fixing attention which is necessary to render movements persistent, orderly, and habitual.
This theory of control by the attention seems so plain in its applications, that I have taken space for its summary
(451) statement here. Its development is not necessary, however, to the clear statement of our general theory, but it may be taken up in another place. [2]
