Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals
Psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and talent alone can work
them to useful results.
Meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may
pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of
consciousness. The indeterminateness of our paths of association _in
concreto_ is thus almost as striking a feature of them as the uniformity
of their abstract form. Start from any idea whatever, and the entire
range of your ideas is potentially at your disposal. If we take as the
associative starting-point, or cue, some simple word which I pronounce
before you, there is no limit to the possible diversity of suggestions
which it may set up in your minds. Suppose I say 'blue,' for example:
some of you may think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now
are suffering, then go off on thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly
of meteorology at large; others may think of the spectrum and the
physiology of color-vision, and glide into X-rays and recent physical
speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers
on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence. To
others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested; or
blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy, and a train of
associates connected with morbid psychology may proceed to unroll
themselves.
In the same person, the same word heard at different times will provoke,
in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations, either one of a
number of diverse possible associative sequences. Professor Muensterberg
performed this experiment methodically, using the same words four times
over, at three-month intervals, as 'cues' for four different persons who
were the subjects of observation. He found almost no constancy in their
associations taken at these different times. In short, the entire
potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of
its points. This is why we can never work the laws of association
forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never cipher
out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes
later. The elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts
of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly
turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so numerous and
ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact. But, although we
cannot work the laws of association forward, we can always work them
backwards. We cannot say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of
five minutes hence; but, whatever it may be, we shall then be able to
trace it through intermediary links of contiguity or similarity to what
we are thinking now. What so baffles our prevision is the shifting part
played by the margin and focus--in fact, by each element by itself of
the margin or focus--in calling up the next ideas.
For example, I am reciting 'Locksley Hall,' in order to divert my mind
from a state of suspense that I am in concerning the will of a relative
that is dead. The will still remains in the mental background as an
extremely marginal or ultra-marginal portion of my field of
consciousness; but the poem fairly keeps my attention from it, until I
come to the line, "I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of
time." The words 'I, the heir,' immediately make an electric connection
with the marginal thought of the will; that, in turn, makes my heart
beat with anticipation of my possible legacy, so that I throw down the
book and pace the floor excitedly with visions of my future fortune
pouring through my mind. Any portion of the field of consciousness that
has more potentialities of emotional excitement than another may thus be
roused to predominant activity; and the shifting play of interest now in
one portion, now in another, deflects the currents in all sorts of
zigzag ways, the mental activity running hither and thither as the
sparks run in burnt-up paper.
* * * * *
One more point, and I shall have said as much to you as seems necessary
about the process of association.
You just saw how a single exciting word may call up its own associates
prepotently, and deflect our whole train of thinking from the previous
track. The fact is that every portion of the field _tends_ to call up
its own associates; but, if these associates be severally different,
there is rivalry, and as soon as one or a few begin to be effective the
others seem to get siphoned out, as it were, and left behind. Seldom,
however, as in our example, does the process seem to turn round a single
item in the mental field, or even round the entire field that is
immediately in the act of passing. It is a matter of _constellation_,
into which portions of fields that are already past especially seem to
enter and have their say. Thus, to go back to 'Locksley Hall,' each word
as I recite it in its due order is suggested not solely by the previous
word now expiring on my lips, but it is rather the effect of all the
previous words, taken together, of the verse. "Ages," for example, calls
up "in the foremost files of time," when preceded by "I, the heir of all
the"--; but, when preceded by "for I doubt not through the,"--it calls
up "one increasing purpose runs." Similarly, if I write on the
blackboard the letters A B C D E F,... they probably suggest to you G H
I.... But, if I write A B A D D E F, if they suggest anything, they
suggest as their complement E C T or E F I C I E N C Y. The result
depending on the total constellation, even though most of the single
items be the same.
My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, that it follows
from it that, in working associations into your pupils' minds, you must
not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible.
Couple the desired reaction with numerous constellations of
antecedents,--don't always ask the question, for example, in the same
way; don't use the same kind of data in numerical problems; vary your
illustrations, etc., as much as you can. When we come to the subject of
memory, we shall learn still more about this.
So much, then, for the general subject of association. In leaving it for
other topics (in which, however, we shall abundantly find it involved
again), I cannot too strongly urge you to acquire a habit of thinking of
your pupils in associative terms. All governors of mankind, from doctors
and jail-wardens to demagogues and statesmen, instinctively come so to
conceive their charges. If you do the same, thinking of them (however
else you may think of them besides) as so many little systems of
associating machinery, you will be astonished at the intimacy of insight
into their operations and at the practicality of the results which you
will gain. We think of our acquaintances, for example, as characterized
by certain 'tendencies.' These tendencies will in almost every instance
prove to be tendencies to association. Certain ideas in them are always
followed by certain other ideas, these by certain feelings and impulses
to approve or disapprove, assent or decline. If the topic arouse one of
those first ideas, the practical outcome can be pretty well foreseen.
'Types of character' in short are largely types of association.
X. INTEREST
At our last meeting I treated of the native tendencies of the pupil to
react in characteristically definite ways upon different stimuli or
exciting circumstances. In fact, I treated of the pupil's instincts. Now
some situations appeal to special instincts from the very outset, and
others fail to do so until the proper connections have been organized in
the course of the person's training. We say of the former set of objects
or situations that they are _interesting_ in themselves and originally.
Of the latter we say that they are natively uninteresting, and that
interest in them has first to be acquired.
No topic has received more attention from pedagogical writers than that
of interest. It is the natural sequel to the instincts we so lately
discussed, and it is therefore well fitted to be the next subject which
we take up.
Since some objects are natively interesting and in others interest is
artificially acquired, the teacher must know which the natively
interesting ones are; for, as we shall see immediately, other objects
can artificially acquire an interest only through first becoming
associated with some of these natively interesting things.
The native interests of children lie altogether in the sphere of
sensation. Novel things to look at or novel sounds to hear, especially
when they involve the spectacle of action of a violent sort, will always
divert the attention from abstract conceptions of objects verbally taken
in. The grimace that Johnny is making, the spitballs that Tommy is ready
to throw, the dog-fight in the street, or the distant firebells
ringing,--these are the rivals with which the teacher's powers of being
interesting have incessantly to cope. The child will always attend more
to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says. During the
performance of experiments or while the teacher is drawing on the
blackboard, the children are tranquil and absorbed. I have seen a
roomful of college students suddenly become perfectly still, to look at
their professor of physics tie a piece of string around a stick which he
was going to use in an experiment, but immediately grow restless when he
began to explain the experiment. A lady told me that one day, during a
lesson, she was delighted at having captured so completely the attention
of one of her young charges. He did not remove his eyes from her face;
but he said to her after the lesson was over, "I looked at you all the
time, and your upper jaw did not move once!" That was the only fact that
he had taken in.
Living things, then, moving things, or things that savor of danger or of
blood, that have a dramatic quality,--these are the objects natively
interesting to childhood, to the exclusion of almost everything else;
and the teacher of young children, until more artificial interests have
grown up, will keep in touch with her pupils by constant appeal to such
matters as these. Instruction must be carried on objectively,
experimentally, anecdotally. The blackboard-drawing and story-telling
must constantly come in. But of course these methods cover only the
first steps, and carry one but a little way.
Can we now formulate any general principle by which the later and more
artificial interests connect themselves with these early ones that the
child brings with him to the school?
Fortunately, we can: there is a very simple law that relates the
acquired and the native interests with each other.
_Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through
becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
The two associated objects grow, as it were, together: the interesting
portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not
interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real
and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing._ The odd
circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source, the
objects taken together being more interesting, perhaps, than the
originally interesting portion was by itself.
This is one of the most striking proofs of the range of application of
the principle of association of ideas in psychology. An idea will infect
another with its own emotional interest when they have become both
associated together into any sort of a mental total. As there is no
limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may
enter, one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived.
You will understand this abstract statement easily if I take the most