Educational psychology; briefer course

Preface

Our knowledge of human instincts and capacities, of the processes of learning and remembering, of mental work and fatigue, and of individual differences and their causes has been much increased in the past score of years. This knowledge I have organized for advanced students in separate volumes on The Original Nature of Man, The Psychology of Learning, Work and Fatigue and Individual Differences. This Briefer Course represents a simpler treatment of the more fundamental subject matter of these volumes, organized as a text-book in Educational Psychology for students in colleges and normal schools.

Its scope is sufficiently indicated by the table of contents. Its method is that of straightforward and systematic presentation of principles. The wise teacher will introduce students to these principles through problems made real and intelligible by the students' own experiences and will assist students to verify them by observation and experiment and to apply them to appropriate matters of educational theory and practice.

Certain topics are included which are a little beyond the interests and capacities of the lowest third of college students, notably the anatomy and physiology of original tendencies, the causes of changes in the rate of improvement, the effect of equal amounts of practice upon individual differences, and the quantitative treatment of learning, fatigue and individual differences. These facts and principles, however, if mastered, will simplify and economize thought about important educational problems, and I make no apology for including them. If education is to be a serious profession, preparation for it should not avoid matters which require study and are beyond the interests of dull minds.

Teachers College, April, 1914

PART I Chapter Pagh

I. General Characteristics of Original Tendencies i

Original versus Learned Tendencies The Problems of Original Nature Names for Original Tendencies The Components of an Original Tendency The Action of Original Tendencies

II. Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capacities ii

Sensory Capacities Original Attentiveness *~~ Gross Bodily Control

Food-getting, Protective Responses and Anger

III. Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capa-

cities : Responses to the Behavior of other Human Beings 27

Motherly Behavior

Responses to the Presence, Approval and

Scorn of Men Mastering and Submissive Behavior Other Social Instincts Imitation

General Imitativeness The Imitation of Particular Forms of Behavior

IV. Original Satisfiers and Annoyers 50

The Original Nature of Wants, Interests and Motives

vu

I CONTENTS

Chapter Page

■^ The Principle of Readiness

The Explanation of 'Multiple Response' or 'Varied Reaction'

V. Tendencies to Minor Bodily Movements and

Cerebral Connections 59

Vocalization, Visual Exploration and Manipulation Other Possible Specializations Play

VI. The Capacity to Learn 69

•^•'•The Laws of Learning Limitations to Modifiability The Supposed Formation of Connections by

'Faculties' The Supposed Formation of Connections by

the Perception of Their Action in Another The Supposed Formation of Connections by

the Power of an" Idea to Produce the Act

which It Represents

VII. t he Anatomy and Physiology of Original

Tendencies 84

The Structure of the Neurones The Arrangement of the Neurones Sensitivity and Conductivity The Physiology of the Capacity to Learn and of Readiness

VIII. Order and Dates of Appearance and Disappearance of Original Tendencies 100

The Recapitulation Theory The Utility Theory

The Gradual Waxing of Delayed Instincts and Capacities

CONTENTS IX

Chapteb Page

The Probable Frequency of Transitoriness in Original Tendencies

IX. The Value and Use of Original Tendencies 116 The Doctrine of Nature's Infallibility Defects in Man's Original Nature

Part II

X. The Laws of Learning in Animals. .......... 125

Samples of Animal Learning Characteristics of Animal Learning

XI. Associative Learning in Man 138

Varieties of Learning The Laws of Habit

XII. Learning by Analysis and Selection 153

Analysis and Selection in General The Subtler Forms of Analysis The Higher Forms of Selection

XIII. Mental Functions 173

The Organization of Connections

Characteristics of Mental Functions

The Concepts of Efficiency and Improvement

XIV. The Amount, Rate and Limit of Improvement 186

Practice Curves

The Frequency and Rapidity of Improvement

under Experimental Conditions Differences amongst Individuals in the Rate

of Improvement in the Same Function The Limit of Improvement

CONTENTS Chapter Page

XV. The Factors and Conditions of Improvement 202 The Elements in Improvement External Conditions of Improvement Psychological Conditions of Improvement Educational Conditions of Improvement

XVI. Changes in Rate of Improvement 225

Illustrative Cases

The Causes Determining Changes in the Rate of Improvement

XVII. The Permanence of Improvement, Deterioration by Disuse Results of Experimental Studies General Conclusions

XVIII. The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function upon the Efficiency of

Other Functions 259

Facilitation and Inhibition

Changes in Expectation of Mental Discipline

The General Rationale of Mental Discipline

XIX. Mental Fatigue 283

The Decrease in Efficiency of a Single Function under Continuous Exercise The Curve of Work The Curve of Satisfyingness

XX. Mental Fatigue (continued) 305

The Influence of Continuous Mental Work, Special or General, upon General Ability Exnerimental Results

General Theories of Mental Work and Fatigue The Hygiene of Mental Work

CONTENTS XI

Chapter Page

PART III Individual Differences and Their Causes

XXI. Introduction 331

XXII. The Causes of Individual Differences: Sex

and Race 340

Sex Differences in Ability

Sex Differences in Traits Not Measured

Objectively A Sample Study of Racial Differences

XXIII. The Influence of Immediate Ancestry or

Family 354

The Variability of Individuals of the Same

Sex and Ancestry Measurements of Resemblances in Related

XXIV. The Influence of Maturity 369

XXV. The Influence of the Environment 376

Difficulties in Estimating the Amount of Influence of the Environment

Measurements of the Influence of the Environment

The Method of Action of Differences in Environment

The Relative Importance of Original Nature and Environment

XXVI. The Nature and Amount of Individual Differences in Single Traits 402

The Continuity of Mental Variations The Relative Frequency of Different Amounts of Difference

X1J CONTENTS

Chapter Page

XXVIL The Nature and Amount of Individual Differences in Combinations of Traits: Types

of Intellect and Character 411

A Sample Problem : Individual Differences in

Imagery The Theory of Multiple Types and the Single- Type Theory Individual Differences in the Average Amount of a Combination of Traits

Bibliography of References Made in the Text 423

Educational Psychology

Briefer Course PART I chapter i

General Characteristics of Original Tendencies

The arts and sciences serve human welfare by helping man to change the world, including man himself, for the better. The word education refers especially to those elements of science and art which are concerned with changes in man himself. Wisdom and economy in improving man's wants and in making him better able to satisfy them depend upon knowledge — first. of what his nature is, apart from education, and second, of the laws which govern changes in it. It is the province of educational psychology to give such knowledge of the original nature of man and of the laws of modifiability or learning, in the case of intellect, character and skill.

A man's nature and the changes that take place in it may be described in terms of the responses — of thought, feeling, action and attitude — which he makes, and of the bonds by which these are connected with the situations which life offers. Any fact of intellect, character or skill means a tendency to respond in a certain way to a certain situation — involves a situation or state of affairs influencing the man, a response or state of affairs in the man, and a connection or bond whereby the latter is the result of the former.

ORIGINAL VerSHS LEARNED TENDENCIES

Any man possesses at the very start of his life — that is, at the moment when the ovum and spermatozoon which are to produce him have united — numerous well-defined tendencies to future behavior.* Between the situations which he will meet and the responses which he will make to them, pre-formed bonds exist. It is already determined by the constitution of these two germs, that under certain circumstances he will see and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and morals, as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part the consequence of the nature of the embryo in the first moment of its life. What a man is and does throughout life is a result of whatever constitution he has at the start and of all the forces that act upon it before and after birth. I shall use the term 'original nature' for the former and 'environment' for the latter.

THE PROBLEMS OF ORIGINAL NATURE

Elementary psychology acquaints us with the fact that men are, apart from education, equipped with tendencies to feel and act in certain ways in certain circumstances — that the response to be made to a situation may be determined by man's inborn organization. It is, in fact, a general law that, other things being equal, the response to any situation will be that which

* Since the term, behavior, has acquired certain technical meanings in its use by psychologists, and since it will be frequently used in this book, the meaning which will be attached to it here should perhaps be stated. I use it to refer to those activities of thought, feeling, and conduct in the broadest sense which an animal — here, man — exhibits, which are omitted from discussion by the physics, chemistry and ordinary physiology of today, and which are referred by popular usage to intellect, character, skill and temperament. Behavior, then, is not contrasted with, but inclusive of, conscious life.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 3

is by original nature connected with that situation, or with some situation like it. Any neurone will, when stimulated, transmit the stimulus, other things being equal, to the neurone with which it is by inborn organization most closely connected. The basis of intellect and character is this fund of unlearned tendencies, this original arrangement of the neurones in the brain.

The original connections may develop at various dates and may exist for only limited times; their waxing and waning may be sudden or gradual. They are the starting point for all education or other human control. The aim of education is to perpetuate some of them, to eliminate some, and to modify or redirect others. They are perpetuated by providing the stimuli adequate to arouse them and give them exercise, and by associating satisfaction with their action. They are eliminated by withholding these stimuli so that they abort through disuse, or by associating discomfort with their action. They are redirected by substituting, in the situation-connection-rcsponse series, another response instead of the undesirable original one; or by attaching the response to another situation in connection with which it works less or no harm, or even positive good.

It is a first principle of education to utilize any individual's original nature as a means to changing him for the better — to produce in him the information, habits, powers, interests and ideals which are desirable.

The behavior of man in the family, in business, in the state, in religion and in every other affair of life is rooted in his unlearned, original equipment of instincts and capacities. All schemes of improving human life must take account of man's original nature, most of all when their aim is to reverse or counteract it.

NAMES FOR ORIGINAL TENDENCIES

Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, divide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection between the situation and the response is very hard to modify and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the connection or response to which it leads is called a reflex. Thus the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a certain spot. It is hard to lessen, to increase, or otherwise control the movement, and, given the situation, the response almost always comes. When the response is more indefinite, the situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a situation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of responses to a very complex situation, and when the connection's final degree of strength is commonly due to very large contributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or tendency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond to the circumstances of school education by achievement in learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholarship.

There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, or between instincts and the still less easily describable original tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with respect to the nature of the responses from such as are single, simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly com-

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 5

pound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's life and amongst individuals. They range with respect to the nature of the situation from simple facts like temperature, oxygen or humidity, to very complex facts like 'meeting suddenly and unexpectedly a large animal when in the dark without human companions,' and include extra-bodily, bodily, and what would be commonly called purely mental, situations. They range with respect to the bond or connection from slight modifiability to great modifiability, and from very close likeness amongst individuals to fairly wide variability.

Much labor has been spent in trying to make hard and fast distinctions between reflexes and instincts and between instincts and these vaguer predispositions which are here called capacities. It is more useful and more scientific to avoid such distinctions in thought, since in fact there is a continuous gradation.

THE COMPONENTS OF AN ORIGINAL TENDENCY

A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or connection whereby that response is made to that situation. For instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist without the existence of a connection therewith of any further exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year-old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his

D THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN

response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound.

Original nature seems to decide that the individual will respond somehow to certain situations more often than it decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make certain responses more often than it decides just when he will make them. So, for convenience in thinking about man's unlearned equipment, this appearance of multiple response to one same situation and multiple causation of one same response may be taken roughly as the fact.

It must not, however, be taken to mean that the result of an action set up in the sensory neurones by a situation is essentially unpredictable — that, for instance, exactly the same neurone-action (paralleling, let us say, the sight of a dog by a certain two-year-old child) may lead, in the two-year-old, now to the act of crying, at another time to shy retreat, at another to effusive joy, and at still another to curious examination of the newcomer, all regardless of any modification by experience. On the contrary, in the same organism the same neurone-action will always produce the same result — in the same individual the really same situation will always produce the same response. The apparent existence of an original sensitivity unconnected with any one particular response, so that apparently the same cause produces different results, is to be explained in one of two ways. First, the apparently same situations may really be different, Thus, the sight of a dog to an infant in its mother's arms is not the same situation as the sight of a dog to an infant alone on the doorstep. Being held in its mother's arms is a part of the situation that may account for the response of mild curiosity in the former case and fear in the latter. Second, if the situations are really identical, the apparently same organism really differs. Thus a dog seen by a child,

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7

healthy, rested and calm, may lead to only curiosity, whereas, if seen by the same child, ill, fatigued, and nervously irritable, it may lead to fear.

Similarly, the really same response is never made to different situations by the same organism. When the same response seems to be made to different situations, closer inspection will show that the responses do differ; or that the situations were, in respect to the element that determined the response, identical ; or that the organism is itself different. Thus, though 'a ball seen,' 'a tin soldier seen,' and 'a rattle seen' alike provoke 'reaching for/ the total responses do differ, the central nervous system being provoked to three different responses manifested as three different sense-impressions — of a ball, of a tin soldier, and of a rattle. Thus, if 'ball grasped,' 'tin soldier grasped,' and 'rattle grasped' alike provoke 'throwing,' it is because only one particular component, common to the three situations, is effective in determining the act. Thus, if a child now weeps whenever spoken to, whereas before he wept only when hurt or scolded, it is because he is now exhausted, excited, or otherwise changed.

The original connections between situation and response are never due to chance in its true sense, but there are many minor cooperating forces by which a current of conduction in the same sensory neurones or receptors may, on different occasions, diverge to produce different results in behavior, and by which very different sensory stimulations may converge to a substantially common consequence.

One may use several useful abstract schemes by which to think of man's original equipment of reflexes, instincts and capacities. Perhaps the most convenient is a series of S-R connections of three types. Some are of the type — Si leads to R u its peculiar sequent ; some are of the type — Si leads to R x or R 2 or R 3 or R 4 or R 5 , etc., according to very minor casual contributory causes ; some are of the type — Si leads to R+r 1? S 2 leads to R+r 2 , S 3 leads to R-pr 3 etc., where r x> r 2 and r 3 are minor results.

Graphically this scheme is represented by Figs. 1, 2 and 3.

Fig. i. Sk.

FTr - ■ s_ s. s.

*

tm

Fig. 3. Sl

R

Besides such a system of tendencies deciding which response any given situation will produce, there are certain tendencies that decide the status of features common to all situation-response connections. There is, for example, in man an original tendency whereby any connection once made tends, other things being equal, to persist. There is also a tendency whereby any connection or response may or may not be in readiness to be made — may be excited to action easily or with difficulty. These tendencies toward the presence or absence of a certain feature in all connections or responses will be examined by themselves in due time.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 9

THE ACTION OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES

We can imagine a man's life so arranged that one after another original tendency should be called into play, each by itself. Let him be in a certain status, and let, successively, the light grow five times as intense, snuff be blown up his nostrils, a dear friend approach, and the earth quake, without in any case any other changes whatever either in the surroundings or in his internal status. Then the pupils of his eyes would contract, he would sneeze, he would smile, and he would start.

The original tendencies of man, however, rarely act one at a time in isolation one from another. Life apart from learning would not be a simple serial arrangement, over and over, of a hundred or so situations, each a dynamic unit ; and of a hundred or so responses, fitted to these situations by a one-to-one correspondence. On the contrary, they cooperate in multitudinous combinations. Their combination may be apparent in behavior, as when the tendencies to look at a bright moving object, to reach for a small object passing a foot away, and to smile at a smiling familiar face combine to make a baby smilingly fixate and reach for the watch which his father swings. Or the combination may take place unobserved in the nervous system, as when a large animal suddenly approaching a solitary child makes him run and hide, though the child in question would neither run nor hide at solitude, at the presence of the animal, or at the sudden approach of objects in general.

It is also the case that any given situation does not act absolutely as a unit, producing either one total response or none at all. Its effect is the total effect of its elements, of which now one, now another may predominate in determining response, according to cooperating forces without and within the man. The action of the situations which move man's original

10 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OE MAX

nature is not that of some thousands of keys each of which unlocks one door and does nothing else whatever. Any situation is a complex, producing a complex effect ; and so, if attendant circumstances van;, a variable effect. In any case it does, so to speak, what it can.

chapter ii Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capacities

I shall not give a complete inventory of human original tendencies, much less a full description of each one of them. Some of them, such as the tendencies directly concerned in food-getting, are of little consequence to school education. Concerning some, science can give us little information beyond what common-sense observation already reveals. Some, such as the tendencies to respond to water in its common forms, to wind, to thunder, to strange men, to large animals approaching one suddenly, to the dark, to various sorts of blows, clutches and restraints, to enclosure, to slimy things, creeping things, snakes, blood, pus, entrails and the like, are not well enough known to be safely made the basis for educational practice.

The account given here will serve two purposes. First, it will list and describe some of the unlearned tendencies in man which education has oftenest to work with; and, second, it will form the habit of seeking to replace the vague facts that man has instincts of 'pugnacity,' 'gregariousness,' 'cruelty,' 'curiosity,' 'constructiveness,' 'play,' and the like, by definite descriptions of what the responses are in each of such cases, and what the situations are to which they are bound.

sensory capacities

To certain situations man responds originally by special changes in the first sensory neurones and, through these, by

ii special changes in other neurones. He is thus affected by the situation 'a certain substance in touch with the olfactory membrane' as he is not by the situation 'that substance in touch with his fingers.' To the general pressure, absorption of heat and what not that the substance causes in both cases, there are added, in the former case, special effects, notably the excitement of certain neurones giving the sensation of smell. Well*-known illustrations of original tendencies to sensitivity are the capacities to receive special impressions via the cones of the retina from light waves of 450 to 750 million million vibrations per second, that are not received from those of 350 million million vibrations (the infra-red) ; and to be influenced by air waves of 30 to 30,000 vibrations per second as one is not by air waves of 50,000 and over per second, and the like. All the remaining original tendencies hang by these tendencies to be sensitive to certain situations in ways in which a stone, a drop of water, or a potato-plant is not. Sensitivity, or impressibility, or receptivity, is the necessary preliminary to attention, approach, flight, and all other features of original intellect and character.

It must not be supposed that the neurone-action which is set up by a given stimulus in touch with a given senseorgan in a trained adult can fairly be taken as that by which he would have responded to the same situation originally. Even in sensory capacities original and eventual nature differ. The states of consciousness which vibrations of the ether of a given rate, or the air-vibrations caused by a given tuning fork, or the presence on the tip of the tongue of a tiny drop of saturated salt-solution, and the like, provoke by their original connections are probably very unlike the states of consciousness which the trained analytical psychologist knows. The latter does not, by attending to one after another feature of

SENSITIVITY 13

the sensed world, eliminate the results of acquired connections. On the contrary, his analysis itself occurs precisely by acquiring new connections. The overtone which one hears along with the fundamental, after training in getting it separately and in listening for it in the complex, is created by forming, with a part of the stimulus, connections which that part originally lacked and so letting it produce a consciousness which it did not originally produce. The original capacities of sensation do not give us the clear sounds, colors, pressures, degrees of heat and cold, and the like, in which long experience has taught us to feel the world. To get an idea of the way the world would be sensed apart from training, we must subtract all that we know about it, and all the definite 'things,' 'qualities' and 'relations' which have, in the course of training, been analyzed out of the flux of gross sensations. We must take as types, the sensations which an adult psychologist gets from suffocation, heart-burn, itching or nausea rather than those which he gets from a black dot, a 100-vibration tuning fork, or a band of spectral light.

For educational theory and practice, indeed, it is often more instructive to consider what is not original in human sensitiveness to events than what is. That 'dead' and 'bead' are seen by an adult reader as they are not by the beginner; that v does not look the same to one who cannot add or count as it does to us; that the separate tones in a chord may not be heard by original nature — such facts as these are the most significant results which a student of education gets from surveying sensory capacities. Just as the training of the expert musician makes him hear a symphony as the beginner does not, or as the expert tea-taster has acquired tastes which the same objects once did not give, — so training in reading, mathematics and geography makes a pupil see letters, words, geometrical forms, magnitudes, collections, maps and photographs anew; and so the general training of infancy changes the original perceptions in response to the different vibrationrates of light, degrees of temperature, or amplitudes of sound waves.

ORIGINAL ATTENTIVENESS

Of the situations to which man is sensitive some originally excite the further responses — of disposing him, especially his sense organs and central nervous system, to be more emphatically impressed thereby — which we call responses of attention to the situations in question. Thus, he moves his head and eyes so that the light rays from a bright-colored object moving across the visual field are kept upon or near the spot of clear vision. The features which are so selected for special influence upon man vary with sex and age, but are substantially covered by the rule that man is originally attentive ( i ) to sudden change and sharp contrasts and (2) to all the situations to which lie has further tendencies to respond, as by flight, pursuit, repulsion, play and the like.

Since, as will be seen in the following chapters, man has tendencies to respond to an enormous range of situations by visual exploration, manipulation, curiosity and experimentation, his attentiveness is omnivorous to an extent not approached by any other animals save the monkeys, and far from equalled by them. Very early the human infant devotes a large fraction of his waking hours to watching what is and happens in his neighborhood. When he gains control of reaching and grasping he examines what he can move. AYhen he gains power to move about, he attends to almost every object that he can get to until its possibilities as a stimulus to manipulation and experimentation are exhausted. In the meantime, parts of his own body and the sounds that he and the persons

BODILY CONTROL 1 5

and things about him make have been selected from the total medleys in which they inhere by the preparation of the sense-organs, and perhaps of the neurones associated therewith, to be stimulated by this or that sight or sound or touch.

One is tempted to assert that man is originally attentive to everything until its novelty wears off. But certain notable lacks show that original attentiveness is the sum of many particular tendencies and not an indifferent general capacity. For example, man lacks the attentiveness to small differences in smells, or small intrusions of new smells into a familiar medley, which is so characteristic of many mammals.

GROSS BODILY CONTROL

How far man's management of his body in holding up his head, sitting, standing, walking, running, stooping, jumping up, jumping down, leaping at, crouching, lying down, rolling over, climbing, dodging, stooping to pick up, raising oneself again, balancing, clinging, pushing with arms and with legs, pulling with arms, and in such other movements of position, locomotion and the displacement of large objects as man has in common with the primates in general, is unlearned, is still a disputed question. Reputable opinion can be cited in support of remote extremes.