Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

to convince the reader that, besides the things we like for satisfaction of our instinctive needs and cravings, there are other things that we "just naturally like"--and the same with dislikes--and that these primary likes and dislikes have considerable importance in life. Other Proposed Elementary Feelings

Pleasantness and unpleasantness are the only feelings generally accepted as elementary, though several others have been suggested.

Wundt's tri-dimensional theory of feeling.

This author suggested that there were three pairs of feelings: pleasantness and unpleasantness; tension and its opposite, release or relief; and excitement and its opposite, which may be called numbness or subdued feeling. Thus there would be three dimensions of feeling, which could be represented by the three dimensions of space, and any given state of feeling could be described by locating it along each of the three dimensions. Thus, one moment, we may be in a pleasant, tense, excited state; another moment in a pleasant, relieved and subdued state; and another moment in an unpleasant, tense and subdued state, etc. As each feeling can also exist in various degrees, the total number of shades of feeling thus provided for would be very great, indeed.

Though this theory has awakened great interest, it has not won unqualified approval. Excitement and the rest are real enough states of feeling--no one doubts that--but the question is whether they are fit to be placed alongside of pleasantness and unpleasantness as elementary feelings. It {185} appears rather more likely that they are blends of sensations. In the excited states that have been most carefully studied, that is to say, in fear and anger, there is that big organic upstir, making itself felt as a blend of many internal sensations. Tension may very probably be the feeling of tense muscles, for tension occurs specially in expectancy, and the muscles are tense then.

Whether elementary or not, these feelings are worthy of note. It is interesting to examine the striving for a goal and the attainment of the goal with respect to each "dimension" of feeling. Striving is tense, attainment brings the feeling of release. Striving is often excited, but fatigue and drowsiness (seeking for rest) are numb, and self-assertion may be neutral in this respect, as in "cool assumption". Reaching the goal may be excited or not; all depends on the goal, whether it be striking your opponent or going to sleep. On the other hand, reaching the goal is practically always pleasant (weeping seems an exception here), while striving for a goal is pleasant or unpleasant according as progress is being made towards the goal, or stiff obstruction encountered.

The feeling of familiarity, and its opposite, the feeling of strangeness or newness, also have some claim to be considered here. The first time you see a person, he seems strange, the next few times he awakens in you the feeling of familiarity, after which he becomes so much a matter of course as to arouse no definite feeling of this sort, unless, indeed, a long time has elapsed since you saw him last; in this case the feeling of familiarity is particularly strong.

The feelings of doubt or hesitation, and of certainty or assurance, also deserve mention as possibly elementary.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter.

2. Complete the sentence, "I feel_____" in 20 different ways (not using synonyms), and measure the time required to do this.

3. What can be meant by speaking in psychology of only two feelings, when common speech recognizes so many?

4. If the states of mind designated by the words, "feeling sure", or "feeling bored", are compound states, what elements besides the feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness may enter into the compounds?

5. Attempt an analysis of the "worried feeling", by your own introspection, i.e., try to discover elementary feelings and sensations in this complex state of mind.

6. Following Wundt's three-dimensional scheme of feeling, analyze each of the following states of mind (for example, a child just admitted to the presence of the Christmas tree would be in a state of mind that is pleasant, tense, and excited):

(a) Watching a rocket go up and waiting for it to burst.
(b) Just after the rocket has burst.
(c) Waiting for the dentist to pull.
(d) Just after he has pulled.
(e) Enjoying a warm bed.
(f) Lying abed after waking, not quite able as yet to decide to get up.
(g) Seeing an automobile about to run down a child.

7. Make a list of six primary dislikes, and a list of six dislikes that are dependent on the instincts.

REFERENCES

For a much fuller treatment of the subject, see E. B. Titchener, Textbook of Psychology, 1909, pp. 225-264.

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CHAPTER X

SENSATION AN INVENTORY OF THE ELEMENTARY SENSATIONS OF THE DIFFERENT SENSES

With reflex action, instinct, emotion and feeling, the list of native mental activities is still incomplete. The senses are provided by nature, and the fundamental use of the senses goes with them. The child does not learn to see or hear, though he learns the meaning of what he sees and hears. He gets sensation as soon as his senses are stimulated, but recognition of objects and facts comes with experience. Hold an orange before his open eyes, and he sees, but the first time he doesn't see an orange. The adult sees an object, where the baby gets only sensation. "Pure sensation", free from all recognition, can scarcely occur except in the very young baby, for recognition is about the easiest of the learned accomplishments, and traces of it can be seen in the behavior of babies only a few days old.

Sensation is a response; it does not come to us, but is aroused in us by the stimulus. It is the stimulus that comes to us, and the sensation is our own act, aroused by the stimulus. Sensation means the activity of the receiving organ (or sense organ), of the sensory nerves, and of certain parts of the brain, called the sensory centers. Without the brain response, there is apparently no conscious sensation, so that the activity of the sense organ and sensory nerve is preliminary to the sensation proper. Sensation may be called the first response of the brain to the external stimulus. It is usually only the first in a series of brain {188} responses, the others consisting in the recognition of the object and the utilization of the information so acquired.

Sensation, as we know it in our experience, goes back in the history of the race to the primitive sensitivity (or irritability) of living matter, seen in the protozoa. These minute unicellular creatures, though having no sense organs--any more than they have muscles or digestive organs--respond to a variety of stimuli. They react to mechanical stimuli, as a touch or jar, to chemical stimuli of certain kinds, to thermal stimuli (heat or cold), to electrical stimuli, and to light. There are some forces to which they do not respond: magnetism, X-rays, ultraviolet light; and we ourselves are insensitive to these agents, which are not to be called stimuli, since they arouse no response.

The Sense Organs

In the development of the metazoa, or multicellular animals, specialization has occurred, some parts of the body becoming muscles with the primitive motility much developed, some parts becoming digestive organs, some parts conductors (the nerves) and some parts becoming specialized receptors or sense organs. A sense organ is a portion of the body that has very high sensitivity to some particular kind of stimulus. One sense organ is highly sensitive to one stimulus, and another to another stimulus. The eye responds to very minute amounts of energy in the form of light, but not in other forms; the ear responds to very minute amounts of energy in the form of sound vibrations, the nose to very minute quantities of energy in certain chemical forms.

There is only one thing that a sense organ always and necessarily contains, and that is the termination of a sensory nerve. Without that, the sense organ, being isolated, would have no effect on the brain or muscles or any other {189} part of the body, and would be entirely useless. The axons of the sensory nerve divide into fine branches in the sense organ, and thus are more easily aroused by the stimulus.

Besides the sensory axons, two other things are often found in a sense organ--sometimes one of the two, sometimes the other and sometimes both. First, there are special sense cells in a few sense organs; and second, in most sense organs there is accessory apparatus which, without being itself sensitive, assists in bringing the stimulus to the sense cells or sensory nerve ends.

Fig. 25.--Diagram of the taste end-organ. Within the "Taste bud" are seen two sense cells, and around the base of these cells are seen the terminations of two axons of the nerve of taste. (Figure text: surface of tongue, taste bud, pit)

Sense cells are present only in the eye, ear, nose and mouth--always in very sheltered situations. The taste cells are located in little pits opening upon the surface of the tongue. In the sides of these pits can be found little flask-shaped chambers, each containing a number of taste cells. The taste cell has a slender prolongation that protrudes from the chamber into the pit; and it is this slender tip of the cell that is exposed to the chemical stimulus of the {190} tasting substance. The stimulus arouses the taste cell, and this in turn arouses the ending of the sensory axon that twines about the base of the cell at the back of the chamber. The taste cell, or its tip, is extra sensitive to chemical stimuli, and its activity, aroused by the chemical stimulus, in turn arouses the axon and so starts a nerve current to the brain stem and eventually to the cortex.

Fig. 26.--The olfactory sense cells and their brain connections. (Figure text: axon to brain cortex, dendrites, synapses in brain stem, axons of sense cells sense cells in nose.)

The olfactory cells, located in a little recess in the upper and back part of the nose, out of the direct air currents going toward the lungs, are rather similar to the taste cells. They have fine tips reaching to the surface of the mucous membrane lining the nasal cavity and exposed to the chemical stimuli of odors. The olfactory cell has also a long slender branch extending from its base through the bone into the skull cavity and connecting there with dendrites of nerve cells. This central branch of the olfactory cell is, in fact, an axon; and it is peculiar in being an axon growing from a sense cell. This is the rule in invertebrates, but in vertebrates the sensory axon is regularly an outgrowth of a {191} nerve cell, and only in the nose do we find sense cells providing their own sensory nerve.

Fig. 27.--Sense cells and nerve cells of the retina. Light, reaching the retina from the interior of the eyeball (as shown in Fig. 28), passes through the nearly transparent retina till stopped by the pigment layer, and then and there arouses to activity the tips of the rods and cones. The rods and cones pass the impulse along to the bipolar cells and these in turn to the optic nerve cells, the axons of which extend by way of the optic nerve to the thalamus in the brain. (Figure text: pigment layer, rods, cones, light, bipolar Cells, optic Nerve Cells)

In the eye, the sense cells are the rods and cones of the retina. These are highly sensitive to light, or, it may be, to chemical or electrical stimuli generated in the pigment of the retina by the action of light. The rods are less highly developed than the cones. Both rods and cones connect at their base with neurones that pass the activity along through the optic nerve to the brain.

The internal ear contains sense cells of three rather similar kinds, all being "hair cells", Instead of a single {192} sensitive tip,