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

keeping the main stream of energy directed into the task instead of toward the distracting stimuli. Effort is necessary when the main task is uninteresting, or when the distraction is specially attractive, or even when the distraction is something new and strange and likely to arouse curiosity. But one may grow accustomed or "adapted" to an oft-recurring distraction, so as to sidetrack it without effort; in other words, a habit of inattention to the distracting stimulus may be formed. There is another, quite different way of overcoming a distraction, which works very well where it can be employed, and that is to couple the distraction to the main task, so as to deal with both together. An example is seen in piano playing. The beginner at the piano likes to play with the right band alone, because striking a note with the left hand distracts him from striking the proper note with the right. But, after practice, he couples the two hands, strikes the bass note of a chord with the left hand while his right strikes the other notes of the same chord, and much prefers two-handed to one-handed playing. In short, to overcome a distraction, you either sidetrack it or else couple it to your main task. Doing Two Things at Once

The subject of distraction brings to mind the question that is often asked, "Can any one do two things at once?" In this form, the question admits of but one answer, for we {261} are always doing at least two things at once, provided we are doing anything else besides breathing. We have no trouble in breathing and walking at the same time, nor in seeing while breathing and walking, nor even in thinking at the same time. But breathing, walking, and seeing are so automatic as to require no attention. The more important question then, is whether we can do two things at once, when each demands careful attention.

The redoubtable Julius Caesar, of happy memory, is said to have been able to dictate at once to several copyists. Now, Caesar's copyists were not stenographers, but wrote in long-hand, so that he could speak much faster than they could write. What he did, accordingly, was undoubtedly to give the first copyist a start on the first letter he wished to send, then turn to the second and give him a start on the second letter, and so on, getting back to the first in time to keep him busy. Quite an intellectual feat, certainly! But not a feat requiring absolutely simultaneous attention to several different matters. In a small way, any one can do something of the same kind. It is not impossible to add columns of numbers while reciting a familiar poem; you get the poem started and then let it run on automatically for a few words while you add a few numbers, switch back to the poem and then back to the adding, and so on. But in all this there is no doing of two things, attentively, at the same instant of time.

You may be able, however, to combine two acts into a single coördinated act, in the way just described under the head of distraction, and give undivided attention to this compound act.

The Span of Attention

Similar to the question whether we can attentively perform more than a single act at a time is the question of {262} how many different objects we can attend to at once. The "span of attention" for objects of any given kind is measured by discovering how many such objects can be clearly seen, or heard, or felt, in a single instant of time. Measurement of this "span" is one of the oldest experiments in psychology. Place a number of marbles in a little box, take a single peek into the box and see if you know how many marbles are there. Four or five you can get in a single glance, but with more there you become uncertain.

In the laboratory we have "exposure apparatus" for displaying a card for a fifth of a second or less, just enough time for a single glance. Make a number of dots or strokes on the card and see whether the subject knows the number on sight. He can tell four or five, and beyond that makes many mistakes.

Expose letters not making any word and he can read about four at a glance. But if the letters make familiar words, he can read three or four words at a glance. If the words make a familiar phrase, he gets a phrase of several words, containing as many as twenty letters, at a single glance.

Expose a number of little squares of different colors, and a well-trained subject will report correctly as many as five colors, though he cannot reach this number every time.

Summary of the Laws of Attention

Bringing together now what we have learned regarding the higher and more difficult forms of attention, as revealed by sustained attention and work under distraction, by the span of attention and by trying to do two things at once, we find the previously stated three laws of attention further illustrated, and a couple of new laws making their appearance.

(1) The law of selection still holds good in these more {263} difficult performances, since only one attentive response is made at the same instant of time. Automatic activities may be simultaneously going on, but any two attentive responses seem to be inconsistent with each other, so that the making of one excludes the other, in accordance with the general law of selection.

What shall we say, however, of reading four disconnected letters at the same time, or of seeing clearly four colors at the same time? Here, it would seem, several things are separately attended to at once. The several things are similar, and close together, and the responses required are all simple and much alike. Such responses, under such very favorable conditions, are perhaps, then, not inconsistent with each other, so that two, three, or even four such attentive responses may be made at the same time.

(2) The law of advantage holds good, as illustrated by the fact that some distractions are harder to resist than others.

(3) The law of shifting holds good, as illustrated by the constant movement of attention, even when it is "sustained", and by the alternation between two activities when we are trying to carry them both along simultaneously.

(4) The law of sustained attention, or of tendency in attention, is the same old law of tendency that has shown itself repeatedly in earlier chapters. A tendency, when aroused to activity, facilitates responses that are in its line and inhibits others. A tendency is thus a strong factor of advantage, and it limits the shifting of attention.

(5) A new law has come to light, the law of combination, which reads as follows: a single response may be made to two or more stimuli; or, two or more stimuli may arouse a single joint response.

Even though, in accordance with the law of selection, only one attentive response is made at the same time, more than {264} one stimulus may be dealt with by this single attentive response. Groups of four dots are grasped as units, familiar words are grasped as units. Notice that these units are our own units, not external units. Physically, a row of six dots is as much a unit as a row of four, but we grasp the four as a unit in a way that we cannot apply to the six. Physically, six letters are as much a unit when they do not form a word as when they do; but we can make a unitary response to the six in the one case and not in the other. The response is a unit, though aroused by a number of separate stimuli.

The law of combination, from its name, is open to a possible misconception, as if we reached out and grasped and combined the stimuli, whereas ordinarily we do nothing to the stimuli, except to see them and recognize them, or in some such way respond to them. The combination is something that happens in us; it is our response. If the expression were not so cumbersome, we might more accurately name this law that of "unitary response to a plurality of stimuli".

Sometimes, indeed, we do make an actual motor response to two or more stimuli, as when we strike a chord of several notes on the piano. The law of combination still holds good here, since the movements of the two hands are coördinated into a single act, which is thought of as a unit ("striking a chord"), attended to as a unit, and executed as a unit. Such coördinated movements may be called "higher motor units", and we shall find much to say regarding them when we come to the subject of learned reactions. The law of combination, all in all, will be found later to have extreme importance in learned reactions.

Passing now to another side of the study of attention, we shall immediately come across a sixth law to add to our list.

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Attention and Degree of Consciousness

Up to this point, the introspective side of the psychology of attention has not been considered. One of the surest of all introspective observations belongs right here, to the effect that we are more conscious of that to which we are attending than of anything else. Of two stimuli acting at once upon us, we are the more conscious of that one which catches our attention; of two acts that we perform simultaneously, that one is more conscious that is performed attentively.

We need not be entirely unconscious of the act or the stimulus to which we are not attending. We may be dimly conscious of it. There are degrees of consciousness. Suppose, for example, you are looking out of the window while "lost in thought". You are most conscious of the matter of your thoughts, but conscious to a degree of what you see out of the window. Your eyes are focused on some particular object outside, and you are more conscious of this than of other objects seen in indirect vision, though even of these last you are not altogether unconscious. Consciousness shades off from high light to dim background.

The "field of attention" is the maximum or high light of consciousness; it comprises the object under attentive observation, the reaction attentively performed. The "field of consciousness" includes the field of attention and much besides. It includes objects of which we are vaguely aware, desires active but not clearly formulated, feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness, of tension, excitement, confidence, etc.

Apparently the field of consciousness shades off gradually into the field of unconscious activity. Some physiological processes go on unconsciously, and very habitual movements may be almost or entirely unconscious. The boundary {266} between what is vaguely conscious and what is entirely unconscious is necessarily very vague itself, but the probability is that the field of consciousness is broader than we usually suspect, and that many activities that we ordinarily think of as unconscious, because we do not observe them at the time nor remember them later, lie really near the margin of the field of consciousness, but inside that field. "Unconscious motives", such as spite or pride often seem to be, are probably vaguely conscious rather than unconscious. We shall return to the fascinating topic of the unconscious at the close of the book.

Degree of consciousness does not always tally with intensity of sensation or energy of muscular action. You may be more conscious of a slight but significant sound than of much louder noises occurring at the same time. You may be more conscious of a delicate finger movement than of a strong contraction of big muscles occurring at the same time. Degree of consciousness goes with degree of mental activity. Of all the reactions we are making at the same time--and usually there are several--the most active in