The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    object in going to a party is in fact to promote the success of her daughter. We might say here naturally that her daughter was throughout the time the real object of her atten- tion. But this way of speaking, if convenient, is not correct. Her true, ‘ real object ’ is the observing, the doing, and the preventing this and that thing in regard to her daughter — in a certain interest. And hence it is hard to say what detail in the scene may as condition or circumstance . . . fail to be included and be attention’s total object.” 1 The Focus of Attention. — In the examples just given attention is successively engaged with the partial features, phases, and aspects of a single total object. At any stage in the process, some partial feature, phase, or aspect of the whole is relatively prominent and definite, the rest being only indeterminately apprehended. Now the fea- ture or features which at any moment are thus specially emphatic and determinate, are said to be in the focus of attention. While I am counting the stones, my atten- tion’s object includes the whole heap as something to be numbered. But at any given stage, what is in the focus of attention is the particular stone I am taking into account at that moment and the particular number which is formed by adding it to the stones previously counted. Various Kinds of Attention. — We may broadly distin- guish two sorts of Attention, the Voluntary and the Non- voluntary. In so far as an object excites interest on its own account, attention to it is called nonvoluntary. In so far as an object interests us merely as a means to an end, attention to it is voluntary. Nonvoluntary attention Is either enforced or spontaneous. Voluntary attention is either explicitly or implicitly voluntary. Thus we have : — 1 F. H. Bradley in Mind, N. S., No. 41, p. 23.
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