Attention and interest : a study in psychology and education / by Felix Arnold.

  • Arnold, Felix, 1879-
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Attention and interest : a study in psychology and education / by Felix Arnold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    example, one has seen snow, felt it, and handled it, one will have a greater belief in its existence, will read a reality into the word ‘snow’ more readily than the savage who has simply heard of it. Much of what is given in instruction, in reading, in conversation, etc., has a reality only in an indirect manner. Upon the basis of what- ever experience has been acquired, a number of ideal situations acquire a reality in terms of transferred control. One may not have seen an emu, but if one is told that it is a bird similar to the ostrich, one more readily gives the term a reality which can be tested in some immediate, concrete situation. So, too, one may never have been in China, but actual situations before one, ideal situations in the form of pictures, descrip- tions, and the like, give one a basis which may be transferred to the possible situation implied in the term ‘China.’ The situation is possible in that there is a certain belief in its existence, in possible control and reaction in a sensorimotor manner. One feels sure, for example, that China exists, that travel to it is possible, that certain reactions may take place in it, that control in it is much like that under present conditions. The possible, it is seen, is a form of the ideal, but it is a form in which transferred motor coeffi-
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