Questions and Exercises
(1) Criticise the following statements. (A good plan would be, first, to go behind the expression to the meaning, and to make sure of that; then to take up precisely the opposite position, and see what can be said for it; and then finally to write your comments on the statements themselves.) (a) When two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them, on reoccurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other. (b) There is no tendency on the part of simple ‘ideas,’ attributes, or qualities to remind us of their like, (c) Association marries only universals. (d) Brick is one complex idea, mortar is another complex idea; these ideas, with ideas of position and quantity, compose my idea of a wall.
W. James, Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, 566, 579; F. H. Bradley, in Mind, xii., 1887, 358; J. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, i., 1869, 115.
(2) How does the dominance of associationism in British psychology throw light upon the psychology of the nation itself?
(3) What sort of service could the doctrine of association render to psychology?
(4) Can you give specific reasons for the fact that too long a series of syllables throws the learner into confusion? and for the advantage that results from distribution of the series in time?
(5) Do you think that the quick or the slow learner has the better chance to retain what he has learned? Have you any evidence?
(6) Associative tendencies decay with time; yet we have said that the practised speaker drops his speech, and lets his brain incubate it. Is there not a contradiction here? Consider the two cases carefully.
(7) Can you give instances, from your own recent experience, of the working of initial and terminal inhibition?
(8) Later writers have added to the four ‘laws’ of Aristotle (similarity, contrast, succession, coadjacency) various other laws: means and end, cause and effect, whole and part, thing and properties, sign and thing signified, and so on. Can you suggest any reason for these additions? Can you give an instance under every ‘law,’ and reduce it psychologically to our own law of association? Try to get real instances, taken from your own or your friends’ experience.
(9) Trace the connection of mental processes in your own case as follows. An experimenter prepares a set of simple pictures, and arranges to show them for 3 sec. by removal and replacement of a cardboard screen. Sit at a convenient distance, and let the stimulus have its way with you; report your mental processes as they come; the experimenter writes down what you say. Try to give the facts, and not to express yourself in meanings. Do not be discouraged if the task seems, at first, to be too difficult.
(10) (a) Can you give any reason why your work might be unusually good when you are feeling a little tired? (b) What is the relation of interest to practice?
(11) State, in your own words, what the doctrine of association professes to do, and what cardinal mistake it falls into when it tries to do it.
(12) (a) Write out, in common-sense terms, the facts that the law of mental connection has to translate into psychological language. Next, write out, in your own words, the law itself. Now compare your formulation with that of the text: do they tally? If not, do you understand the difference? Do not be satisfied to leave any point obscure. (b) Show that the law of mental connection does justice, as the older ‘laws’ of association do not, to the facts of § 35. (c) You often read in fiction of situations whose every detail makes an indelible impression; you will find one described, for instance, in Mrs. Deland’s ‘Philip and his Wife,’ ch. xxix. Is the writer’s psychology sound?