Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/540

528 This difference, we are inclined to believe is not accidental, but directly due to skill previously gained in the separate control of the fingers, the skill thus acquired showing itself in the ability to write as readily without bringing the point of regard so close to the fingers as was done by the other two subjects. C and R focussed every separate objective item involved in the writing with the exception of the fingers.

While inner speech was distinctly conscious at this stage, there are no reports showing that it became a focal element. It would seem that the inner speech in this case was very much the same as it is in silent reading; attention is upon the page and the meaning and never upon the inner speech as such. Inner speech reacts upon and modifies what is attentively seen (or heard) instead of what is seen (or heard) reacting upon and modifying what is present in inner speech. Indeed the latter would involve a complete reversal of the situation as it is given to the subject, for the reason that what he starts with is, in practice, a fixated word, and in dictation a heard word. Meaning always implies the associative play of another process upon the one that has the meaning. It is clear that a sense process cannot possess conscious meaning in and of itself; it must call up something, be reacted upon by something, to have meaning. In this case the visual sensations flowing in from the list of words or the auditory sensations flowing in by virtue of the dictation, are reacted upon by inner speech and thus get their meaning. In this sense the "inwardly spelled word" is the immediate cue for the consequent movements, although the entire cue is always the total situation as perceptually cognized by focal and marginal processes. Inner speech was at first more or less strongly muscular on account of the effortful nature of the whole performance. Another characteristic of this first stage of the movements under discussion is that the muscular sensations, though clearly conscious, are never focal, except when by virtue of their intensity they may distract attention from the copy. For example, at his first sitting subject C complains of "a feeling of jerkiness" and that the "muscular currents are interrupted" and significantly adds, that the process is "not pleasant." This subject was the first to break away from the visual use of the "key-board" which he did at his fourth sitting, having learned in their order the letters on the key-board. Here then was an opportunity for attention to muscular sensations to show itself if occurring at all during this period of learning. But the report for this sitting contains the statement that the subject is "conscious of the bulb to be pressed rather than of the finger to do the pressing." It is