Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/541

Rh only when the situation is new and highly stimulating and the consequent "overflow" considerable that the muscular sensations claim direct attention, and perhaps only then when the subject is on the lookout for them. Here again we have an instance tending to show that when learning to make movements that involve objects other than the body attention is upon the sensations arising outside the body and not upon those arising within the body.

With minor exceptions there is no evidence that during this learning period our subjects made use of either resident or remote imagery of the forthcoming movement. There is not an introspection indicating that any one thought of how the movement, about to be made, was going to "feel" or look. The only functional imagery, distinguishable from the sense and perceptual processes involved, was inner speech, and even this was at this time more or less muscular. One of the "minor exceptions" just referred to, was the idea of the result of the movement, which figured only in the dictation writing. This idea was the idea or visual image of the result of the movement of the writing point upon the drum surface. It is therefore clear that during this first and most difficult stage of control, attention is objective and perceptual.

The second stage leading towards automatization is characterized by a "short circuiting" process in which certain perceptual elements drop out, and, if consciously present thereafter, are represented by memory images. The first elimination is to be found in the disappearance of excessive eye movements over the key-board when a general idea of where to look for the letters has been reached. At this stage the different methods presented by different subjects began to manifest themselves. As previously stated, C consciously freed himself from the key-board very early by learning the letters for each bulb and then using the "touch method." Even on the second day "the effort is to make automatic the coördination between memory impressions of the letter on the cardboard and the motor impulse." On the fourth day he is "trying to avoid looking at the cardboard entirely," but he has not yet "got the letter translated into the bulb," i.e., he has not "short circuited" so completely as to "take directly from list to bulb." C's short-circuiting method was therefore that of eliminating eye movements over the letters on the cardboard and substituting for them the visual memory image of each letter and its location until a direct association between letter and bulb was set up. E, trained upon the piano, followed essentially the same method. For example, at the fourth sitting E "can make the movement of pressing the bulbs in shorter time than it takes to place (i.e., to fixate) –2