Psychological Principles

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ...of Hamilton, when, thinking of Ben Lomond, "this thought was immediately followed by the thought of the Prussian system of education." The'intermediate and unawakened links' that explained ' the anomaly' he succeeded in tracing to a conversation about Prussian schools between himself and a certain German whom he chanced to meet on his last visit to the mountain. This and like instances, it is reasonable to assume were really cases of association, not of an idea reviving spontaneously as the Herbartians maintained. There is then no anomaly about them unless it be this absence of direct evidence. But, where not even indirect evidence is forthcoming, it would be rash too confidently to assert the impossibility of any spontaneous revival of a presentation (freisteigende Vorstellung), especially so in view of such facts as ' recurrent sensations2,' perseveration,' and delirium. Nevertheless if Herbart's 'spontaneous revival' or G. E. Muller's 'perseveration' were to be taken so 'atomistically' as to imply the complete rupture of the continuity of the memory-thread or the ideational tissue, it would be still more rash to assert that it was possible. But the mediate association we have here specially to consider is quite different from all this. In relearning verses forwards but omitting alternate syllables Ebbinghaus found a saving in time of 108%; by omitting two syllables, the saving effected was 7-o%; and by omitting three, 5'8%. This he explained by assuming that in memorising a series a b c d e... there was formed not only a 'principal' or primary association of each term with its immediate successor, of a with b, of b with c, &c., but also subsidiary or mediate associations of each term with all the rest, of a with c, a with...