The educational applications of the instinct-motor conception of apperception are:

1. The first task of the teacher in taking up the study of a new unit of instruction is to prepare the children for the new work

2. By calling up those facts that will enable the child to comprehend the new

3. By making the child conscious of his ignorance

4. By introducing an aim which while definite, short and attractive, foreshadows the value of the work to be done, the information or knowledge to be acquired, etc. The aim must appear worth while to the child

The child's assimilation of knowledge is dependent upon his own mental activity. Therefore, he should be encouraged to do his own thinking as far as possible.

1. Impressions

[SEASHORE, Carl E., Psychology in Daily Life, pp. 134-138. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1916.]

Theoretically, every sense impression . . . leaves a trace. The meaning of this statement may be made clear by an analogy. An earthquake disturbs a body of water violently; a ship plying at surface changes its distribution; a single drop falling makes an impression, however small, and the continued falling of drop after drop causes great changes in the level and distribution of the water, but no drop disappears without a trace. Just so the conscious, strong, and relevant impressions make marked changes in the psycho-physical organism; but the stream of processes in this organism is made up in large part of merged "drops," the countless faint impressions, each of which, though losing its identity, enters into the composition and cumulative flow of the ever-changing stream.

Sentience, affection, skill, and character all rest upon an incomparably broader foundation of fact than that of the sum total of consciously experienced impressions. We are seldom judged by our intentions or the attitudes we strike; we are judged by the attitudes in which we are least concerned with the effect we are to produce. When we judge a man we seldom develop a rational opinion of him from an indifferent point of view; on the contrary, we first fall into an attitude toward him, and then proceed to picture him to ourselves from that point of

view, usually without becoming aware of the existing bent of mind or of the impressions which caused it. This is true not only in friendships and aversions, but as well in our rich life. of feeling-attitudes toward objects, events, ideas, and ideals in life. The countless inflowing impressions have left their traces, which exist as forces or tendencies; our attitudes are in large part the resultants of such forces. . .

At the present moment your consciousness is properly centered upon the reading of this chapter or upon some reflections suggested by it. But at this very time there is a mass of visual, auditory, taste, smell, temperature, strain, pain and equilibrium sensations pressing in upon you. Every one leaves a trace. You feel with compunction that your mind is wandering. There is a fleeting array of undifferentiated ideas and impressions passing through you. Every one leaves a trace; it changes the growing mind so that the mental content is different from what it would have been if any one of these impressions had not occurred.

It is one of the great blessings of nature that so few of these traces reach consciousness in the act of impression, and that still fewer are ever consciously recalled as individual impressions. Rationality, endurance, discrete cognition, and action rest upon the fact that consciousness is selective, personal, purposive, and of particular things. And, again, it is fortunate that the elimination is automatic and therefore easy and effective. If we should be conscious of all impressions strong enough to reach consciousness in a given hour we should become mentally wrecked. So sensitive is our psvchophysical organism that it registers everything, and so wonderfully are we organized that we can utilize stored-up experience with but slight expenditure of conscious effort.

2. The Percept

[BETTS, George Herbert, The Mind and Its Education, pp. 105-106. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1924.]

The percept, then, always contains a basis of sensation. The eye, the ear, the skin, or some other sense organ must turn in its supply of sensory material or there can be no percept. But the percept contains more than just sensations.

The percept that contained only sensory material, and lacked all memory elements, ideas, and meanings, would be no percept at all. And this is the reason why a young child cannot see or hear like ourselves. It lacks the associative material to give

significance and meaning to the sensory elements supplied by the end-organs. The dependence of the percept on material from past experience is also illustrated in the common statement that what one gets from an art exhibit or a concert depends on what he brings to it. . . .

3. Theory of Apperception

[JAMES, William, Talks to Teachers, pp. 157-158. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1915.]

The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with other materials, already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them. . . . The impression arouses its old associates; they go out to meet it; it is received by them, recognized by the mind. . . . It is the fate of every impression thus to fall into a mind preoccupied by memories, ideas and interests, and by these it is taken in. Educated as we already are, we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript: it always reminds us of something similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded it before, and which it now in some way suggests. This mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's ready-made stock. We conceive the impression in some definite way. We dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' This way of taking in the object is the process of apperception. The conceptions which meet and assimilate it are called by Herbart the 'apperceiving mass.' The apperceived impression is engulfed in this, and the result is a new field of consciousness, of which one part comes from the outer world, and another part comes from the previous contents of the mind.

4. The Doctrine of Apperception

The terms apperception and perception refer to one and the same thing as the terms are used by the psychologists. The educator has favored the term apperception because it indicates the mind's own activity in determining the character of our perceptions.

Apperception is a term used to denote that objects are perceived in the light of past experience and the present state or condition of the mind. This principle has played an important part in educational writing for over a century. Some of the corollaries to the theory are "Link the new to the old," "Build upon the child's experiences," and "Go from the known to the unknown." While the doctrine has been very serviceable in many ways, it has some limitations. If learning is to be regarded as a formation of bonds, we must require three possible kinds of bonds to be formed: (1) between known elements which had not been connected; (2) between the known and the unknown elements; and (3) between two unknown elements. A great deal of learning consists in the formation of the third type of bonds. The doctrine of apperception is applicable only to the first and second type of bonds. The main task of education is to acquire the unknown. If this can be done by linking the new to the old, it should be done. The emphasis should be, however, upon the linking of the new. The doctrine has been adversely criticized also on the grounds that much of the socalled proceeding from the known to the unknown, or the linking of the new to the old is more or less fruitless since it neither proceeds to the unknown nor links anything new. It generally consists of a reorganization of the known and of the old. Learning is primarily the acquisition of new patterns of stimulus-response bonds. The important thing in teaching is that new bonds be built up and that the new element be sought.

5. Part Played in Perception by Previous Experience

Our reactions are being constantly modified in the light of our previous experience. This fact is obvious to any one who has observed the learning of a new muscular habit or skill. The same principle holds true in the case of perception as well as of other conscious processes. We may perceive the top of a table as being rectangular but we perceive it in a way that is different from that which is physically present to the retina. In other words, we perceive many objects differently from what they are actually sensed. Furthermore,

as we look at an object, such as the top of a table, we may get feelings of smoothness, hardness, and so on. A perception may thus involve sense qualities that belong to other sense organs as well as to the one that is stimulated at the moment. It is quite true that we often perceive what we expect to perceive or what we are accustomed to perceive. What we see at any moment is determined by our idea in mind, our interest at the moment, by our past experience, and the attitude of mind as well as by the particular object presented to the senses.

6. Dependence of Perception upon the Individual [SEASHORE, Carl E., Elementary Experiments in Psychology, pp. 146–148. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1908.]

All perception is inceptive interpretation. Among different persons viewing the same point in a landscape under exactly similar outward conditions, the botanist sees the cause for the shape of the overhanging tree, the artist sees effective shadows for the setting of a sketch, the carpenter sees a good location for a cottage, the farmer sees the rich clover going to waste, and the summer girl sees the location for a romance. "We see things not as they are but as we are" (Patrick).

And let a man recall what he has seen in a familiar landscape as a child, as a ball player, as a lover, as a real-estate investor, as a naturalist-in happy moods or in gray moods, in company or alone. No matter how constant the outward features, he has always seen in the landscape just what it meant to him in the light of his knowledge, needs, and tendencies of the moment.

All interpretation is partial. It is confined to the limits of the sense-organs, the time, opportunity, and inclination for detailed scrutiny, habits of inference, the purpose in mind, the store of knowledge about it, etc. These facts are so universal that we scarcely take cognizance of them.

7. Control of Character of Our Perceptions

Sensation is a bare, abstract, sensory experience. Perception is owing to original sense material. This experience results when the individual adjusts himself to the object of sensation and, in this way, gains a practical familiarity with it. The kind of adjustment, at least in the higher learning