facts should be accurate, "faithful to the original"; they should be long retained, if necessary; they should come promptly, easily and conveniently. Improvement in memory will be judged with reference to these and allied standards.

QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Find what evidence you can from your knowledge of yourself and of your acquaintances to support the following statements: (a) A good memory over a short interval does not imply a good memory over a long interval. (b) A good logical memory may go with a very poor verbal memory. (c) Very stupid people may have excellent memories.

In your own ex

2. What is meant by mnemonic devices? perience have you found such devices to be useful? If so, can you explain the secret of their utility?

3. Give three objections to mnemonic devices in learning.

4. Do you think that training of the memory for memorizing poetry would strengthen the power to learn music, arithmetic, or psychology? Defend your answer.

5. Which would be the better way to commit to memory a speech, to sit in one's chair and read it to oneself or to stand up, and say it out loud?

6. Give some rules that suggest themselves for acquiring a good memory. What are the limitations of the rules?

7. What factors are likely to cause a distortion of memory, and how may this distortion be avoided?

8. If you are "cramming" a ten-stanza German poem before an examination, at which part would you best take your last hasty glance?

9. Why is cramming a bad method of study? Answer in the light of the laws of learning and forgetting.

10. Occasionally one tries in vain to recall a certain name or face. What factors are at fault?

11. Why is it essential to learn beyond the point where the material may be recalled without error?

12. Describe the conditions essential for a good memory and discuss the methods of improving memory and show why they are effective.

13. Of what value is the advice: "Understand and systematize what you wish to remember"?

14. Give some conditions that may make a good recitation impossible, even if the answer to the question is known.

15. Why is it a waste of time to plunge a class of children immediately into arithmetic work after a very interesting lesson in history in which all the pupils participated wholeheartedly?

16. Very frequently pupils study by repetition only. If one is then asked a question of relationships-which requires a breaking across of all the serial connections formed-he will answer by saying, "I know it, but I am not able to tell it." Why?

17. The children of Miss Gray's third grade class can sing "America," but not recite or repeat from memory the poem "America." Why?

18. In forming the right associations or proper connections (habit) of spelling "believe," the task of the learner is to associate a series of letters in a proper sequence. In learning to say "der Hund" instead of dog, we must learn to associate these new words with a certain idea. In learning to think 63 in response to the situation (7 x 9) we must put together 63 and 7 x 9. What are the most effective ways of accomplishing this? How would you determine how much repetition to provide for "believe" as compared with "building" in a spelling lesson? What may be done to make repetition generally effective?

REFERENCES

ANGELL, J. R., Introduction to Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1918), Chap. viii.

BOLTON, F. E., Everyday Psychology for Teachers (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), Chap xii.

CAMERON, E. H., Psychology and the School (New York, Century Co., 1921), Chaps. vi, xii.

COLVIN, S. S., The Learning Process (New York, Macmillan Co., 1921), Chaps. ix-xiii.

FREEMAN, F. N., How Children Learn (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917), Chap. x.

HUNTER, W. S., General Psychology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1919), Chap. ix.

JAMES, William, Talks to Teachers (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1915), Chap. xii.

KOFFKA, Kurt, Growth of the Mind (New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1924), Chap. v.

NORSWORTHY, Naomi, and WHITLEY, Mary T., Psychology of Childhood (New York, Macmillan Co., 1923), Chap. viii.

STARCH, DANIEL, Educational Psychology (New York, Macmillan Co., 1919), Chap. xi.

THORNDIKE, E. L., Educational Psychology, Briefer Course (New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1914), Chap. ix. -, Principles of Teaching (New York, A. G. Seiler, 1916), Chap. viii.

WARREN, H. C., Elements of Human Psychology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1922), Chap. viii.

WATT, H. J., Economy and Training of the Memory (New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1910).

WOODWORTH, R. S., Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co.,

1921), Chaps. xiii, xv, xix.

CHAPTER XIV

IMAGINATION

In its popular sense the term imagination has often been used to signify some capricious act of fancy. In its true sense, it refers to sensory objects not present at the time to the senses (1). Imagination is of great importance (2). It is essential to the higher levels of thought and action; and makes possible creative and constructive work. The problems of daily life must be solved more or less on the level of imagination before they can be solved on the level of action.

In former days people were classified according to their prevailing type of imagery. Some were considered as being "eye-minded," others were "ear-minded," and still others were "motor-minded." Experimental results show that such classifications are usually unscientific (3,5). Hence all types of imagery should be cultivated in the child.

Children and adults differ in the vividness and accuracy of their mental imagery. Proper training will enable the child to distinguish between the fancied and the real.

1. Imagination

[BETTS, George Herbert, The Mind and Its Education, pp. 132, 138, 139. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1924.]

Imagination is not a process of thought which must deal chiefly with unrealities and impossibilities, and which has for its chief end our amusement when we have nothing better to do than to follow its wanderings. . . . It is the process by which the images from our past experiences are marshaled and made to serve our present. Imagination looks into the future and constructs our patterns and lays our plans.

Nothing can enter the imagination, the elements of which have not been in our past experience and then been conserved in the form of images. It takes the various images at its

disposal and builds them into wholes which may never have existed before, and which may exist now only as a creation of the mind. And yet we have put into this new product not a single element which was not familiar to us in the form of an image of one kind or another. It is the form which is new; the material is old. . . .

2. Importance of Imagination

[MÜNSTERBERG, Hugo, Business Psychology, pp. 132-133. Chicago, LaSalle Extension University, 1917.]

The higher the life work the more the pleasure, and the resulting interests are independent of the momentary impressions and are linked with the whole situation, including what the future may bring. The simplest workingman reaches a higher level if he does not ask only for the pleasure in the wages of the day, but also considers his future and the joy or misery to which his life may lead him. The joy in the gifts of the future can be far stronger than the satisfaction in the offerings of the present. Here lies the spring of the power of imagination. Through imagination a possible joyful achievement of the future is anticipated in the mind and the pleasure in this hoped-for effect becomes the moving force for the inner life. The inventor holds before his mind an unsolved problem, anticipating the joy which its solution will bring him in the future. This joy has stronger hold on him than any suffering or deprivation which he must undergo in the pursuit of his distant goal. His personality is widened so as to include all those possible coming experiences. He does not feel the hunger of to-day because he is thrilled by the glory of the future achievement.

These joys of the imagination can enter into every life, the humblest as well as the noblest. Everybody's imagination can turn to possible improvements and developments toward which his efforts are directed. No business life is really successful which is not aided by some kind of imagination. Nobody lives from the satisfactions of the present only. Anticipated joys of the future are the chief motives to action. Every successful life is, after all, a life with a life plan. Only where strong feelings are attached to the ideas of worthy ends can the whole work be organized for true achievement. The action of the attention is only a means in the service of feeling. Feeling alone is the true incentive to action. But this indicates that a true understanding of the mind at work is possible only if we con