To guarantee any transfer, the element to be transferred must be brought specifically to the pupil's attention, generalized into a principle, and the application of the principle to other fields made clear. For example, if neatness is trained in written arithmetic work, the value of neatness must be discussed and the ways in which neatness is secured made plain and more than a mere rule of thumb; it should be reduced to general principles, and conditions of neatness in other fields should be made plain. In short, the matter to be transferred must be made the specific subject of study.

QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. What is meant by formal or mental discipline? of training?

2. How does transfer take place?

By transfer

3. On what points are psychologists agreed as regards transfer of training? On what points are there some differences of opinion! 4. What does Thorndike's "identical elements" include? How does his view of transfer compare with the view held by Judd? 5. How may the explanations of Judd and Thorndike be reconciled?

6. What is the "functional value" theory of transfer of training? 7. What experimental evidence have we that transfer of training is not a myth?

8. To what extent, if at all, should transfer of training be taken into account in teaching?

9. To what extent, if at all, should the school curriculum be determined on the basis of transfer of training?

10. Will good teaching or poor teaching secure the greater increments of transfer? Why?

11. Evaluate Horne's views of transfer of training in the light of experimental evidence now available.

12. List the results of the extensive investigation made by Thorndike for the purpose of determining the amount of transfer from the different high school subjects.

REFERENCES

BLAIR, Vevia, "The Present Status of Disciplinary Values in Education," The Reorganization of Mathematics in Secondary Education: A Report by the National Committee on Mathematics Requirements (1923), pp. 89-104.

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

EDWARDS, A. S., Psychology of Elementary Education (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1925), Chap. x.

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

GATES, A. I., Psychology for Students of Education (New York, Macmillan Co., 1924), Chap. xv.

JAMES, William, Principles of Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1890), Vol. I, Chap. xvi.

JUDD, C. H., Psychology of High School Subjects (Boston, Ginn & Co., 1915), Chap. xvii.

RUGG, H. O., Experimental Determination of Mental Discipline in School Subjects (Baltimore, Warwick & York, 1916).

STARCH, D., Educational Psychology (New York, Macmillan Co., 1919), Chaps. xiii, xiv.

THOMSON, Godfrey H., Instinct, Intelligence and Character (New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1925), Chap. xiv.

THORNDIKE, E. L., Principles of Teaching (New York, A. S. Seiler, 1916), Chap. xv.

Educational Psychology (New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1921), Vol. II, Chap. xii.

"Experimental Determination of the Amount of Mental Discipline in High School Subjects," Journal of Educational Psychology (1924).

WOODWORTH, R. S., Psychology; A Study of Mental Life (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1921), p. 316.

CHAPTER XX

MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE

Educators are generally of the opinion that the child be comes fatigued in the course of his day's work in school. The subjects thought to be most difficult are placed in the morning schedule, while the easier subjects come in the afternoon. The selections chosen for reading in this chapter are designed to throw some light upon the validity of these assumptions, and to show that only in rare instances, if at all, do we need to fear for the health of a child because of overwork and fatigue.

An analysis of the nature of fatigue and the evidences of fatigue are given. The curve of mental work is described by Thorndike (3). The selection from Arai (4) contains a brief digest of one of the most important experimental studies of mental fatigue made in this country. The adjustment of school work in the light of our knowledge of the psychology and physiology of fatigue is outlined in the adaptation from Colvin (6). Regardless of his I. Q., and environing opportunities, man seldom works up to his highest levels. There is at hand a growing body of evidence that each individual can do more and be more than he is (8,9,10).

1. Fatigue

Fatigue is a term used to denote the decreased capacity to perform work caused by work. Every activity tends to diminish capacity, but also gives increased inefficiency for the same sort of activity; that is, practice and fatigue may be regarded as always present and always opposed. When work first starts, there is an increase in efficiency up to a certain point after which there is diminished returns for the amount of energy expended. The effects of the practice seem to continue for long periods of time, while the effects of fa

tigue are generally of short duration. The attitude of the learner, or his purpose, plays an important part in the fatigue curve. The individual who is working for himself, apparently, will not become fatigued as quickly as the individual who is working for some one else. Indeed it is very difficult to separate lassitude and ennui from fatigue.

The physiologist observes three results of fatigue. In the first place, fatigue produces toxins in the blood which seriously interfere with the individual's efficiency; secondly, fatigue is characterized by the accumulation of certain waste products in the muscles; and thirdly, fatigue is thought to produce certain changes in the nucleus of the brain cells. In view of these facts, it is evident that fatigue, whether physical or mental, is very real. On the other hand, it is very seldom that an individual in good health will suffer from fatigue produced by overwork. It is now believed by many authorities that children seldom, if ever, suffer from fatigue produced by school activities.

2. Thorndike on Fatigue

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Educational Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 326328. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1914.] (Adapted.)

Thorndike maintains that "We can feel mentally fatigued without being so." He concluded from his experiments that children's power of actually doing school work at the close of the day is as great as at the beginning. While the children said "they were tired in the late hours, and thought that they couldn't work nearly as well, yet these same children did do just as well in the tests given." He further maintains that his results "prove that the work in the case of the schools tested did not decrease one jot or tittle the ability of the scholars to do mental work.”

Proper air and light, proper posture and physical exercise, enough food and sleep, and work whose purpose is rational, whose difficulty is adapted to one's powers, and whose rewards are just, should be tried before recourse to the abandonment of work itself. It is indeed doubtful if sheer rest is the appropriate remedy for a hundredth part of the injuries that result from mental work in our present irrational conduct of it (p. 328).

3. Curve of Mental Work

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Educational Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 300301. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1921.]

The essential empirical facts about the curve of mental work seem then to be as follows: Two hours or less of continuous exercise of a function at maximum efficiency, so far as the worker can make it so, produce a temporary negative effect, curable by rest, of not over ten per cent, and in most functions still less than that. Fluctuations of considerable amount occur in any one work period for any one subject, but except for a rise in achievement of approximately four per cent near the end when the date of the end is known, no regularity in them has been proved for any one of them for any one subject in any one sort of work, much less for any one subject in all sorts of work, or for all subjects in any one sort of work. The supposed laws that the very first few minutes and the minutes after a drop in efficiency are periods of specially high efficiency are not supported by the facts. A special gradual increase in efficiency in the first fifteen or twenty minutes is not demonstrable in the case of the simple functions such as addition, mental multiplication, marking words of certain sorts and the like. The fluctuations in a single day's record for a single subject are then in no sense explained by referring them to fervor at starting, fervor after disturbance, fervor after fatigue, incitement or adaptation.

The most important fact about the curve of efficiency of a function under two hours or less continuous maximal exercise is that it is, when freed from daily eccentricities, so near a straight line and so near a horizontal line. The work grows much less satisfying or much more unbearable, but not much less effective. The commonest instinctive response to the intolerability of mental work is to stop it altogether. When, as under the conditions of the experiments, this response is not allowed, habit leads us to continue work at our standard of speed and accuracy. Such falling off from this standard as does occur, is, in the writer's opinion, due to an unconscious reduction of the intolerability, by intermitting the work or some parts of it.