Psychology, Robert S. Woodworth [android based ebook reader .txt] 📗

studious but easy-going person, "for goodness' sake not to dawdle over his lessons", with any idea that the more time he spends with them the longer he will remember them. More gas! High pressure gives the biggest results, provided only it is directed into high-level observation, and does not simply generate fear and worry and a rattle-brained frenzy of rote learning.

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Recall

Having committed something to memory, how do we get it back when we want it? To judge from such simple cases as the animal's performance of a previously learned reaction, all that is necessary is a stimulus previously linked with the response. How, for example, shall we get the cat to turn the door-button, this being an act that the cat has previously learned? Why, we put the cat into the same cage, i.e., we supply the stimulus that has previously given the reaction, and trust to it to give the same reaction again. The learning process has attached this reaction to this stimulus. Now can we say the same regarding material committed to memory by the human subject? Is recall a species of learned reaction that needs only the linked stimulus to arouse it?

If you have learned and still retain a list of numbers or syllables, you can recite it on thinking of it, on hearing words that identify it in your mind, or on being given the first few items in the list as a start. The act of reciting the list became linked, during the learning, with the thought of the list, with words signifying this particular list, and with the first items of the list; therefore, these stimuli can now arouse the reaction of reciting the list. As you advance into the list, reciting it, the parts already recited act as stimuli to keep you going forward. In the same way, if you have memorized Hamlet's soliloquy, this title serves as the stimulus to make you recall the beginning of the speech and that in turn calls up the next part and so on; or, if you have analyzed the speech into an outline, the title calls up the outline and the outline acts as the stimulus to call up the several parts that were attached to the outline in the process of memorization. When one idea calls up another, the first acts as a stimulus and the second is a {355} response previously attached to this stimulus. In general, then, recall is a learned response to a stimulus.

There is an exceptional case, where recall seems to occur without any stimulus. This form of recall goes by the name of perseveration, and a good instance of it is the "running of a tune in the head", shortly after it has been heard. Another instance is the vivid flashing of scenes of the day before the "mind's eye" as one lies in bed before going to sleep. It appears as if the sights or sounds came up of themselves and without any stimulus. Possibly there is some vague stimulus which cannot itself be detected. Only a slight stimulus would be needed, because these recent and vivid experiences are so easily aroused.

Difficulties in recall.

Sometimes recall fails to materialize when we wish it and have good reason for expecting it. We know this person's name, as is proved by the fact that we later recall it, but at the moment we cannot bring it up. We know the answer to this examination question, but in the heat of the examination we give the wrong answer, though afterwards the right answer comes to mind. This seldom happens with thoroughly learned facts, but frequently with facts that are moderately well known. Some sort of inhibition or interference blocks recall.

One type of interference is emotional. Fear may paralyze recall. Anxious self-consciousness, or stage fright, has prevented the recall of many a well-learned speech, and interfered with the skilful performance of many a well-trained act.

Distraction is an interference, since it keeps the stimulus from exerting its full effect. Sometimes the stimulus that is present has been linked with two or more responses, and these get in each other's way; as you will sometimes hear a speaker hesitate and become confused from having two ways {356} of expressing the same thought occur to him at almost the same instant.

Helps in recall.

There are no sure rules for avoiding these intricate interferences; and, in general, recall being a much less manageable process than memorizing, we do not have anything like the same mass of practical information regarding it. One or two suggestions have some value, however.

(1) Give the stimulus a good chance. Look squarely at the person whose name you wish to recall, avoiding doubt as to your ability to recall it; for doubt is itself a distraction. Put yourself back into the time when you formerly used this person's name. In extemporaneous speaking, go ahead confidently, avoid worry and self-consciousness, and, full of your subject, trust to your ideas to recall the words as needed. Once carried away with his subject, a speaker may surprise himself by his own fluency.

(2) Drop the matter for a while, and come back to it afresh. Sometimes, when you cannot at once recall a name, it does no good to keep doggedly hunting, while half an hour later you get it without the least trouble. The explanation of this curious phenomenon is found in interference and the dying out of interference. At your first attempt to recall the name, you simply got on the wrong track, and thus gave this wrong track the "recency" advantage over the right track; but this temporary advantage fades out rapidly with rest and leaves the advantage with the track most used in the past.

The rule to drop a matter when baffled and confused, and take it up again when fresh, can be used in more complex cases than hunting for a name. When, in trying to solve any sort of problem, you find yourself in a rut, about the only escape is to back off, rest up, and make an entirely fresh start.

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Recognition

The fourth question propounded at the beginning of the chapter, as to how we can know that the fact now recalled is what we formerly committed to memory and now wish to recall, is part of the larger question of how we recognize. What we recognize includes not only facts recalled, but also facts not recalled but presented a second time to the senses. Recognition of objects seen, heard, touched, etc., is the most rudimentary form of memory. The baby shows signs of recognizing persons and things before he shows signs of recall. A little later, he recognizes and understands words before he begins to speak (recall) them; and everybody's vocabulary of recognized words remains much greater than his speaking vocabulary. We recognize faces that we could not recall, and names that we could not recall. In short, recognition is easier than recall.

Consequently any theory of recognition that makes it depend on recall can scarcely be correct. One such theory held that an object is recognized by recalling its original setting in past experience; an odor would be recognized by virtue of recalling the circumstances under which it was formerly experienced. Now sometimes it does happen that an odor which seems familiar, but cannot be identified, calls up a past experience and thus is fully recognized; but such "indirect recognition" is not the usual thing, for direct recognition commonly takes place before recall of the past experience has time to occur. You see a person, and know him at once, though it may require some moments before you can recall where and when you have seen him before.

Recognition may be more or less complete. At its minimum, it is simply a "feeling of familiarity" with the object; at its maximum it is locating the object precisely in your autobiography. You see a man, and say, "He looks {358} familiar, I must have seen him somewhere", and then it dawns on you, "Oh! yes, now I know exactly who he is; he is the man who . . ." Between these extremes lie various degrees of recognition. This man seems to be some one seen recently, or a long, long time ago, or at the seashore, or as a salesman in a store; or as some one you looked up to, or felt hostility towards, or were amused at; and often these impressions turn out to be correct, when you succeed in fully recognizing the person. These impressions resemble the first signs of recognition in the baby's behavior; you say that the baby remembers people because he smiles at one who has pleased him before, and shrinks from one who has displeased him.

Recognition described in terms of stimulus and response.

Recognition is a form of learned response, depending on previous reaction to the object recognized. To recognize an object is to respond to it as we responded before--except for the feeling of familiarity, which could not occur the first time we saw the object. But notice this: though the object is the same identical object it was before, it may have changed somewhat. At least, its setting is different; this is a different time and perhaps a different place, and the circumstances are bound to be more or less different. In spite of this difference in the situation, we make the same response as before.

Now, the response we made to the object in its original setting was a response to the whole situation, object plus setting; our response to the object was colored by its setting. When we now recognize the object, we make the same response to the object in a different setting; the response originally called out by the object plus its setting is now aroused by the object alone. Consequently we have an uneasy feeling of responding to a situation that is not present. {359} This uneasy feeling is the feeling of familiarity in its more haunting and "intriguing" form.

We see some one who seems familiar and who arouses a hostile attitude in us that is not accounted for in the least by his present actions. We have this uneasy feeling of responding to a situation that is not present, and cannot rest till we have identified the person and justified our hostile attitude.

Or, we see some one who makes us feel as if we had had dealings with him before in a store or postoffice where he must have served us; we find ourselves taking the attitude towards him that is appropriate towards such a functionary, though there is nothing in his present setting to arouse such an attitude. Or, we see some one in the city streets who seems to put us back into the atmosphere of a vacation at the seashore, and by searching our memory we finally locate him as an individual we saw at such and such a resort. At other times, the feeling of familiarity is rather colorless, because the original situation in which the person was encountered was colorless; but we still have the feeling of responding to something that is not present. We make, or start to make, the same response to the person that we originally made to him plus his setting, and this response to something that is not there gives the feeling of familiarity.

When we see the same person time after time in the same setting, as when we go into the same store every morning and buy a paper from the same man, we cease to have any strong feeling of familiarity at sight of him, the reason being that we are always responding to him in the same setting, and consequently have no feeling of responding to something that is not there. But if we see this same individual in a totally different place, he may give us a queer feeling of familiarity. When we see the same person time after time {360} in various