Psychology · William James
ATTENTION.
This is the extreme of what is called dispersed attention. Between this extreme and the extreme of concentrated attention, in which absorption in the interest of the moment is so complete that grave bodily injuries may be unfelt, there are intermediate degrees, and these have been studied experimentally. The problem is known as that of =The Span of Consciousness.=--How many objects can we attend to at once when they are not embraced in one conceptual system? Prof. Cattell experimented with combinations of letters exposed to the eye for so short a fraction of a second that attention to them in succession seemed to be ruled out. When the letters formed familiar words, three times as many of them could be named as when their combination was meaningless. If the words formed a sentence, twice as many could be caught as when they had no connection. "The sentence was then apprehended as a whole. If not apprehended thus, almost nothing is apprehended of the several words; but if the sentence as a whole is apprehended, then the words appear very distinct." A word is a conceptual system in which the letters do not enter consciousness separately, as they do when apprehended alone. A sentence flashed at once upon the eye is such a system relatively to its words. A conceptual system may _mean_ many sensible objects, may be translated later into them, but as an actual existent mental state, it does not _consist of_ the consciousnesses of these objects. When I think of the word _man_ as a whole, for instance, what is in my mind is something different from what is there when I think of the letters _m_, _a_, and _n_, as so many disconnected data.
When data are so disconnected that we have no conception which embraces them together it is much harder to apprehend several of them at once, and the mind tends to let go of one whilst it attends to another. Still, within limits this can be avoided. M. Paulhan has experimented on the matter by declaiming one poem aloud whilst he repeated a different one mentally, or by writing one sentence whilst speaking another, or by performing calculations on paper whilst reciting poetry. He found that "the most favorable condition for the doubling of the mind was its simultaneous application to two heterogeneous operations. Two operations of the same sort, two multiplications, two recitations, or the reciting of one poem and writing of another, render the process more uncertain and difficult." M. Paulhan compared the time occupied by the same two operations done simultaneously or in succession, and found that there was often a considerable gain of time from doing them simultaneously. For instance: "I multiply 421 312 212 by 2; the operation takes 6 seconds; the recitation of four verses also takes 6 seconds. But the two operations done at once only take 6 seconds, so that there is no loss of time from combining them." If, then, by the original question, how many objects can we attend to at once, be meant how many entirely disconnected systems or processes can go on simultaneously, the answer is, _not easily more than one, unless the processes are very habitual; but then two, or even three_, without very much oscillation of the attention. Where, however, the processes are less automatic, as in the story of Julius Cæsar dictating four letters whilst he writes a fifth, there must be a rapid oscillation of the mind from one to the next, and no consequent gain of time.
"How a bit of bad grammar wounds the ear of the purist! How a false note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the man of the world! How rapid is progress in a science when its first principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them mentally with perfect distinctness and ease! How slow and uncertain, on the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the subject has not given us an adequate predisposition!--Apperceptive attention may be plainly observed in very small children when, hearing the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them, they suddenly catch a single known word here and there, and repeat it to themselves; yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when we speak of him and pronounce his name. Not far removed is the talent which mind-wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of noticing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buzzing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as long a time as an anecdote lasted. How could the boys, since they seemed to hear nothing, notice when the anecdote began? Doubtless most of them always heard something of the teacher's talk; but most of it had no connection with their previous knowledge and occupations, and therefore the separate words no sooner entered their consciousness than they fell out of it again; but, on the other hand, no sooner did the words awaken old thoughts, forming strongly-connected series with which the new impression easily combined, than out of new and old together a total interest resulted which drove the vagrant ideas below the threshold of consciousness, and brought for a while settled attention into their place."
_Involuntary intellectual attention_ is immediate when we follow in thought a train of images exciting or interesting _per se_; derived, when the images are interesting only as means to a remote end, or merely because they are associated with something which makes them dear. The brain-currents may then form so solidly unified a system, and the absorption in their object be so deep, as to banish not only ordinary sensations, but even the severest pain. Pascal, Wesley, Robert Hall, are said to have had this capacity. Dr. Carpenter says of himself that "he has frequently begun a lecture whilst suffering neuralgic pain so severe as to make him apprehend that he would find it impossible to proceed; yet no sooner has he by a determined effort fairly launched himself into the stream of thought, than he has found himself continuously borne along without the least distraction, until the end has come, and the attention has been released; when the pain has recurred with a force that has overmastered all resistance, making him wonder how he could have ever ceased to feel it."[34]
_There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time._ What is called sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of successive efforts which bring back the topic to the mind. The topic once brought back, if a congenial one, _develops_; and if its development is interesting it engages the attention passively for a time. Dr. Carpenter, a moment back, described the stream of thought, once entered, as 'bearing him along.' This passive interest may be short or long. As soon as it flags, the attention is diverted by some irrelevant thing, and then a voluntary effort may bring it back to the topic again; and so on, under favorable conditions, for hours together. During all this time, however, note that it is not an identical _object_ in the psychological sense, but a succession of mutually related objects forming an identical _topic_ only, upon which the attention is fixed. _No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change._
Now there are always some objects that for the time being _will not develop_. They simply _go out_; and to keep the mind upon anything related to them requires such incessently renewed effort that the most resolute Will ere long gives out and lets its thoughts follow the more stimulating solicitations after it has withstood them for what length of time it can. There are topics known to every man from which he shies like a frightened horse, and which to get a glimpse of is to shun. Such are his ebbing assets to the spendthrift in full career. But why single out the spendthrift, when to every man actuated by passion the thought of interests which negate the passion can hardly for more than a fleeting instant stay before the mind? It is like 'memento mori' in the heydey of the pride of life. Nature rises at such suggestions, and excludes them from the view:--How long, O healthy reader, can you now continue thinking of your tomb?--In milder instances the difficulty is as great, especially when the brain is fagged. One snatches at any and every passing pretext, no matter how trivial or external, to escape from the odiousness of the matter in hand. I know a person, for example, who will poke the fire, set chairs straight, pick dust-specks from the floor, arrange his table, snatch up the newspaper, take down any book which catches his eye, trim his nails, waste the morning _anyhow_, in short, and all without premeditation,--simply because the only thing he _ought_ to attend to is the preparation of a noonday lesson in formal logic which he detests. Anything but _that_!
Once more, the object must change. When it is one of sight, it will actually become invisible; when of hearing, inaudible,--if we attend to it too unmovingly. Helmholtz, who has put his sensorial attention to the severest tests, by using his eyes on objects which in common life are expressly overlooked, makes some interesting remarks on this point in his section on retinal rivalry. The phenomenon called by that name is this, that if we look with each eye upon a different picture (as in the annexed stereoscopic slide), sometimes one picture, sometimes the other, or parts of both, will come to consciousness, but hardly ever both combined. Helmholtz now says: "I find that I am able to attend voluntarily, now to one and now to the other system of lines; and that then this system remains visible alone for a certain time, whilst the other completely vanishes. This happens, for example, whenever I try to count the lines first of one and then of the other system.... But it is extremely hard to chain the attention down to one of the systems for long, unless we associate with our looking some distinct purpose which keeps the activity of the attention perpetually renewed. Such a one is counting the lines, comparing their intervals, or the like. An equilibrium of the attention, persistent for any length of time, is under no circumstances attainable. The natural tendency of attention when left to itself is to wander to ever new things; and so soon as the interest of its object is over, so soon as nothing new is to be noticed there, it passes, in spite of our will, to something else. _If we wish to keep it upon one and the same object, we must seek constantly to find out something new about the latter_, especially if other powerful impressions are attracting us away."
These words of Helmholtz are of fundamental importance. And if true of sensorial attention, how much more true are they of the intellectual variety! The _conditio sine quâ non_ of sustained attention to a given topic of thought is that we should roll it over and over incessantly and consider different aspects and relations of it in turn. Only in pathological states will a fixed and ever monotonously recurring idea possess the mind. =Genius and Attention.=--And now we can see why it is that what is called sustained attention is the easier, the richer in acquisitions and the fresher and more original the mind. In such minds, subjects bud and sprout and grow. At every moment, they please by a new consequence and rivet the attention afresh. But an intellect unfurnished with materials, stagnant, unoriginal, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. A glance exhausts its possibilities of interest. Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention. In most of them, it is to be feared, the so-called 'power' is of the passive sort. Their ideas coruscate, every subject branches infinitely before their fertile minds, and so for hours they may be rapt. _But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them._ And, when we come down to the root of the matter, we see that they differ from ordinary men less in the character of their attention than in the nature of the objects upon which it is successively bestowed. In the genius, these form a concatenated series, suggesting each other mutually by some rational law. Therefore we call the attention 'sustained' and the topic of meditation for hours 'the same.' In the common man the series is for the most part incoherent, the objects have no rational bond, and we call the attention wandering and unfixed.
1) _The appropriate cortical centre must be excited ideationally as well as sensorially, before attention to an object can take place._ 2) _The sense-organ must then adapt itself to clearest reception of the object, by the adjustment of its muscular apparatus._ 3) _In all probability a certain afflux of blood to the cortical centre must ensue._ Of this third condition I will say no more, since we have no proof of it in detail, and I state it on the faith of general analogies. Conditions 1) and 2), however, are verifiable; and the best order will be to take the latter first. =The Adaptation of the Sense-organ.=--This occurs not only in sensorial but also in intellectual attention to an object. That it is present when we attend to _sensible_ things is obvious. When we look or listen we accommodate our eyes and ears involuntarily, and we turn our head and body as well; when we taste or smell we adjust the tongue, lips, and respiration to the object; in feeling a surface we move the palpatory organ in a suitable way; in all these acts, besides making involuntary muscular contractions of a positive sort, we inhibit others which might interfere with the result--we close the eyes in tasting, suspend the respiration in listening, etc. The result is a more or less massive organic feeling that attention is going on. This organic feeling we usually treat as part of the sense of our _own activity_, although it comes in to us from our organs after they are accommodated. Any object, then, if _immediately_ exciting, causes a reflex accommodation of the sense-organ, which has two results--first, the feeling of activity in question; and second, the object's increase in clearness.
But in _intellectual_ attention similar feelings of activity occur. Fechner was the first, I believe, to analyze these feelings, and discriminate them from the stronger ones just named. He writes: "When we transfer the attention from objects of one sense to those of another, we have an indescribable feeling (though at the same time one perfectly determinate, and reproducible at pleasure), of altered _direction_ or differently localized tension (_Spannung_). We feel a strain forward in the eyes, one directed sidewise in the ears, increasing with the degree of our attention, and changing according as we look at an object carefully, or listen to something attentively; and we speak accordingly of _straining the attention_. The difference is most plainly felt when the attention oscillates rapidly between eye and ear; and the feeling localizes itself with most decided difference in regard to the various sense-organs, according as we wish to discriminate a thing delicately by touch, taste, or smell. "But now I have, when I try to vividly recall a picture of memory or fancy, a feeling perfectly analogous to that which I experience when I seek to apprehend a thing keenly by eye or ear; and this analogous feeling is very differently localized. While in sharpest possible attention to real objects (as well as to after-images) the strain is plainly forwards, and (when the attention changes from one sense to another) only alters its direction between the several external sense-organs, leaving the rest of the head free from strain, the case is different in memory or fancy, for here the feeling withdraws entirely from the external sense-organs, and seems rather to take refuge in that part of the head which the brain fills. If I wish, for example, to _recall_ a place or person, it will arise before me with vividness, not according as I strain my attention forwards, but rather in proportion as I, so to speak, retract it backwards."
In myself the 'backward retraction' which is felt during attention to ideas of memory, etc., seems to be principally constituted by the feeling of an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such as occurs in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their behavior when we look at a physical thing. This accommodation of the sense-organ is not, however, the _essential_ process, even in sensorial attention. It is a secondary result which may be prevented from occurring, as certain observations show. Usually, it is true that no object lying in the marginal portions of the field of vision can catch our attention without at the same time 'catching our eye'--that is, fatally provoking such movements of rotation and accommodation as will focus its image on the fovea, or point of greatest sensibility. Practice, however, enables us, _with effort_, to attend to a marginal object whilst keeping the eyes immovable. The object under these circumstances never becomes perfectly distinct--the place of its image on the retina makes distinctness impossible--but (as anyone can satisfy himself by trying) we become more vividly conscious of it than we were before the effort was made. Teachers thus notice the acts of children in the school-room at whom they appear not to be looking. Women in general train their peripheral visual attention more than men. Helmholtz states the fact so strikingly that I will quote his observation in full. He was trying to combine in a single solid percept pairs of stereoscopic pictures illuminated instantaneously by the electric spark. The pictures were in a dark box which the spark from time to time lighted up; and, to keep the eyes from wandering betweenwhiles, a pin-hole was pricked through the middle of each picture, through which the light of the room came, so that each eye had presented to it during the dark intervals a single bright point. With parallel optical axes these points combined into a single image; and the slightest movement of the eyeballs was betrayed by this image at once becoming double. Helmholtz now found that simple linear figures could, when the eyes were thus kept immovable, be perceived as solids at a single flash of the spark. But when the figures were complicated photographs, many successive flashes were required to grasp their totality.
"Now it is interesting," he says, "to find that, although we keep steadily fixating the pin-holes and never allow their combined image to break into two, we can nevertheless, before the spark comes, keep our attention voluntarily turned to any particular portion we please of the dark field, so as then, when the spark comes, to receive an impression only from such parts of the picture as lie in this region. In this respect, then, our attention is quite independent of the position and accommodation of the eyes, and of any known alteration in these organs, and free to direct itself by a conscious and voluntary effort upon any selected portion of a dark and undifferenced field of view. This is one of the most important observations for a future theory of attention."[35] =The Ideational Excitement of the Centre.=--But if the peripheral part of the picture in this experiment be not physically accommodated for, what is meant by its sharing our attention? What happens when we 'distribute' or 'disperse' the latter upon a thing for which we remain unwilling to 'adjust'? This leads us to that second feature in the process, the '_ideational excitement_' of which we spoke. _The effort to attend to the marginal region of the picture consists in nothing more nor less than the effort to form as clear an_ IDEA _as is possible of what is there portrayed._ The idea is to come to the help of the sensation and make it more distinct. It may come with effort, and such a mode of coming is the remaining part of what we know as our attention's 'strain' under the circumstances. Let us show how universally present in our acts of attention is this anticipatory thinking of the thing to which we attend. Mr. Lewes's name of _preperception_ seems the best possible designation for this imagining of an experience before it occurs.
It must as a matter of course be present when the attention is of the intellectual variety, for the thing attended to then _is_ nothing but an idea, an inward reproduction or conception. If then we prove ideal construction of the object to be present in _sensorial_ attention, it will be present everywhere. When, however, sensorial attention is at its height, it is impossible to tell how much of the percept comes from without and how much from within; but if we find that the _preparation_ we make for it always partly consists of the creation of an imaginary duplicate of the object in the mind, that will be enough to establish the point in dispute. In reaction-time experiments, keeping our mind intent upon the motion about to be made shortens the time. This shortening we ascribed in Chap. VIII to the fact that the signal when it comes finds the motor-centre already charged almost to the explosion-point in advance. Expectant attention to a reaction thus goes with sub-excitement of the centre concerned.
Where the impression to be caught is very weak, the way not to miss it is to sharpen our attention for it by preliminary contact with it in a stronger form. Helmholtz says: "If we wish to begin to observe overtones, it is advisable, just before the sound which is to be analyzed, to sound very softly the note of which we are in search.... If you place the resonator which corresponds to a certain overtone, for example _g´_ of the sound _c_, against your ear, and then make the note _c_ sound, you will hear _g´_ much strengthened by the resonator.... This strengthening by the resonator can be used to make the naked ear attentive to the sound which it is to catch. For when the resonator is gradually removed, the _g´_ grows weaker; but the attention, once directed to it, holds it now more easily fast, and the observer hears the tone _g´_ now in the natural unaltered sound of the note with his unaided ear."
Wundt, commenting on experiences of this sort, says that "The same thing is to be noticed in weak or fugitive visual impressions. Illuminate a drawing by electric sparks separated by considerable intervals, and after the first, and often after the second and third spark, hardly anything will be recognized. But the confused image is held fast in memory; each successive illumination completes it; and so at last we attain to a clearer perception. The primary motive to this inward activity proceeds usually from the outer impression itself. We hear a sound in which, from certain associations, we suspect a certain overtone; the next thing is to recall the overtone in memory; and finally we catch it in the sound we hear. Or perhaps we see some mineral substance we have met before; the impression awakens the memory-image, which again more or less completely melts with the impression itself.... Different qualities of impression require disparate adaptations. And we remark that our feeling of the _strain_ of our inward attentiveness increases with every increase in the strength of the impressions on whose perception we are intent." The natural way of conceiving all this is under the symbolic form of a brain-cell played upon from two directions. Whilst the object excites it from without, other brain-cells arouse it from within. _The plenary energy of the brain-cell demands the co-operation of both factors_: not when merely present, but when both present and inwardly imagined, is the object fully attended to and perceived.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.