(1) “So numerous and varied are the ramifications of attention, that we find it defined by competent authorities as a state of muscular contraction and adaptation, as a pure mental activity, as an emotion or feeling, and as a change in the clearness of ideas. Each of the definitions can be justified from the facts, if we put the chief emphasis now upon one phase and now upon another of its varied expressions” (W. B. Pillsbury, Attention, 1908, 1). Discuss this passage.
(2) Give instances, from your own experience, of the three levels of attention. Trace the development (still from your own experience) of derived primary from secondary attention.
(3) Describe carefully the attitudes (a) of the scout (secondary visual attention) and (b) of the eavesdropper (secondary auditory attention). How do you account for their difference?
(4) A child that has fallen and hurt itself stops crying if you offer it a toy; a soldier who in the heat of battle has received a serious wound may know nothing of it, and may go on fighting till he drops from exhaustion; many a martyr has suffered at the stake with calm serenity. How far are these cases explicable by the laws of attention?
(5) Criticise Sir Wm. Hamilton’s experiment. Do not be satisfied till you have found several reasons for distrusting its result.
(6) Do the lower animals ever give evidence of derived primary attention?
(7) You can follow the movement of a single instrument in the orchestra better, when it has been playing a solo before, than when the whole group of instruments begin together. Why is this? Give other instances of the same law.
(8) It has been proposed to measure the degree of attention by measuring the degree of effort which accompanies it. What have you to say to the proposal?
(9) How could you tell, by outward observation, whether a child is attentive or inattentive? and whether it is adequate to its task or is in difficulties? Do not just list the symptoms; make your answer psychological.