A Beginner's Psychology

by Edward Bradford Titchener

[§ 35]. The Connections of Mental Processes.—So far as the elementary processes are concerned, this question has already been answered in our discussion of perception. We found that there were two modes of sensory connection, two ways in which sensations may go together. In qualitative perceptions, such as the perception of a musical note, there is a blend or fusion of qualities; we can, to be sure, analyse the compound tone, after practice, into fundamental and overtones; yet it still comes to us as unitary, as a single impression; it stands only at one remove, so to speak, from the simplicity of sensation itself. The tastes of coffee and lemonade, with their blending of taste and smell, of touch and temperature; the organic feels of hunger and thirst and nausea; the kinæsthesis aroused by grasping and pulling, by lifting the arm and swinging the foot; all these experiences are fusions, more or less intimate, more or less complex, of sensory qualities. They too can be analysed; but the analysis is not easy; the qualities cling together, seem in a way to merge into one another. In spatial perceptions, on the other hand, in such perceptions as the sight of my desk with its litter of writing materials, the elementary processes stand out side by side; brown contrasts with blue, dark with light; here, we might say, is no confluence, but rather concourse. In the perception of rhythm we have the same separateness of sensations, only that it is now temporal instead of spatial; and in the perception of change (p. 132) we find both modes of connection, separate qualities or intensities passing into one another by that peculiar blur or fusion which we have called the index of change. This second type of connection, whether it is the side-by-side of space or the end-to-end of time, may be named conjunction.

The associative tendencies which we have been more recently discussing are set up by series of meaningless syllables, that is to say, by discrete stimuli. It is clear, then, that the connection of the correlated mental processes is of the conjunctive type; we have said nothing of the brain-processes which underlie sensory fusion. We can, indeed, say nothing of them; we have no knowledge of their nature. It has been suggested that qualitative perception is correlated with a synergy of the brain-processes, that is, with a cooperation so close that every process taking part in it loses something of its individuality. That is possible; we cannot say more.

When we leave the elementary processes for complex experiences, for perceptions and ideas, and ask how these are connected, we cannot return any completely satisfactory answer. Experiments may be made; thus, a familiar visual stimulus (word or simple picture) may be shown for a few seconds to the observer, with the instruction that he receive it passively and report the consequent course of his mental processes. Under these circumstances, it invariably happens that the stimulus is immediately named. After that, apparently, any one of three typical things may happen. First, the named perception is supplemented by a sense-feeling. A word printed in very small letters on a large background aroused the feeling of loneliness; a word printed in red, a feeling of excitement; the word ‘blinding,’ the disagreeable feeling of a dazzling light. Then the feeling gives way to an idea, which supplants the meaning of the stimulus. Secondly, the named perception is resolved into the idea of some object previously seen. An outline drawing of a face may be replaced by the idea of a friend, whose features are, so to say, read into the drawing; or the word ‘Tell,’ printed on a blue ground, may be replaced by the idea of the familiar picture of William Tell springing from a boat to the rocks; the blue of the background becomes the blue sky of the painting. Thirdly, and only occasionally, the named perception is followed by an idea which comes separate and detached; we have the traditional pattern of the ‘successive association.’ These three types of connection (there are, of course, intermediate forms) do not furnish a satisfactory answer to our question, mainly because the experiments are not properly under control; the observer comes to them with all sorts of associative tendencies at work; and unless we make a very large number of observations, we cannot be sure that our results are either representative or exhaustive.

At the same time, such experiments help us; they show, for instance, that the doctrine of association—quite apart from its logical leanings, or perhaps just by reason of them—regarded the course of ideas in too ‘intellectual’ a way; the sense-feelings, and other feeling-blends that we shall mention later, play a larger part in our thinking than the associationists dreamed of. They show, too, that the ‘successive association’ is not the commonest, but rather the least common, form of mental connection. Listen to a quotation from Hobbes! “In a discourse of our present civil war,” he writes, “what could seem more impertinent [less to the point] than to ask, as one did, what was the value of the Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason. And thence easily followed that malicious question: and all this in a moment of time, for thought is quick.” Hobbes has worked out the logical coherence, the coherence of meaning; but he is very far from a psychology of the situation. What actually took place in the mind of the questioner we shall never know; we may be very sure, however, that his mental processes did not follow one another in logical order, as Hobbes imagines. There was a convergence of associative tendencies, which expressed itself in the question; there need not have been any succession of ideas at all.

[§ 36]. The Law of Mental Connection.—We have spoken at some length of the establishment of associative tendencies in the brain, of their decay with time, and of their mutual interference. Can we sum up our knowledge of them in a single general statement? And can we then translate this general statement into psychological language, and so reach a formula of mental connection that may stand in place of the logical laws of association? Let us try.

We must proceed very carefully, even if our care drives us into clumsiness of expression. We cannot, for instance, leave out the fact that the meaningless syllables are given in the state of attention. It appears, indeed, that attention is necessary to association; we may doubt if any amount of repetition—to take that example—would set up an associative tendency, were it not for attention. Repetition, we remember, is one of the determinants of attention (p. 94); so that the repeated experience is likely to become vivid in the very nature of the case; but if it does not, if for any reason our attention is diverted or we fail to notice the stimulus, repetition has no associative power. How many of us would like to recall the carpet or wall-paper of the room we slept in as children! Thousands of times we saw the colours and the patterns; but our adult memory is an absolute blank; those repeated stimuli never ‘impressed’ us.

We cannot either leave out the fact that the meaningless syllables are bracketed all together, so to speak, by a certain situation, namely, the situation created by the experiment. The observer comes to them, in accordance with this situation, intending to learn them, to memorise them: a fact of very great importance!—and a fact that needs to be dwelt on for a little, if we are to see our way clearly in what follows. We said on p. 149 that meanings are associated. Yet we have been studying the formation of associative tendencies in the brain, the associating organ, by the help of—meaningless syllables! Is there not a flat contradiction here between theory and practice? No, that is really not the case; and the key to the riddle lies in this fact of the ‘situation’ which we are now discussing. The syllables are meaningless as syllables; they are thus set apart from ordinary syllables that are meaningful; and it is this difference from words, combined with their likeness to words in other respects, that makes them useful to the experimenter (p. 151). For since they are themselves meaningless, we can put upon them a constant meaning of our own; we can introduce them into any situation of our own making; and the meaning that we give them, in the study of the associative tendencies, is the meaning of ‘an experimental series to be learned under certain instructions’: a meaning which is definite, and which remains the same throughout the experiments. You see, then, that the ‘situation’ is important.

Attention, as we know, means reinforcement of certain nervous processes and inhibition of others (p. 107); and the intention to learn implies the activity of directive nerve-forces (p. 96), the existence of a special set or disposition of the brain. Let us keep these things in mind; and let us call the brain-processes that are correlated with mental processes ‘psychoneural’ processes. Then we may say: When a number of psychoneural processes, all of which are reinforced and all of which stand alike under the directive influence of a nervous disposition, occur together under certain favourable conditions, then associative tendencies are established among them, such that the recurrence of any one tends to involve, according to circumstances, the recurrence of the others. The phrase ‘under favourable conditions’ refers to the effect of repetition of the series, of their distribution in time, and so forth; and the phrase ‘according to circumstances’ means that heed must be paid to the lapse of time since learning, to the working of initial or terminal inhibition, and so forth.

So much for a generalised law of associative tendency, derived from the work with meaningless syllables! That is a law of nervous action; now let us turn to psychology, and see if we can formulate a law of mental connection. We shall be dealing with perceptions and ideas; and we shall be dealing with them as experiences, made up of core and context (p. 117).

Attention is again necessary. Intention, on the other hand, seems not to be necessary; there need be no special purpose behind the experiences, as the intention to learn is behind the experiments with meaningless syllables; attention is enough. The idea of a surgical operation, for instance, may be permanently connected with the idea of the surgeon who performed it, although the intervention of that particular surgeon was quite casual and unexpected. The reason is that attention brings a situation, its own situation, with it; the determinants of primary attention are, as we put it on p. 97, the ‘great biological stimuli,’ things that an organism must take notice of, if it is to persist as a living organism at all; and the determinants of derived primary attention are also what we may call ‘situational’ affairs, things that appeal in certain circumstances to certain sides of our nature, things that interest or ‘impress’ us. So attention, too, implies a set or disposition of the nervous system; common sense is so far in the right—though its words are misleading—when it talks of a ‘concentration of the mind,’ of ‘pulling oneself together,’ and the like; and this general set is sufficient, without the presence of a distinct purpose. Our law will read, then, somewhat to this effect: If a number of vivid perceptions or ideas, whose situational context is the same, occur together under favourable conditions, then the later appearance in the same situational context of any one will tend to be accompanied, according to circumstances, by the reappearance (as ideas) of the others.