10. Why may it not be wise to attempt to teach "their" and "there" at the same time?
11. What is the type of memory employed by children who have considerable ability in cramming for examinations? Is this type of memory ever useful in later life?
12. What precaution do we need to take to insure permanence in memory upon the part of those who learn quickly?
13. What is meant by saying that we possess memories rather than a power or capacity called memory?
14. Do we forget with equal rapidity in all fields in which we have learned? What factors determine the rate of forgetting?
15. Why should a boy think through a poem to be memorized rather than beginning his work by trying to repeat the first two lines?
[VI. THE TEACHER'S USE OF THE IMAGINATION]
Imagination is governed by the same general laws of association which control habit and memory. In these two former topics the emphasis was upon getting a desired result without any attention to the form of that result. Imagination, on the other hand, has to do with the way past experience is used and the form taken by the result. It merges into memory in one direction and into thinking in another. No one definition has been found acceptable--in fact, in no field of psychology is there more difference of opinion, in no topic are terms used more loosely, than in this one of imagination. Stated in very general terms, imagination is the process of reproducing, or reconstructing any form of experience. The result of such a process is a mental image. When the fact that it is reproduction or reconstruction is lost sight of, and the image reacted to as if it were present, an illusion or hallucination results.
Images may be classified according to the sense through which the original experience came, into visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile, kinæsthetic, and so on. In many discussions of imagery the term "picture" has been used to describe it, and hence in the thought of many it is limited rather definitely to the visual field. Of course this is entirely wrong. The recall of a melody, or of the touch of velvet, or of the fragrance of a rose, is just as much mental imagery as the recall of the sight of a friend.