[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 51.--(From Bryan and Harter.) Practice curve of student W. J. R. in learning telegraphy. The height of the curve indicates the number of letters sent or received per minute. Therefore a rise of the curve here indicates improvement.]

The curve for sending, aside from minor irregularities, rose with a fairly smooth sweep, tapering off finally towards the "physiological limit", the limit of what the nerves and muscles of this individual could perform.

[Footnote: A good example of the physiological limit is seen in the hundred yard dash, since apparently no one, with the best of training, can lower the record much below ten seconds; and any given individual's limit may be considerably worse than this, according to his build, muscular strength and quickness of nerve centers. The simple reaction gives another good example; every one has his limit, beyond which no amount of training will lower his reaction time; the neuromuscular system simply will not work any faster.]

The receiving {322} curve rose more slowly than the sending curve, and flattened out after about four months of practice, showing little further improvement for the next two months. This was a discouraging time for the student, for it seemed as if he could never come up to the commercial standard. In fact, many learners drop out at this stage. But this student persisted, and, after the long period of little improvement, was gratified to find his curve going up rapidly again. It went up rapidly for several months, and when it once more tapered off into a level, he was well above the minimum standard for regular employment.

Such a flat stretch in a practice curve, followed by a second rise--such a period of little or no improvement, followed by rapid improvement--is called a "plateau". Sometimes due to mere discouragement, or to the inattention that naturally supervenes when an act becomes easy to perform, it often has a different cause. It may, in fact, represent a true physiological limit for the act as it is being performed, and the subsequent rise to a higher level may result from _improved methods_ of work. That was probably the case with the telegrapher.

[Footnote: A plateau of this sort is present in the learning curve for mastery of a puzzle, given on p. 316.]

The telegrapher acquires skill by improving his methods, rather than by simply speeding up. He acquires methods that he didn't dream of at first. At the start, he must learn the alphabet of dots and dashes.

This means, for purposes of sending, that he must learn the little rhythmical pattern of finger movements that stands for each letter; and, for purposes of receiving, that he must learn the rhythmical {323} pattern of clicks from the sounder that stands for a letter.

When he has learned the alphabet, he is able to send and receive slowly. In sending, he spells out the words, writing each letter as a separate act. In receiving, at this early stage, he must pick out each separate letter from the continuous series of clicks that he hears from the sounder. By degrees, the letters become so familiar that he goes through this spelling process easily; and, doing now so much better than at the outset, he supposes he has learned the trade, in its elements, and needs only to put on more speed.

But not at all! He has acquired but a small part of the necessary stock-in-trade of the telegrapher. He has his "letter habits", but knows nothing as yet of "word habits". These gradually come to him as he continues his practice. He comes to know words as units, motor units for sending purposes, auditory units for receiving. The rhythmical pattern of the whole word becomes a familiar unit. Short, much used words are first dealt with as units, then more and more words, till he has a large vocabulary of word habits. A word that has become a habit need not be spelled out in sending, nor laboriously dug out letter by letter in receiving; you simply think the word "train", and your finger taps it out as a connected unit; or, in receiving, you recognize the characteristic pattern of this whole series of clicks.

When the telegrapher has reached this word habit stage, he finds the new method far superior, in both speed and sureness, to the letter habit method which he formerly a.s.sumed to be the whole art of telegraphy. He does not even stop with word habits, but acquires a similar control over familiar phrases.

Higher Units and Overlapping

The acquisition of skill in telegraphy consists mostly in learning these _higher units_ of reactions. It is the same in {324} learning to typewrite. First you must learn your alphabet of letter-striking movements; by degrees you reduce these finger movements to firm habits, and are then in the letter-habit stage, in which you spell out each word as you write it. After a time, you write a familiar word without spelling it, by a coordinated series of finger movements; you write by word units, and later, in part, by phrase units; and these higher units give you speed and accuracy.

Along with this increase in the size of the reaction-units employed goes another factor of skill that is really very remarkable. This is the "overlapping" of different reactions, a species of doing two or more things at once, only that the two or more reactions are really parts of the same total activity. The simplest sort of overlap can be ill.u.s.trated at an early stage in learning to typewrite. The absolute beginner at the typewriter, in writing "and", pauses after each letter to get his bearings before starting on the next; but after a small amount of practice he will locate the second letter on the keyboard while his finger is still in the act of striking the first letter.

Thus the sensory part of the reaction to the second letter commences before the motor part of reacting to the first letter is finished; and this overlap does away with pauses between letters and makes the writing smoother and more rapid.

With further practice in typewriting, when word habits and phrase habits are acquired, overlap goes to much greater lengths. One expert kept her eyes on the copy about four words ahead of her fingers on the keyboard, and thus was reacting to about four words at the same time: one word was just being read from the copy, one word was being written, and the two words between were being organized and prepared for actual writing. The human typewriting mechanism, consisting of eye, optic nerve, parts of the brain and cord, motor nerves and muscles, works somewhat like one of {325} those elaborate machines which receive raw material steadily at one end perform a series of operations upon it, and keep turning out finished product at the other end.

All this is very remarkable, but the same sort of overlapping and working with large units can be duplicated in many linguistic performances that every one makes. In reading aloud, the eyes keep well ahead of the voice, and seeing, understanding and p.r.o.nouncing are all applied simultaneously to different words of the pa.s.sage read. In talking, the ideas keep developing and the spoken words tag along behind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 52.--(From Book.) Practice curve of a young man learning to typewrite. Each point on the "curve" represents a daily record in number of strokes per minute. With improvement, the curve rises.]

In telegraphy and typewriting, it is almost inevitable that the learner should start with the alphabet and proceed to gradually larger units. But in learning to talk, or to read, the process goes the other way. The child understands spoken words and phrases before breaking them up into their elementary vocal sounds; and he can better be taught to read by beginning with whole words, or even with whole {326} sentences, than by first learning the alphabet and laboriously spelling out the words. In short, the learning process often takes its start with the higher units, and reaches the smaller elements only for the purpose of more precise control.

Moderate Skill Acquired in the Ordinary Day's Work

Merely repeating a performance many times does not give the high degree of skill that we see in the expert telegrapher or typist.

Ordinarily, we practise much less a.s.siduously, are much less zealous, and have no such perfect measure of the success of our work. For "practice to make perfect", it must be strongly motivated, and it must be sharply checked up by some index or measure of success or failure.

If the success of a performance can be measured, and chalked up before the learner's eyes in the form of a practice curve, so that he can see his progress, this acts as a strong incentive to rapid improvement.

Ordinarily, we have no clear indication of exactly how well we are doing, and are satisfied if we get through our job easily and without too much criticism and ridicule from people around. Consequently we reach only a moderate degree of skill, nowhere near the physiological limit, and do not acquire the methods of the real expert.

This is very true of the manual worker. Typesetters of ten or more years' experience were once selected as subjects for an experiment on the effects of alcohol, because it was a.s.sumed that they must have already reached their maximum skill. In regard to alcohol, the result was that this drug caused a falling off in speed and accuracy of work--but that is another story. What we are interested in here is the fact that, as soon as these long-practised operators found themselves under observation, and their work measured, they all began to improve and in the course of a couple of weeks {327} reached quite a new level of performance. Their former level had been reasonably satisfactory under workaday conditions, and special incentive was needed to make them approach their limit.

A similar condition of affairs has been disclosed by "motion studies"

in many kinds of manual work; the movements of the operative have been photographed or closely examined by the efficiency expert, and a.n.a.lyzed to determine whether there are any superfluous movements that could be eliminated, and whether a different method of work would be economical of time and effort. Usually, superfluous motion has been found and considerable economy seen to be possible. There is evidently no law of learning to the effect that continued repet.i.tion of a performance necessarily makes it perfect in speed, ease, or adaptation to the task in hand. What the manual worker attains as the result of prolonged experience is a pa.s.sable performance, but not at all the maximum of skill.

The brain worker has little to brag of as against the manual worker.

He, too, is only moderately efficient in doing his particular job.

There are brilliant exceptions--bookkeepers who add columns of figures with great speed and precision, students who know just how to put in two hours of study on a lesson with the maximum of effect, writers who always say just what they wish to say and hit the nail on the head every time--but the great majority of us are only pa.s.sable. We need strong incentive, we need a clear and visible measure of success or failure, we need, if such a thing were possible, a practice curve before us to indicate where we stand at the present moment with respect to our past and our possible future.

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Habit

A habit is contrasted with a reflex, in that the reflex is native, the habit acquired; but both are alike in being prompt and automatic reactions. The best ant.i.thesis to a habit is the response of a person to a novel situation, where neither nature nor previous experience gives him a ready response. The new response is exploratory and tentative, while habit is fixed and definite. The new response is variable, the habit regular. The new response is slow and uncertain, the habit fairly quick and accurate. The new response is attended by effort and strained attention, the habit is easy and often only half-conscious. The new response is apt to be unsatisfying to the one who makes it, while habit is comfortable and a source of satisfaction.

To break a habit is most uncomfortable. Nature--at least that "second nature" which is habit--calls aloud for the customary performance.

Strenuous effort is required to get out of the rut, and the slipping back into the rut which is almost sure to occur in moments of inadvertence is humiliating. Result--usually the habit sticks.

But if the habit simply must be broken? Breaking a habit is forming a counter-habit, and the more positive the counter-habit the better for us. This counter-habit must not be left to form itself, but must be practised diligently. Strong motivation is necessary, no half-hearted acquiescence in somebody else's injunction to get rid of the habit. We must adopt the counter-habit as ours, and work for a high standard of skill in it. For example, if we come to realize that we have a bad habit of grouchiness with our best friends, it is of little use merely to attempt to deaden this habit; we need to aim at being a positive addition to the company whenever we are present, and to practise the art of being good company, checking up our efforts to be sure we are hitting {329} the right vein, and persisting in our self-training till we become real artists. It takes some determination for a grouchy individual to make such a revolution in his conduct; his self-a.s.sertion resists violently, for the grouchiness is part and parcel of himself and he hates to be anything but himself. He must conceive a new and inspiring ideal of himself, and start climbing up the practice curve towards the new ideal.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter.

2. Which of the acts performed in eating breakfast are instinctive, which are matters of habit, and which are partly the one and partly the other?

3. Compare your mental att.i.tude in approaching an unfamiliar and a familiar task.

4. How does the performance of the expert in swimming or dancing, etc., differ from the performance of the beginner? a.n.a.lyze out the points of superiority.

5. Show that the element of trial and error is present in (a) the child's learning to p.r.o.nounce a word, and (b) learning "how to take" a person so as to get on well with him.

6. Why is it that our handwriting, though exercised so much, is apt to grow worse rather than better, while on the contrary our spelling is apt to improve?

7. How would you rate your efficiency in study? Is it near your physiological limit, on a plateau, or in a stage of rapid improvement?

8. A practice experiment. Take several pages of uniform printed matter, and mark it off into sections of 15 lines. Take your time for marking every word in one section that contains both e and r.

The two letters need not be adjacent, but must both be present somewhere In the word. Having recorded your time for this first section, do the same thing with the next section, and so on for 12 sections. What were you able to observe, introspectively, of your method of work and changes with practice. From the objective observations, construct a practice curve.

9. Write brief explanations of the following terms: practice habit higher unit overlapping plateau physiological limit insight trial and error negative adaptation subst.i.tute stimulus subst.i.tute response conditioned reflex

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REFERENCES

Thorndike's _Animal Intelligence, Experimental Studies,_ 1911, reports his own pioneer work in this field. See also Chapter X in the same author's _Educational Psychology, Briefer Course_, 1914.

For other reviews of the work on animal learning, see Watson's _Behavior_, 1914, pp. 184-250; also Washburn's _Animal Mind_, 2nd edition, 1917, pp. 257-312.