QUESTIONS

1.  Distinguish in so far as you can between habit and memory.

2.  Name the factors which determine one’s ability to recall.

3.  How can you hope to improve children’s memories?  Which of the factors involved are subject to improvement?

4.  In what way can you improve the organization of associations upon the part of children in any one of the subjects which you teach?  How increase the number of associations?

5.  What advantage has the method of concentration over the method of repetition in memorization?

6.  Give the reasons why the method of recall is the best method of memorization.

7.  If you were teaching a poem of four stanzas, would you use the method of memorization by wholes or by parts?  Indicate clearly the degree to which the one or the other method should be used or the nature of the combination of methods for the particular selection which you use for the purposes of illustration.

8.  How long do children in your classes seem to be able to work hard at verbatim memorization?

9.  Under what conditions may the writing of the material being memorized actually interfere with the process?  When may it help?

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?

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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.