THE ACQUISITION OF SKILL IN ARCHERY. 



The great majority of experiments upon habit formation in man have dealt 

 with functions involved in implicit behavior; functions connected chiefly with 

 the speech mechanisms have received most attention. Improvement in such 

 activities as addition, translation into code or from code, solving mechanical 

 puzzles, checking letters on a printed page, or memorizing word material is 

 due almost wholly to increase in complexity of language habits. Practice 

 in typewriting and musical technique is, in the beginning, followed by the 

 formation of implicit* habits which later are dropped out to leave only the 

 direct sensory-motor reactions from eye to fingers. Improvement in writing 

 and in telegraphy probably involve similar changes. In the study of all such 

 functions in human adults the subjects have already, at the beginning of the 

 experiments, a vast number of constellations of habits in the implicit systems 

 which have more or less in common with the problem offered by the experi- 

 mental situation and may influence the course of learning in unknown ways. 

 This is illustrated by the relation between the fullness of "meaning" of word 

 material (i. e., the number of habits in which the material is already involved) 

 and the ease with which it is learned. 



The existence of such complex systems of implicit behavior with their 

 equally complex relations to overt activity makes it difficult to distinguish the 

 different functions improved in learning, or to say whether a given amount of 

 improvement is the result of a gradual coordination of many unrelated habits 

 or of the simpler union of a few constellations of habits; whether the practice 

 is distributed over a large number of nervous changes or is concentrated upon 

 the fixation of a very few new neural pathways. For an insight into the mech- 

 anism of habit formation some simple, more direct sensory-motor associations 

 must be studied, particularly such as permit of the control of related functions, 

 metabolism, etc. This is best accomplished with animals, as they may be 

 subjected to more vigorous training methods than is possible with man, but 

 some types of learning in man, free from the complications of language habits, 

 must be studied before the extension of the results obtained with animals to 

 ma n will be completely justified. The activities studied by Bair (tossing shot) , 

 Wl-itley (tracing the smooth maze), Swift (tossing balls), Wells (tapping), and 

 Partridge (inhibition of the winking reflex) call for the formation of relatively 

 simple motor habits, but have the disadvantage of giving little to interest the 

 subjects and probably offer a weaker stimulus to learning than is provided 

 by more complex activities. 



Ii the spring of 1913 Dr. J. B. Watson suggested archery as a means of 

 studying habit formation in man which would in part avoid the complexity 

 of language habits. Material for practice in archery was obtained and a pre- 

 liminary experiment was begun by him at the Marine Biological Laboratory of 

 the Carnegie Institution of Washington on Loggerhead Key, Tortugas. The 



*The term "implicit" is used in the sense defined by Watson (1914) as a common name for the 

 movements, too slight for detection, which seem to bridge the gap between external stimulus 

 and overt reactions when more than a single reflex is involved. 



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