Experimental Psychology. — “On the Development of Attention 
from the 8 until and including the 12% year of life.” By 
F. Rorrs and J. FrLpsruaes. (Communicated by Prof. 
C. WinNkLER). 
(Communicated at the meeting of February 26, 1921). 
I. 
The literature records little about the development of attention 
in children, the writers having confined themselves only to the 
value which the experimental investigation of attention in adults, 
possesses for a proper notion of the development of attention in 
children. Their investigations regarded the range of attention for 
simultaneous and successive impressions, its intensity, the aptness 
for distraction or the power of resistance to disturbing influences, 
the degree of clearness of the several elements observed in one 
action. True, in the first part of his “Vorlesungen zur Einführung 
in die experimentelle Pädagogik und ihre psychologischen Grund- 
lagen” *) Mreumann describes, on the basis of his own investigations, 
the development of attention in young individuals in all these 
respects, but for want of space he had to forego the publication 
of his experimental results. Children were also experimented on 
ao. by F. N. Freeman’), A. Kocn ®), J. Hasricn *), D. Karz *) and 
M. v. KuvenBure ®); with exception of the first, all about attention 
and conscious isolating abstraction, i.e. fixating of uniform elements 
from simple pictures. 
1) Leipzig 1916, p. 179 volg. 
°) Untersuchungen über. den Aufmerksamkeitsumfang und die Zahlauffassung bei 
Kindern und Erwachsenen. Pädagogische Arbeiten des Leipziger Lehrervereins I, 1910. 
3) Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Abstraktionsfähigkeit von Volks- 
schulkindern. Zeitschrift fiir angewandte Psychologie 7, p. 332. 
4) Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Abstraktionsfahigkeit von Schülerinnen, 
Ibid. 9, p. 189. 
5) Studiën zur Kinderpsychologie. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Pädagogik und 
Psychologie. Heft 4, 1913. 
6) Ueber Abstraktionsfähigkeit und die Entstehung von Relationen beim vorschul- 
pflichtigen Kinde. Ibid. 17, p. 270; See also K. Bünrer: Die geistige Entwick- 
lung des Kindes?. Jena 1921, p. 162. 
