Some Aspects of Attention 291 



state. In other words, no reaction is to be made to the 

 object attended to except such as may be necessary to allow 

 its being carefully discriminated from other objects. At- 

 tention, in its intenser degrees, at least, seems to involve a 

 state of suspended reaction. 



Not every case, then, of response adapted to the vital im- 

 portance of a stimulus is a case that suggests as its psychic 

 aspect attention to the accompanying sensation. When, for 

 example, a reaction of especial speed is made to contact with 

 a moving stimulus, the speed of the reaction would itself 

 indicate that the sensations produced are not attended to. 

 The proper situation for attention would be the situation in 

 which the reaction needs to be suspended until the stimu- 

 lus is fully discriminated. Now such careful discrimination 

 does not appear to be characteristic of reactions that are 

 largely based on inherited nervous structures. Many facts 

 concerning the instincts of animals, that is, their inherited 

 reactions, indicate that these are extremely rough adjust- 

 ments of behavior to environment until refined by individual 

 experience. Hudson observed, for example, that newly born 

 lambs on the South American plains had a tendency to run 

 away from any object that approached them, and to follow 

 any object that receded from them. They would follow 

 his horse for miles as he rode along, and would run away 

 from their own mothers when the latter moved toward them. 

 He explained this as adapted to the fact that ordinarily 

 their first duty, on making their appearance in the world, 

 is to keep up with the receding herd, while an approaching 

 object is more likely to be an enemy (188). Later, this 

 rough adjustment is modified; they learn by experience 

 not to run away from their mothers, and not to follow indis- 

 criminately any leader. 



If it is true that instinct unmodified by experience is 



