748 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
a child’s interests and convictions are due to native tastes and how far to 
suggestion. Probably more importance is attached to the former than is 
justifiable, because the suggested idea, when once accepted, often leads to an 
habitual interest which appears to subsequent observers as a native taste. In 
regard to the second point, we need to determine the relative importance of 
suggestions given in early childhood and those given at adolescence. Educational 
tradition attaches a possibly exaggerated importance to the former. 
III. The more influential we admit suggestion to be, the more cautiously 
should it be used. (a) Its use tends to discourage criticism and reasoning. 
Much of the adolescent period is wasted in painfully discarding by a critical 
process the convictions impressed upon us by suggestion during childhood. 
Unless civilisation is stationary, this is sometimes inevitable. Suggestive 
methods of education in morals, religion, art, and politics, increase a waste 
which ought to be minimised. In other cases the critical stage is never reached, 
and prejudice, or at worst fanaticism, results. (0b) Its use in teaching and 
ordinary intercourse to suggest pursuits and arouse interests and to avoid the 
friction of direct command tends to make the child dependent instead of self- 
reliant. The more skilful the methods of suggestion, the more is this apt to be 
the’ case, because the teacher is himself often unconscious of the extent of his 
influence. He believes the child to be ‘thinking’ when in fact he is ‘ sug- 
gesting ’ each step himself. 
IV. The excessive use of suggestion is due to (a) bad conditions of teaching 
and confused criteria of ‘good’ teaching; (b) distrust of reason and the critical 
faculties. The child cannot in most cases reason adequately, but he should he 
prepared to reason in the future, instead of being trained to accept unreasoned 
convictions without criticism. 
10. Experiments on Practice in Immediate Memory. 
By J. L. McIntyre. 
Preliminary tests were made in several primary and higher grade schools 
in Scotland, with meaningless syllables as material; their object was to give a 
standard of unpractised memory, and to determine the influence of different 
times of exposure and interval, number of repetitions, age, sex, social status, 
&e. They showed the ordinary gradual increase with age, fluctuations of rise 
and fall practically alternating for boys and girls, with greater spread of varia- 
tion for earlier ages, superiority throughout for girls over boys, and for town 
over country children, the advantage of girls over boys being greater at the 
lower ages, and greater also for country as compared with town children. Very 
slight differences were found in results for different rates of exposure (one and 
a half, two, and three seconds), the quicker reproduction in the first compensat- 
ing for the longer fixation in the third, but it was found that different methods 
of memorising were also adopted in the different cases. Visual is throughout 
more effective than oral presentation, the superiority of the former being greater 
for older children, and for town as compared with country children. Correlation 
of the ranking by these tests with the teacher’s ranking, in one school, showed 
extraordinary divergencies in some classes and closeness in others. 
The three practice series were carried out in a town school, an oral series 
(thirty days), a visual (twenty-one days), and a further visual series (sixty 
days). The improvement was relatively greatest for the oral series (nearly 
100 per cent.) and for one as compared with two readings; in the longer visual 
series, a comparison of the first and last weeks gave an average rise of 50 per 
cent. Individuals showed well-marked differences of type in the form of the 
practice curve, and it was found that in most cases the weakest section of the 
syllable-group was instinctively strengthened as practice continued, becoming in 
some individuals the strongest by the end of the practice-period. The junior 
pupils, beginning at a much lower level, made more rapid and greater improve- 
ment than the senior pupils, although the difference of age was slight. 
An attempt was also made to study the value of such mechanical memory- 
work as ‘formal training’; the results support the view that a considerable 
amount of the improvement of ability gained by memorising syllables is available 
for ordinary school-work. 
