39-1 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.-^. 



thirty, were brought in for comparison. Their treatment of fairy tales and nannc 

 tales emphasised one or two additional trends of the adolescents' thinking. 



(1) While both sets of writers seek in a fairyland compensations for the ills of 

 present life, their method of attaining it is diSerent. The adolescent causes the 

 mortal completely to leave his present world and escape to fairyland bj- magic aid, 

 changing his form and being completely different ; the thirty-year-old brings fairj'land 

 to the mortal as he is, in his own surroundings : there is neither change of form nor 

 circumstance. 



The adolescent seeks compensation for disappointment and unhappiness b\' 

 ranging in imagination a world quite other than this, in which dreams come true. 

 The more mature have learned to find ' Heaven about them ' in the ordinary ways 

 of life. 



(2) Many of the adolescents and thirty-year-old writers seek to cure a child of some 

 vice lay the experience in fair3dand, but the adolescent makes the experience a 

 punishment. The older writers make it a demonstration of the beauty and desirability 

 of virtue. The adolescent is negative in his thinking about right and wrong, tending 

 to condemn and eschew evil rather than to approve and seek after virtue. 



Miss M. Phillips.- — The Adolescence of the Young Wage Earner. 



The differences between the adolescent in industry and normal adolescence are 

 to be found rather in the development of the sentiments than in intellectual develop- 

 ment. Though there may exist a rough correlation between social and economic 

 status on the one hand and intelligence on the other, yet the range of intelligence to 

 be found among repetition workers is always large, and where any of the following 

 three factors are present — periods of industrial depression ; the good conditions 

 offered by certain firms ; the existence of areas whose elementary schools are as yet 

 imperfectly combed by any scholarship system — this range may be almost complete. 



Where low intelligence exists, its main effect is, together with the unstimulating 

 mental environment in which many repetition workers live, to form sentiments whose 

 ideational, emotional and impulsive material is scanty, crude and ill-organised. 

 Where, on the other hand, such factors in the mental environment as home, school and 

 work are stimulating and formative, a development of the sentiments may take 

 place which is analogous to the rapid development under good phj'sical conditions of 

 a hitherto undersized, because undernourished body. 



The most serious defect of the young wage earner's environment usually consists 

 in the unstimulating and unsatisfying work which he is often offered. This commonly 

 results in an attitude of unambitious, unadventurous resignation, or in withdrawal 

 into fantasy, or both. Even during work hours tlie adolescent's mind may be centred 

 on his leisure time, past or present, or may be employed by dreaming. The same 

 withdrawal from the real world may take place in the sphere of personal relationships ; 

 boys and girls may refuse to undertake the adventure which getting to know each 

 other involves. 



Failing any transformation of the industrial environment, the way out lies in the 

 enrichment of leisure time by varied and stimulating intellectual, emotional and 

 aesthetic material. For girls, especially, the first essential is experience of vivid, 

 attractive, unfamiliar personalities. Welfare schemes, continuation schools, clubs of 

 various kinds may all undertake with success this task of transforming personality 

 through the transformation of leisure. 



Afternoon. 



Mr. R. J. Bartlett. — Some Effects of Low Frequency Vibration on Body 

 and Mind. 



Unpublished work on the effect of metronome ticks on breathing has shown that 

 subjectively-imposed rhythms are related to the breathing frequency and that, in 

 particular, as the beat of the metronome is changed in length, the breathing period 

 lengthens or shortens until a critical length of beat is reached and then, after a period 

 of uncertainty, accompanied by feelings of anxiety, irritation or annoyance, a new 

 subjective rhythm sets in. 



The experiments now described were performed to put to the test the possibility 

 that similar effects would result from the low frequency vibration set up by a running 

 motor. 



