480 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE of all, the prime moral purpose of youthful reading is ignored in choices based on form and style, and a growing profusion of notes that distract from content to language, the study of which belongs in the college if not in the university, de- velops the tendencies of criticism before the higher powers of sympathetic appreciation have done their work.1 (B) Other new mental powers and aptitudes are as yet too little studied. Very slight are the observations so far made of children's historic, which is so clearly akin to literary, in- terest and capacity. With regard to this and several other subjects in the curriculum we are in the state of Watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began to dream of the steam- engine; we are just recognizing a new power and method destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency of education, but only after a long and toilsome period of limited successes.
Mrs. Barnes 2 told a story without date, place, name, or moral, and compared the questions which 1,250 children would like to have an- swered about it..She found that the interest of girls in persons, or the number who asked the question " who," culminated at twelve, when it coincided with that of boys, but that the latter continued to rise to fifteen. The interest to know "place where" events occurred culminated at eleven with girls, and at fifteen, and at a far higher point, with boys. The questions " how " and " why," calling for the method and reason, both culminated at twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, but were more infrequent and showed less age differences than the preceding question. Interest in results of the action was most pronounced of all, 1 Perhaps the best and most notable school reader is Das Deutsche Lesebuch, begun nearly fifty years ago by Hopf and Paulsiek, and lately supplemented by a corps of writers headed by Dobeln, all in ten volumes of over 3,500 pages and con- taining nearly six times as much matter as the largest American series. Many men for years went over the history of German literature, from the Eddas and Nibe- lungenlied down, including a few living writers, carefully selecting saga, legends, Mdrchen, fables, proverbs, hymns, a few prayers, Bible tales, conundrums, jests, and humorous tales, with many digests, epitomes and condensation of great stand- ards, quotations, epic, lyric, dramatic poetry, adventure, exploration, biography, with sketches of the life of each writer quoted, with a large final volume on the history of German literature. All this, it is explained, is " statarie" or required to be read between Okotava and Obersecunda. It is no aimless anthology or chrestoma- thy like Chambers's Encyclopedia, but it is perhaps the best product of prolonged concerted study to select from a vast field the best to feed each nascent stage of later childhood and early youth, and to secure the maximum of pleasure and profit. The ethical end is dominant throughout this pedagogic canon.
1 The Historic Sense among Children. In her Studies in Historical Method.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 4&I culminating at twelve in girls and fifteen in boys. Details and time excited far less interest, the former jointly culminating for both sexes at eleven. Interest in the truth of the narrative was extremely slight, although it became manifest at fifteen, and was growing at sixteen. The number of inferences drawn steadily increased with age, although the increase was very slight after thirteen. Both legitimate and crit- ical inferences increased after eleven, while imaginative inferences at that age had nearly reached their maximum. Interest in names was very strong throughout, as in primitive people. Boys were more curi- ous concerning " who," " where," and " how "; girls as to " why." In general, the historic curiosity of boys was greater than that of girls, and culminated later. The inferences drawn from an imagined finding of a log-house, boat, and arrows on a lonely island indicate that the power of inference, both legitimate and imaginative, develops strongly at twelve and thirteen, after which doubt and the critical faculties are apparent; which coincides with Mr. M. A. Tucker's conclusion, that doubt develops at thirteen and that personal inference diminishes about that age.
The children were given two accounts of the fall of Fort Sumter, one in the terms of a school history and the other a despatch of equal length from Major Anderson, and asked which was best, should be kept, and why. Choice of the narrative steadily declined after eleven and that of the despatch increased, the former reaching its lowest, the latter its highest, point at fifteen, indicating a preference for the first- hand record. The number of those whose choice was affected by style showed no great change from twelve to fifteen, but rose very rapidly for the next two years. Those who chose the despatch be- cause it was true, signed, etc., increased rapidly in girls and boys throughout the teens, and the preference for the telegram as a more direct source increased very rapidly from thirteen to seventeen.
Other studies of this kind led Mrs. Barnes to conclude that children remembered items by groups; that whole groups were often omitted; that those containing most action were best remembered; that what is remembered is remembered with great accuracy; that generalities are often made more specific; that the number of details a child carries away from a connected narrative is not much above fifty, so that their numbers should be limited; and from it all was inferred the necessity of accuracy, of massing details about central characters or incidents, letting action dominate, omitting all that is aside from the main line of the story, of bringing out cause and effect, and dramatizing where possible.
Miss Patterson * collated the answers of 2,237 children to the ques- tion " What does 1895 mean? " The blanks " Don't know " decreased very rapidly from six to eight, and thereafter maintained a slight but constant percentage. Those who expanded the phrase a little without 1 Special Study on Children's Sense of Historical Time. Mrs. Barnes's Studies jn Historical Method, p. 94.
482 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE intelligence were most numerous from eight to ten, while the propor- tion who gave a correct explanation rose quite steadily for both sexes and culminated at fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. The latter only indicates the pupils of real historic knowledge. The writer con- cludes that " the sense of historical time is altogether lacking with children of seven, and may be described as slight up to the age of twelve." History, it is thought, should be introduced early with no difference between boys and girls, but " up to the age of twelve or thirteen it should be presented in a series of striking biographies and events, appearing if possible in contemporary ballads and chronicles, and illustrated by maps, chronologic charts, and as richly as possible by pictures of contemporary objects, buildings, and people." At the age of fourteen or fifteen another sort of work should appear. Orig- inal sources should still be used, but they should illustrate not " the picture of human society moving before us in a long panorama, but should give us the opportunity to study the organization, thought, feeling, of a time as seen in its concrete embodiments, its documents, monuments, men, and books." The statesmen, thinkers, poets, should now exceed explorers and fighters; reflection and interpretation, dis- crimination of the true from the false, comparison, etc., are now first in order; while later yet, perhaps in college, should come severer methods and special monographic study.
Studies of mentality, so well advanced for infants and so well begun for lower grades, are still very meager for adoles- cent stages so far as they bear on growth in the power to deal with arithmetic, drawing and pictures, puzzles, super- stitions, collections, attention, reason, etc. Enough has been done to show that with authority to collect data on plans and by methods that can now be operated and with aid which should now be appropriated by school boards and teachers' associations, incalculable pedagogic economy could be secured and the scientific and professional character of teaching every topic in upper grammar and high school and even in the early college grades be greatly enhanced. To enter upon this laborious task in every branch of study is perhaps our chief present need and duty to our youth in school, although in- dividual studies like that of Binet belong elsewhere. Below is a description of the few tentatives that suggest mental changes of puberty relative to a few of the above topics, rea- soning power, etc.
J. A. Hancock * undertook a statistical study of children's ability to reason by giving them a number of carefully devised sums in arith- 'Ed. Rev., October, 1896, INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 4^3 metic. He found in going up the grades the greatest oscillation of in- crease and decrease in the number of failures and apparently in the power of numerical analysis. But his figures showed that the rate of decrease in error is most rapid at thirteen and fifteen, although at four- teen errors are nearly as numerous as at twelve. Girls improved till they were ten and then lost, but after a year improved again. From this work it would appear that children can not reason much beyond their experience and environment until about the age of puberty. These conclusions are based on returns studied for the purpose of 500 or more children of each age from seven to fifteen. Queyrat in his Logique chez 1'enfant, Paris, 1902, chap, iii, abundantly illustrates the lack of reasoning power in children, indisposed as he is to await maturer season.
Voris * found that the seventh school year was more accurate in fundamental operations of arithmetic, and that the subsequent year shows not only no progress, but a tendency to decline. More errors were indicated in the lower work of the high school than in the eighth grammar grade, and th^re was little progress from the fifth to the eighth, indicating a stationary period.
Dr. Hoffmann developed a simple story as a result of careful study of children's interests, which strongly appealed to them.2 This Barnes translated, and had it read twice to children, who were told to draw whatever pictures it suggested. He collated these from 6,392 children, who drew 15,218 scenes, the meeting with the dog and rescue after a fall into the river predominating. While at six each child drew an average of 1.6 scenes, the latter increased in number, culminating in girls at thirteen and boys at fourteen, each of whom averaged more than 3 scenes each. This number declined until seventeen, when the census ended as if the children became less daring in expression. " The courage to express ideas through drawing increases in Califor- nia children until they are thirteen or fourteen years old, and then steadily decreases." Lukens 3 and others have confirmed this point. All who declined to draw were over thirteen. Other studies show that at this age there is a change of ideals, and that children more fully realize that they can not execute what they see. Collating 12,740 faces, full faces decreased and profiles increased till at thirteen there were twice as many of the latter as of the former, the equality point being between nine and ten.
Miss Herrick4 classified 1,324 drawings of 451 children made to illustrate the same poem and on the same conditions. There were in all 1,313 faces in these drawings, tabulation of which showed that 1 Unpublished Dissertation. Study of Children's Errors in Examination Papers. Indiana University, 1900.
2 See his Der Struwwelpeter. Hans Guck-in-die-Luft.
3 A Study of Children's Drawings in the Early Years. Fed. Sem., October, 4 Children's Drawings. Fed. Sem., October, 1895, vol. iii, pp. 338, 339 484 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE whereas young children always tend to draw the full face, profile seems well established by nine, and rather tends to increase up to fourteen, when this census ends.
Indian children 1 were found to draw the maximal number of fig- ures at six or seven, and then interest in drawing somewhat declined as they learned to write, but later returned; the greatest variety of objects drawn was found in girls of eleven and boys of twelve, but this later declined till sixteen. Animals, birds, and man were often chosen by the boys in the earlier years. Flowers were most frequent for girls from twelve to fifteen, and conventional figures were domi- nant for both sexes at fifteen.
Miss Maitland " was able to study the spontaneous drawings of 65 Eskimo children. Up to ten, thirty-three per cent were picture stories, and this " catalogued frieze " work predominated over repre- sentative work. Up to ten or eleven, drawing is a language and represents their own environment. There are very many human fig- ures, and both men and animals are full of action.
Lancaster's returns 3 indicate that fifty to seventy-five per cent of young people are profoundly moved by art at this stage of life, al- though the fervor usually lasts but a few months or at most a year or two. It was not a sign of artistic ability, but only of the awakening emotional nature. The change in pictures was generally from the bright-colored pictures of action to quiet scenes of sentiment. Now, a picture may be interesting without animals or a person in it. Those pictures that show deep emotion or are thought to reveal the heart are preferred. Some now become very conscious of inartistic archi- tecture, wall paper, etc., and make new demands upon their home or environment. Classical pictures, which have sometimes passed unno- ticed or even been hated, now begin to move the soul. " In our house hung Angelo's Madonna. I hated it and would make terrible faces at it as a child. At fifteen it suddenly struck me with a beauty that nothing else has ever made me feel. The Madonna came to be my ideal." Many speak of now loving landscapes for the first time.
A study of children's passion for collecting * was made on a basis of 607 boys and the same number of girls, as measured by the number of things collected, which reached its greatest intensity at ten and declined, although with considerable persistence, through the teens. Two hundred and fourteen kinds of collection for each sex were studied and sexual differences stood out more markedly at adolescence. At eleven or twelve there was more interest in the things than in 1 Favorite Drawings of Indian Children, by Louisa McDermott. North-West- ern Monthly, September, 1897, vol. viii, p. 134.
•Notes on Eskimo Drawings. North-Western Mo., June, 1899, vol. ix, p. 443.
• Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence Fed. Sem. July 1897, vol.v, p. 101.
4 The Collecting Instinct, by Caroline Frear Burk. Ped. Sem., July, 1900, INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION the mere collecting. The possession idea develops into love of quan- tity, so that the largest collections come now and imitation is potent. From twelve on interest begins to pass from the things themselves to their relations, classifications, and explanations, but in general the impulse " continues into adolescence as a vestige, as it were, a remnant of the real instinct. It dribbles off into sentimental lines as in the collection of party souvenirs, theater programs, etc., and into social fads as in the collection of spoons, hatpins, etc." The spontaneous nature interest largely dies out except in the case of birds' eggs, where other instincts, as roaming and hunting, continue to supply incentive. The collecting mania is perhaps a natural beginning in any subject, and the logical, analytical, literary, and esthetic interests come later, but are often initiated by collections of books or pictures which should by induction lay the base for true appreciation later. To encourage this instinct is often, therefore, a method of generating interest. Girls are more prone to receive, and boys to hunt or trade for their objects, while dickering and buying are predominant in adolescence with more faddism and larger commercial, scientific, and sentimental interests, and often with more systematic arrangement of collections.
From 556 returns to a questionnaire upon interest in puzzles, Lindley 1 found that the curve of greatest interest in guess games and original riddles culminated at about seven years of age; that in the standard riddles culminated at about ten; that in mechanical puz- zles about two years later, and that in geometrical puzzles a trifle later yet. Language puzzles, exclusive of riddles, seemed to reach their maximum interest at about fifteen, while last of all came arith- metical puzzles, which indicates with a high degree of probability that the culmination of the puzzle aspect of the mental play instinct falls in the immediate prepubertal stage of growth. It marks the close of the period just preceding adolescence. Curiously enough the cul- mination coincides with the period of highest specific intensity of life. Perhaps "it is fair to assume a priori that the system of cortical asso- ciation fibres now begins to develop more rapidly, and indeed Wer- nicke states that at about the twelfth year there is a marked increase in the medullation of these fiber systems, which must be present before there is a great activity of reason." Being a boy or a girl had " be- come easy, and the energies are not all taxed to maintain the equilibrium of life. Thus there is a mental surplus, which expends itself in play. May not this prepubertal intellectual play activity bear direct and propaedeutical relations to adolescence? " From 692 papers on superstitions of children, the number stated rose rapidly from eleven onward, and the increase " does not seem due merely to the child's ability to express himself more easily as he grows 1 A Study of Puzzles with Special Reference to the Psychology of Mental Adaptation. Am. Jour, of Psy., July, 1897, vol. viii, pp. 43J-493- 486 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE older, but to his actually acquiring more superstitions," girls always leading.1 Up to the dawn of puberty superstitions are very simple and vague, but at this period ghost fear develops rapidly, and later come superstitions of love and marriage. The curve of disbelief in, e. g., pin luck, rises very rapidly from eleven onward in girls and from thir- teen in boys, and the number of superstitions called untrue rises rapidly from thirteen in boys and from twelve in girls. The critical spirit at first insists on only a single test or coincidence, and evidence to the contrary is not thereafter ignored. " This reliance on a single proof continues through the seventeenth year." In affairs of the heart, adolescent boys do not rely on love lore as girls do. The latter rarely express contempt for superstitions as boys do, who nevertheless seem to have more faith in the supernatural.
Barnes 2 collated returns from 2,000 children from six to fifteen who were asked, What is a knife, bread, doll, water? etc. — thirty-three objects in all. Young children defined things almost entirely by their use; at eleven, definition by a larger, more generic term is well de- veloped, as is definition by stating the substance of which a thing is made, while at fifteen most of the definitions for both sexes were by invoking the larger term, indicating a marked adolescent rise in the logical mode of thought.
Shaw 3 spoke and immediately wrote upon the blackboard names of things, requiring the pupil to write at once as rapidly as possible whatever the term suggested to his mind. In studying these returns, it was found that the younger child's interest was self-centered in individual and particular acts, while older children recognized general or universal use. The following are the results which differ most widely from those of Barnes. Use was predominant at all ages, and definition by the larger term, although it increased with years, was rare. While action led at all ages, quality increased with age and was most prominent in adolescent children. Substance also increased with age, and mere sentence-making declined.
Kratz 4 shows that children's preferences in their studies up to and including the eighth grade by no means followed that of their teacher, and that in the last two grades this divergence became more marked. In these grades the motives of interest and utility came stronger to the front.
Schuyten 5 and Lobsien c show that the energy of attention reaches 1 A Study of Children's Superstitions, by Clara Vostrovsky. Barnes's Studies in Education, pp. 123-143.
2 A Study on Children's Interests. Studies in Education, p. 203.
3 A Comparative Study of Children's Interests. Child Study Monthly, 1898.
4 A Study of Pupils' Preferences. North- Western Monthly, September, 1897.
5 Bull, de 1'Acad. Royale de Belgique, vol. xxxii, 1896. 6Pad.-Psy. Studien, July and September, 1892.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 487 its low-water mark once a year in July. Schuyten's dynamometer tests for 54,200 children, mostly between twelve and sixteen years of age, stimulated by rivalry, showed an ascending curve from October to January, a sharper rise in February, and a fall in March. Psychic and physical development increase from October to January, and fall from January to March. The curves then separate and take opposite directions. While attention diminishes during the summer months, muscular power increases in a remarkable way to June or July. The atmospheric temperature of summer thus seems to depress attention and stimulate muscular power. This is very suggestive for the order of work through the school year and for vacations. The body needs care in March and April in order that it may do its best in June and July. The curve of. psychic activity has two apexes, the higher in the spring and summer and the lower in the fall and winter. Hence, in March should come a shorter and before October a longer vacation. From October to March mental work can increase, but should then diminish till July, the best time for work being from December to April.
In a long-continued study of the mental apparatus, processes, and content of two girls, aged twelve and thirteen, Binet 1 sought to esti- mate variability and stability, good sense and caprice, alternation and imagination, the relations of internal and external life, etc. He care- fully noted what they thought of, their vocabulary and idealism, how thought developed, its relations to imagery, and the character of the latter, abstract, spontaneous, and voluntary mentation, power of de- scription, of voluntary attention, and of memory. In one of these psychic portraits he saw clearly a pronounced bias that would later become scientific, in the other the basis of a literary career, that logical thought was asserting its independence of and dominance over images, that the work of thought was not sufficiently represented by the mech- anism of association of ideas, that it may interpret and may even be opposed to its laws. Individual psychology, which would penetrate the secret of personality more than statistical methods based on large numbers can do, seems here to find in intention or the general direction of thought its chief determinant. Perhaps this comes as near as any to Taine's idea of a master faculty from which the entire mental organization can be deduced. The prevailing direction of attention, which expresses the tendency to vary, is the basis of the explication of char- acter. Emotional tone is another determinant. Unstable tempera- ments pass soon from pleasure and interest to indifference or revul- sion. Images associated by ambiguity, and resemblance and contrast are conservative factors. The tendency to change and the conserva- tive influence of association and emotional tone are the three root explicants, on the basis of which our mental life unfolds, a somewhat 488 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE restrictive view for the power of education and even for the primacy of consciousness.
(C) The studies of memory up the grades show character- istic adolescent changes, and some of these results are directly usable in school.
Bolton x tested the power of 1,500 children to remember and write dictated digits, and found, of course, increasing accuracy with the older pupils. He also found that the memory span increased with age rather than with the growth of intelligence as determined by grade. The pupils depended largely upon visualization, and this and concen- trated attention suggested that growth of memory did not necessarily accompany intellectual advancement. Girls generally surpassed boys, and as with clicks too rapid to be Counted, it was found that when the pupils reached the limits of their span, the number of digits was overestimated. The power of concentrated and prolonged attention was tested. The probability of error for the larger number of digits, 7 and 8, decreased in a marked way with the development of pubes- cence, at least up to fourteen years, with the suggestion of a slight rise again at fifteen.
In comprehensive tests of the ability of Chicago children to re- member figures seen, heard, or repeated by them, it was found that, from seven to nine, auditory were slightly better remembered than visual impressions. From that age the latter steadily increased over the former. After thirteen, auditory memory increased but little, and was already about ten per cent behind visual, which continued to in- crease at least till seventeen. Audio-visual memory was better than either alone, and the span of even this was improved when articula- tory memory was added. When the tests were made upon pupils of the same age in different grades it was found in Chicago that memory power, whether tested by sight, hearing, or articulation, was best in those pupils whose school standing was highest, and least where standing was lowest.
When a series of digits was immediately repeated orally and a record made, it was found 2 that while from the age of eight to twelve the memory span increased only eight points, from fourteen to eighteen it increased thirteen points. The number of correct repro- ductions of numbers of seven places increased during the teens, al- though this class of children remain about one digit behind normal children of corresponding age. In general, though not without excep- tions, it was found that intelligence grew with memory span, although the former is far more inferior to that of the normal child than the 1 The Growth of Memory in School Children. Am. Jour, of Psy., April, 1892, a Contribution to the Psychology and Pedagogy of Feeble-minded Children, by G. E. Johnson. Ped. Sem., October, 1895, vol. iii, p. 270.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION latter, and also that weakness of this kind of memory is not an espe- cially prominent factor of weak-mindedness.