Measurement of the attention of the weak-minded, by F. Consoni, 1904

Reading report published in the Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology, Volume I, 1904, p. 97-98.   See the original in Gallica

in: III. Clinical studies on mental degeneration
(69) — Measurement of the attention of the weak-minded, by F. Consoni (Rome). Archives of Psychology, vol. II, fascic. III, no. 7, June 1903 (42 p.).

I. Attention and its measurement. — We have confused, under the name of attention, two very different things: 1° the central factor of perception where the intensity of the stimulus plays the main role; and 2° persistence over time of a state of concentration on a single object, persistence which seems above all to depend on the concomitant effective tonality. The author proposes, for him, to consider attention, taking the word in the most sense broad, like the very basis of consciousness, the condition which alone makes possible the transition from physiological to psychological. It will be necessary, moreover, to establish here a very clear distinction between static attention and dynamic attention.

Static attention consists in the fact of the persistence of the mechanism attentional. This mechanism is, in this case, determined by a group of excitations forming a single complexus and acting on the same area of the brain. It will thus be to this first form that the most of the observations made on the physical characteristics of attention.

Dynamic attention will consist of a series of acts of attention fairly close together, clearly distinct, and due to natural stimulants varied, interesting different projection zones. In both cases these are, it seems, more or less complex affective states which determine the formation of the attentional mechanism. The measurement of attention, both static and dynamic, can therefore provide us with further information on the nature and degree of organization of feelings in the observed subject.

II. The experiences. — The experiments carried out in parallel on fifteen children, including eleven phrenasthenics and four normal, all of the same age and of the same social condition. The first observations made using of the esthesiometric method consisted of establishing the sense of proper place on each subject. They lasted twenty days. Then the experiments carried only on attention and its qualities, which were:

1° For static attention: speed, constancy, tenacity.

2° For dynamic attention, speed and breadth.

III. Conclusions. — The results of the experiments recorded at length in seven graphs and a few tables, lead the author to formulate thirteen conclusions of which here, it seems, are the main ones:

7. There are precise relationships between the capacity of various individuals to dynamic attention and certain qualities of their static attention.
8. There is an undeniable correspondence between the way natural attention and conative attention behave.
9. The degree of general capacity for attention is, among phrenasthenics, directly proportional to their degree of emotionality and their power of inhibition.
10. There is a direct relationship between this degree of ability and the degree of phrenasthenia: phrenasthenics can therefore be classified according to their degree of attention.
11. In normal children, conative dynamic attention capacity is more developed and often appears extensive.

This work is followed by a bibliography.

J. PAULHAN.