Mary Whiton Calkins
ASSOCIATION:
An Essay Analytic and Experimental
By Mary Whiton Calkins (1896)
First published in Psychological Review Monograph Supplement, 1, No. 2.
Prefatory Note
PART I. THE NATURE OF ASSOCIATION.
PART II. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF CONDITIONS OF SUGGESTIBILITY.
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.
PART I
THE NATURE OF ASSOCIATION.
I. PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS.
a. Provisional Definition.
Association is the observable connection between succeeding objects or elements
of consciousness of which the second is not an object of perception.
b. The Associationist and the Spiritualist theory of Association.
Association is neither a 'psychic force' nor an 'activity of the self.'
II. DETAILED ANALYSIS.
a. Assumed Identity of the associated objects with connected past objects of
consciousness.
Association can be psychologically 'accounted for,' only in that its terms are
assumed to be identical with continuous past objects of consciousness.
b. The implication of 'assumed identity.
Both the Spiritualist and the Associationist theory are more than psychological;
and the latter is, besides, metaphysically invalid.
c. Discussion of 'association by similarity' and 'by contiguity
'Association by Similarity' is reducible to 'Association by Contiguity'; but
both terms are misleading.
III. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CASES OF ASSOCIATION.
a. Total, partial and focalized association.
Cases of association are best distinguished according as the first term is a
concrete whole; or a group of persisting elements of such a whole; or a single
persisting element.
b. Simultaneous Association.
Cases of simultaneous association are those of the reflectively-observed
connection of the parts of total objects of consciousness, when there has been
no remembered succession.
c. So-called Voluntary Association
'Voluntary Association' is really no form of association.
IV. A MODERN FORM OF ASSOCIATION BY SIMILARITY.
a. The sequence upon a percept of images like itself is not association.
b. The Associationist argument for this so-called 'association.'
The Associationist theory of revivable images is untrue to fact and
metaphysically invalid.
c. Höffding's theory of this so-called 'association' (or assimilation.')
1. The possibility of 'immediate recognition.'
Immediate recognition may occur.
2. The relation of this so-called association to immediate recognition.
Immediate recognition neither requires nor admits this so-called association as
explanation.
V. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF ASSOCIATION.
The physiological explanation of association, through habitual connection
between brain-tracts and between sensory and motor activities, must not be
confused with the psychological analysis.
PART II.
EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF CONDITIONS OF SUGGESTIBILITY.
INTRODUCTION.
Classification of cases of suggestiveness and of suggestibility
I. SIMPLE SERIES.
a. Visual series.
1. Successive arrangement
The 'frequent' numeral is remembered in 63.7% of the possible cases.
The 'vivid' numeral is remembered in 52.2% of the possible cases.
The 'recent' numeral is remembered in 53.7% of possible cases.
2. Simultaneous arrangement.
The results are parallel with those of the 'successive' experiments.
b. Auditory series.
The 'frequent' numeral is remembered in 80% of the cases.
The 'vivid' numeral is remembered in 56.5% of the cases.
The 'recent' numeral is remembered in 82.5% of the cases.
II. COMPARATIVE SERIES.
The 'frequent' numeral is associated more often than by
The 'vivid' by 19.7% of the cases.
The 'recent' by 7.6 of the cases.
The 'vivid' numeral is associated more often than the 'recent' by 10.5% of the
cases.
*******
PREFATORY NOTE.
The tables and most of the text of Part II. of this mono graph are reprinted
from the PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW Of January, 1896. The additions, of which some are
quotations from an article in the REVIEW Of January, I895, include comments and
statements of detail, so that the record in its present form is the only
complete report of the experiments described. Some of the conclusions reached by
the analysis attempted in Part I. were formulated in a paper printed in the
Philosophical Review of June, 1892, but the present discussion is an independent
one.
The writer takes this occasion to acknowledge gratefully the inspiration and
direction in psychological study, received from her teachers and friends,
Professors Hugo Münsterberg and William James, of Harvard University, and
Professor Edmund C. Sanford, of Clark University.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE, January, 1896.
PART I. THE NATURE OF ASSOCIATION.
I. PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS.
a. Provisional Definition.
Association may be provisionally defined as the observable connection between
successive objects or partial objects of consciousness, of which the second is
not an object of perception. The expression 'object of consciousness' is
proposed as an equivalent for that most useful term of the Germans, Vorstellung.
It is used in order to avoid the inadequacy of the statement, 'association is of
things, not thoughts,'[1] which is open to misrepresentation as a theory of
extra-mental connection, and which, besides, leaves out of account the cases in
which sense qualities, not concrete things, are the associated terms; like the
expression 'association of ideas' it also ignores the possibility clearly shown
by experiments in free association,[2] that the factors of an associative series
may be emotions or motor impulses. The condition that the second object of
consciousness shall be representation, not percept, excludes from association
not only the sequence of one percept upon another, or the intrusion of a
presentation upon a train of thought, but also that combination of several
present sense qualities into an object which Wundt[3] calls fusion
(Verschmelzung) and incorrectly enumerates under the head of association.
This definition may stand as the starting point of discussion because it assumes
no more than everybody grants, so that every [p. 2] other definition merely
supplements without supplanting it. As a matter of fact, writers of the two
schools-the Spiritualist and the Associationist-which hold a different theory of
association, often define it in exactly these terms. So Wundt says: "Association
is the connection of one object of consciousness with a preceding memory-image
or sense impression."[4] And, on the other side, Hobbes may be supposed to have
this meaning, when he says of the 'consequence or trayn of thoughts,'[5] that
"when a man thinketh on anything whatsoever his next thought after is not
altogether so casual as it seems to be;" Hume embodies this view, in describing
association[6] as 'a connection between the different thoughts and ideas of the
mind;' and James Mill expressly repudiates the more dynamic theory in the
words:[7] "In successive order of ideas that which precedes is sometimes called
the suggesting, that which succeeds the suggested idea; not that any power is
supposed to reside in the antecedent over the consequent; [the words][8] mean
only antecedent and consequent with the additional idea that such order is not
casual but to a degree permanent."
b. The Associationist and the Spiritualist theory of association.
But from this safe and simple recognition of association as the observable
connection of facts of consciousness, the Associationists pass swiftly to the
unwarrantable assertion that association is the complete explanation, and the
adequate philosophy of psychic phenomena. "Every mental affection and
operation," Priestley says,[9] "are but different modes or cases of the
association of ideas." Here association is evidently something more than
phenomenal, and turns out to be a force, or power, belonging to the facts of
consciousness, or ideas, by virtue of which they associate each other. So
Hume[10] calls association a 'gentle force' as well as 'a principle of
connection.' Hartley [p. 3] says:[11] "Any sensations, A, B, C, by being
associated with one another a sufficient number of times, get such a power over
the corresponding ideas, a, b and c, etc., that any one of the sensations, A
when impressed alone shall be able to excite in the mind b, c, etc., the Ideas
of the Rest." Spencer repeats in slightly varying form the statement,[12] "each
feeling as it arises associates itself instantly not with its class only, but
with its sub-class."
The underlying dogma of this conception of association as a force or function of
ideas, is a theory of ideas which makes of them single, psychic entities or
realities, soul-things, as it were, each with an independent existence of its
own, each possessing a mysterious force, called association, by which to summon
others to its side. In this view, indeed, as Lehmann says, ideas become "glatte
Atome, mit Haken angestaltet so dass sie sich einander einheften konnen."
Now the relative independence of mental phenomena is a necessary hypothesis of
psychological investigation, for psychical facts must be studied as if ultimate,
must be abstracted from all implications of a deeper reality and must be
correlated with definable physical and physiological facts. Such independent
ideas, are, however, mere abstractions, corresponding with no reality directly
known, but inferred for purposes of scientific or metaphysical utility. And the
Associationist theory, since it gains all its persuasiveness by just this
assumption, that we are immediately aware of independent 'ideas,' is obviously a
metaphysical hypothesis masquerading as a description of phenomena.
The simple definition of association is abandoned also, by writers quite
antagonistic to Associationist doctrine. Their conception, too, is a dynamic
one; they describe association as a '...
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