An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
This complementary association is met with in a striking manner, when a
real assimilation is hindered by the associated elements belonging to
different senses. In this case the difference in sense-quality erects,
as it were, a partition-wall, which prevents the unobservable union of
the elements. But at the same time even then close combinations can
be formed, which at the operation of a sense-impression immediately
reproduce the associated sensations of another sense. For example,
we often observe in silent reading weak clang-images of the words,
to which are joined slight movements of the articulation-organs, or
at least indications of such movements. At the sight of a musical
instrument we often perceive in ourselves a weak auditory sensation
of its clang; the sight of a gun will often give rise to a weak
sound sensation, or if we hear the gun fired, to a reproduced visual
image, and so forth. Such associations of disparate senses are called
complications. They form an important supplement to the associations,
since together with these they essentially determine the ideational
process in consciousness.
Such a co-operation of assimilations and complications is seen in
the most striking manner in those processes of association which in
ordinary life are called "recognitions," or, if the scope of the region
of association over which the recognition stretches is indefinitely
larger, are called "cognitions." We recognise, for example, an
acquaintance, whom we have not seen for a long time. We know a table
as a table, although we may never have seen the particular table in
question before. We can do this by means of the indefinite number
of associations with other tables, which the image of the table in
question gives rise to. From what we have said above, it is at once
obvious that all such recognitions or cognitions are nothing more
than assimilations. The usual expression (to know or to be cognisant
of) must not tempt us to look upon the process as a logical process,
as an act of "knowledge." An act of knowledge may possibly follow a
process of pure associative assimilation, if we afterwards try to
account for the motives of the same. But the processes themselves,
as they continually occur and make up an important part of our
sense-experience, are pure associations. To place in them any acts of
judgment or of reflection, as is customary in the scholastic psychology
of ancient and modern times, can only serve to disguise the real
psychological character of these processes. Among the associations
called recognitions, only those are of special interest in which the
consummation of the assimilation process is in any way hindered,
either because the perceived object has but seldom been met with, or
because it has undergone changes since a previous perception of it. For
example it may, as is well known, take a long time before we recognise
a friend, who meets us unexpectedly after many years' absence. If we
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