Although these two types of attention are discussed as if they were
entirely separated from each other, as if one occurred in this situation
and the other in that, still as a matter of fact the actual conditions
involve an interplay between the two. It is seldom true that free
attention is given for any great length of time without flashes of
forced attention being scattered through it. Often the forced attention
may be needed for certain parts of the work, although as a whole it may
take free attention. The same thing is true of occasions when forced
attention is used. There are periods in the activity when free attention
will carry the worker on. Every activity, then, is likely to be complex
so far as the kind of attention used, but it is also characterized by
the predominance of one or the other type.
The question as to the conditions which call out each type of attention
is an important one. As has already been said, free attention is given
when the situation attended to satisfies a need. Physiologically stated,
free attention is given when a neurone series which is ready to act is
called into activity. The situations which do this, other things being
equal, will be those which appeal to some instinctive tendency or
capacity, or to the self-activity or the personal experience of the
individual and which therefore are in accord with his stage of
development and his experience. Forced attention is necessary when the
neurone tracts used by the attention are for some reason unready to act.
Situations to which attention is given through fear of punishment, or
when the activity involves a choice of ideal ends as opposed to personal
desires, or when some instinctive tendency must be inhibited or its free
activity is blocked or interfered with, or when the laws of growth and
experience are violated, take forced attention. Of course fatigue,
disease, and monotony are frequent breeders of forced attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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