12. Let the members of the class make a plan for the improvement of their memory for the material studied in school. Plan devices for learning the material better and for fixing it in memory. At the end of the course in psychology, have an _experience_ meeting and study the results reported. 13. Prepare five lists of nonsense syllables, with eight in a list. Give them as in experiment No. 3, and compare the results with those of that experiment. What do the results indicate as to the value to memory of _meaningful_ material? What educational inferences can you make? In preparing the syllables, put a vowel between two consonants, and use no syllable that is a real word. 14. A study of the effects of distractions on learning and memory can be made as follows: Let the teacher select two paragraphs in later chapters of this book, of equal length and difficulty. Let the students read one under quiet conditions and the other while an electric bell is ringing in the room. Compare the reproductions in the two cases. 15. From the chapter and from the results of all the memory tests, let the students enumerate the facts that have educational significance. 16. Make a complete outline of the chapter. REFERENCES FOR CLASS READING COLVIN and BAGLEY: _Human Behavior_, Chapter XV. MÜNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, pp. 165-170. PILLSBURY: _Essentials of Psychology_, Chapters VI and VIII. PYLE: _The Outlines of Educational Psychology_, Chapter XIII. TITCHENER: _A Beginner's Psychology_, Chapter VII. CHAPTER VIII THINKING In Chapter III we learned about sensation. We found that when a sense organ is stimulated by its appropriate type of stimulus, this stimulation travels through the sensory nerves and sets up an excitation in the brain. This excitation in the brain gives us sensation. We see if the eye is stimulated. We hear if the ear is stimulated, etc. In Chapter VII we learned that after the brain has had an excitation giving rise to sensation, it is capable of reviving this excitation later. This renewal or revival of a brain excitation gives us an experience resembling the original sensation, only usually fainter and less stable. This revived experience is called _image_ or _idea_. The general process of retention and revival of experience is, as we have seen, known as memory. An idea, then, is a bit of revived experience. A perception is a bit of immediate or primary experience. I am said to perceive a chair if the chair is present before me, if the light reflected from the chair is actually exciting my retinas. I have an _idea_ of the chair when I _seem_ to see it, when the chair is not before me or when my eyes are shut. These distinctions were pointed out in the preceding chapter. Let us now proceed to carry our study of ideas further.