APPERCEPTION

(Bigge and Shermis 1999, 33‑42)

Study Notes

1. The third major outlook toward learning – apperception is far more complicated than either mental discipline or learning as unfoldment. Apperception is idea‑centered learning.

An idea is apperceived when it appears In consciousness and is assimilated to other conscious ideas.

Thus, apperception is a process of new ideas associating themselveswith old ones.

2. Adherents of both mental discipline and natural unfoldment either assume or imply the existence of an inborn human nature, some aspects of which are common to all people. Although, in their treatment of learning, supporters of both theories sharply differ from one another, they agree that

the "furniture of minds" is innate.

· Whereas romantic naturalists in their emphasis upon natural unfoldment have expounded instinctive spontaneous development of persons, mental disciplinarians often agree that knowledge is inborn but insist that students need expert help to enable them to recall it.

3. Apperception, in contrast to both mental discipline and natural unfoldment, is a dynamic mental associationism based upon the fundamental premise that

· there are no innate ideas;

· everything one knows comes to one from outside oneself.

4. This means that mind is wholly a matter of content -- a compound of elemental impressions bound together by association and formed when subject matter is presented from without and makes certain associations or connections with prior content of the mind.

5. An association is any general psychological concept within which it is assumed that the process of learning is one of combining irreducible elements and that, in recall, we connect ideas or actions simply because they were connected in our earlier experiences with them. There are two broad types of associationisms:

· early mentalistic associationisms, such as apperception, which focus upon the association of ideas in a mind, and

· more modem physicalistic stimulus‑response associationisms, which focus upon formation of connections, either between cells in a brain and peripheral nervous system or between organic responses and environmental stimuli.

6. The method of studying human beings within a framework of associationism is analytic or

reductionistic .

· learnings are reduced to their component structural parts.

· The basic elements that are associated may be mental, physical, or a combination of both.

But in apperception, the associated elements are completely mental and constitute the structures of minds. Hence, whereas mental discipline implies that a mind Is a substance, apperception implies that it is a structure.

HOW DID APPERCEPTION DEVELOP

7. The thinking that underlies modern associationism, goes back to Aristotle, who in the fourth

century B.C. observed that

· recollection of an item of knowledge was facilitated by a person's associating that item or idea with another when the person learned it.

Aristotle maintained that four kinds of connections or associations would aid or strengthen memory:

· contiguity of one idea with another,

· succession of ideas in a series,

· similarity of ideas, and

· contrast of ideas.

8. Contiguity means "being together." If children are told about Eskimos and igloos at the same time, future mention of Eskimo will help them recall igloo. "A tiger is a big kitty" uses the principle of similarity. If children learn that pleasure is the opposite of pain (contrast), mention of pain will aid them in thinking of pleasure.

9. In the seventeenth century John Locke (1632‑1704) challenged the whole notion of innate

faculties or ideas and with it the conception of learning as a development of innate potentialities or faculties. He replaced this notion with the idea that learning consists of persons gaining ideas in originally empty minds.

10. Locke observed that he could find no common human nature at all. Realizing that he could find no ideas common to all people in any one society or to people in different societies, he developed his tabula rasa theory of the human mind.

11. Tabula rasa, a "blank tablet" means that there are no innate ideas. Locke was convinced that not only was a mind empty at birth but also any ideas that one holds must have come to one originally.

12. Locke’s theory that all of one's ideas must come to that person through the senses is called empiricism.

13. Locke's empiricism was directly opposed to the earlier rationalism of Plato and Locke's immediate forerunner, Rene Descartes (1596‑1650). Whereas these two scholars

considered reason the source of knowledge, Locke insisted that knowledge was derived from sense experience. In his view, perception is synonymous with learning and is a product of sensory experience.

14. Whereas Plato thought that individuals may, through mental training, apprehend ultimate reality consisting of ideas or forms, Locke thought that sensations impinging upon minds gave rise to ideas.

15.Therefore, a mind has no direct contact with objects; only ideas of object are perceived.

16. For Locke, ideas were the units of a mind, and associations consisted of combinations of ideas, which were either simple or complex.

· One of the operations of a mind was thought to be a compounding of complex ideas from simple ones. This notion of mental combination and analysis was mental chemistry, "which later characterized apperception.

17. To allow for associations within a mind, Locke recognized an "internal sense." He realized that if a mind were only a passive receptacle of sense impressions (which basically he thought it to be) the impressions would accumulate in a disorderly manner. Consequently, he gave mind a means for dealing with passive impressions once they were in.

· To mind, he attributed the ability to compare impressions, generalize then and discriminate between them, meaning that it could associate ideas through contiguity, similarity, and contrast.

18. Locke's writings spearheaded a shift in the conception of education from mental discipline to habit formation.

· His tabula rasa theory implied that the original nature of human beings is neither morally good nor bad, nor actionally active.

· Instead, it is deemed morally neutral and actionally passive.

· Thus, a mind is the product of life experiences.

19. Locke's thinking opened the way for psychologists to place their emphasis upon environmental nurture rather than upon hereditary nature.

· In school, this meant that teachers were to be the architects and builders of minds of children and youths.

· they were to develop a systematic instructional program centered in procedures designed to form proper habits in students.

· Teaching, then, became a matter of stimulating the senses as opposed to training the mental faculties.

20. Locke's work constituted a turning point in professional thinking about learning. Up to the seventeenth century most psychological thinking consisted of restatements and reinterpretations of the psychology of antiquity‑‑mental discipline. "

21. This trend continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but simultaneously, Locke spearheaded modem associationism -‑ a new line of thought in regard to learning

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WHAT IS HERBARTS APPERCEPTION THEORY OF LEARNING?

22. Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776‑1841) developed the first modem systematic psychology of learning to emerge from a tabula rasa theory of mind.

· Herbart was an eminent German philosopher‑psychologist and a skillful teacher. I

· n 1809 he succeeded Immanuel Kant in the world's most distinguished chair of philosophy at Konigsberg, Germany, and held it until 1833.

· His speculative thinking developed from his dealing with problems of education.

23. To Herbart. morality was the supreme objective of education, he wanted to make children good. Thus. he developed a psychology to achieve this goal.

24. Whereas Locke and other early associationists had assumed that linkages or associations are passive in nature, Herbart's apperception theory replaced this passivity with dynamic ideas.

25. However, in Herbart's apperception, ideas, not persons, are dynamic. Persons are passive containers within which laws of mental chemistry operate.

26. Herbart's influence on twentieth‑century American education has been great. Although this theory was developed early in the nineteenth century, it did not reach the United States until the l880s, when four young American -- Charles DeGarmo, Frank McMurry, Charles A. McMurry, and Charles C. Van Liew -- studied at the University of Jena and returned to the United States to spread Herbartian doctrine with religious fervor.

27. From the early years of the twentieth century to the time its tenets were seriously challenged by behaviorism, Herbartianism dominated teacher education institutions in the United States.

Thus, if one is to comprehend the psychological atmosphere of today's schools, it is essential that one understand the development, principles, and implications of the theory of apperception.

28. Today, one seldom meets an avowed Herbartian; however, much of what occurs in our schools carries with it the implicit assumption that the neutral and passive minds of children are being filled.

29. Although apperceptive teaching seldom is advocated as such in teacher education institutions, much actual teaching continues to follow a pattern much in harmony with the theory of apperception.

30. Herbart perpetuated a mind‑body dualism that was prevalent in his time. This was a psychophysical parallelism within which the psychic aspect – mind -- played the major role, particularly in the learning process.

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· Psychophysical parallelism is a theory of mind and body according to which, for every variation in conscious or mental process, there is a concomitant, parallel neurological or body process.

Yet there is no causal relation between a person's body and mind.

31. Through the use of the concepts presentations, mental states, apperception, and apperceptive mass, Herbart expanded the notion of a mind's neutral passivity into a systematic theory of learning and teaching

· He thought that a mind had no innate natural faculties or talents whatsoever for receiving or producing ideas and that not even any remote dispositions toward perception. thought, willing or action lay within it.

· He regarded a mind as nothing more than a battleground and storehouse of ideas.

· Ideas, he thought, had an active quality. They could lead a life of their own in a mind, which was completely passive

· A mind was an aggregate not of faculties, but of ideas or mental states.

32. Herbart's ambition was to build a science of human minds that would parallel the physical and

biological sciences.

He thought that the actual character of a mind consists of an arrangement of ideas, which are very much like the electrons of modern physics‑they make up the object that contains them.

Accordingly, a mind is an aggregate of contents resulting from a person's being presented certain ideas.

33. Since Herbart thought of psychology as "mental chemistry," he felt that the chief role of

psychology was to study the various bleedings and amalgamations of ideas or mental states in minds.

· Discovery of the principles by which ideas combine and recombine like chemical elements was Herbart's object in psychological investigation.

34. Although Herbart felt that his psychology was scientific, probably most experimental psychologists today would not agree;

· he rejected experimentation and the use of physiological data, both of which have been cornerstones of twentieth‑century behavioristic psychology.

· To him, observation and thought were the proper methods for psychological inquiry.

· Furthermore, the observation he had in mind was self‑observation‑introspection. By looking into his own mind, Herbart thought that its "chemistry" could be observed and described.

He felt that it was proper that a science like physics was experimental, but that, equally appropriate, the "science" of psychology should be metaphysical and introspective.

HOW DOES APPERCEPTION WORK?

34. Herbart used the German term Vorstellungen to name the mental elements which he deemed

the constituent parts of a mind.

· Vorstellungen may be translated to mean presentations, mental states, or ideas.

· According to Herbartian psychologists, mental states constitute a nonspatial, mental reality that is experienced firsthand and stored in the subconscious mind. They have three forms

o sense impressions,

o images or copies of previous sense impressions, and

o affective elements such as pleasure and pain.

· Such mental states furnish the total source of mental activity. The derived states, feeling and willing, are secondary factors that accompany mental states but are not a source or cause of mental activity. Thus, volitional willing has its roots in thought; right thinking produces right

actions.

35. Mind is an aggregate of mental states, and a person's stock of mental states at any given time is his "apperceptive mass."

· Until a first presentation occurs, there is nothing whatever present in a mind; except for its inherent receptivity, it is completely passive

· Mental states, the active structural parts of a mind, become associated to produce experience.

· Thus, new ideas are learned only as they are related to what is already in an apperceptive mass.

· Hence, it is the addition of new mental states to the old ones that produces the various types of mental processes.

· Furthermore, the particular combination of ideas that is predominant at any given time determines what will hold a person's attention at that time.

36. In Herbart's system of "mental chemistry," every mental state has an inherent quality, giving it

an affinity for certain other mental states and an aversion for some others; respective ideas either attract or repel one another. Whereas the ideas of "book" and "school" would have an affinity and attract each other, the ideas of "book" and "fishing rod" would have a repugnancy and repel one another.

37. A Herbartian regards a mind as a battleground of contending ideas. Each idea in the mind of a person has once been in the center of the person's consciousness and strives to return, seeking self‑preservation

38. Furthermore, it tries to enter into relations with other ideas. Having once held the center of consciousness and subsequently lost it, each idea, like a deposed king, keeps trying to occupy the throne once aaaln. Compatible ideas may operate as teams, helping each other to remain in a conscious mind. But when two ideas are incompatible, one is likely to be submerged.

39.To Herbartians, all perception is apperception; it is a process of new ideas relating themselves to the store of old mental states.

· A mind is like an iceberg in that most of it is submerged below the level of consciousness.

· Memories stored in the subconscious enable one to interpret experience of the moment.

· Without a background of experience, any new sensation would mean almost nothing at all.

40. In picturing, a mind, Herbart introduced the idea of threshold of consciousness.

· Objects occupying consciousness are constantly changing

· At any moment, several ideas may occupy the consciousness,

· However, one will be at the focus of attention, some will be sinking below the threshold, and others will be striving to rise into consciousness.

41. The subconscious aspect of mind‑apperceptive mass‑‑contains the store of perceptions and images that have been accumulated during all past experiences of an individual.

· Any of these ideas are ready to spring back into consciousness whenever a propitious opportunity occurs.

· The content of consciousness at any moment is the result of an interplay of many ideas.

42. Apperception is a process not only of a person becoming consciously aware of an idea but also of the idea's assimilation into a totality of conscious ideas.

43. Within the apperceptive process Herbart saw the principles of frequency and association in operation.

· The principle of frequency means that the more often an idea or concept has risen into consciousness, the easier its return becomes.

· The principle of association holds that when a number of presentations or ideas associate, or form a mass, the combined powers of the mass determine the ideas that will enter consciousness.

44. Herbart recognized three levels or stages of learning:

· the stage of predominantly sense activity; followed by

· the stage of memory, characterized by exact reproductions of previously formed ideas; and

· the highest level, that of conceptual thinking or understanding.

Understanding occurs when the common, or shared, attributes of a series of ideas make themselves seen. It involves generalization‑deriving rules, principles, or laws from a group of specifics.

WHAT DOES APPERCEPTION MEAN FOR TEACHING?

45.According to apperception, right thinking will produce right action; volition or willing has its roots in thought.

· If a teacher builds up the right sequence of the right conduct follows.

· Hence, the real work of instruction is implantation not only of knowledge but also of inner volitions or will by means of presented ideas.

· Psychologically, students' mentalities are determined by the kind of ideas that are presented to them from without.

46. Since, in apperception, there is no substantive mind to be trained, it can no longer be said that learning is a matter of disciplining or training a mind; rather, learning is the formation of the apperceptive mass that constitutes a mind.

47. Thus, the task of education is to cause present appropriate experiences to combine with an achieved background. The problem of education, then, is to select the right materials for formina the backarounds or apperceptive masses of students. Teachers must start with the experiences that pupils already have had and then enlarge and enrich these experiences.

WHAT ARE THE HERBARTIAN FIVE STEPS IN TEACHING AND

LEARNING?

48. Herbart and his followers were convinced that the learning process proceeds through an

ordered series of steps that a teacher should understand and follow. Accordingly, effective teaching

requires that regardless of obstacles, the proper succession of steps be pursued.

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49. Herbart's four steps, clearness, association, system, and method, were expanded to five by American Herbartians. Clearness became (1) preparation and (2) presentation; association became (3) comparison and abstraction; system became (4) generalization; and method became (5) application.

· Use of these steps came to be regarded as the general method to be followed in all teaching.

· The steps may be demonstrated by the following example, which involves a teacher teaching students the generalization that any object will float in liquid or in air if it weighs less than an equal volume of the liquid or air in which it is suspended.

Preparation. To bring relevant ideas into consciousness the teacher reminds students of certain experiences they have had with floating objects. The students will recall the floating of boats, balloons, bubbles, and the like.

Presentation. The teacher presents new facts about floating, perhaps through means of

demonstrations. For example, the teacher might demonstrate how oil floats on water or how a steel ball will float on mercury.

Comparison and Abstraction. If the teacher has performed the first two steps properly, students will see that the new facts have similarities with those already known. Hence, in the students' consciousness, the new and old ideas associate; they are welded together because of their natural affinity for each other. At this point, students should also see the nature of the common elements that give the two sets of facts their mutual attractiveness. Sorting out this common element is what is meant by abstraction.

Generalization. In this step, students attempt to name the common elements of the two sets of facts as a principle or generalization. They arrive at the principle of flotation which was the stated objective of this instruction.

Application. The newly learned principle is then used to explain further facts or solve problems relatin‑ to flotation. This is done throuah assigned tasks or problems. The teacher might ask students to explain why boats can be made successfully from steel, or give them a problem that requires them to determine whether a certain object would float in a certain medium. For example, the teacher might ask, "Given a freight barge of specified weight and displacement, how much weight could be placed in it without causing it to sink?"