At least it is certain that learning
always means far more than a mere facilitation of the movement by
mechanical repetition, and this is true of the simplest handling of
the tools in the workshop, of the movements at the machine in the
factory, and of the most complex performances at the subtlest
instruments. The chief factor in the development is always the
organization of the impulses by which the reactions which are at first
complicated become simplified, later mechanized, and finally
synthesized into a higher group which becomes subordinated to one
simple psychical impulse. The most reliable and psychophysically most
economic means for this organization will have to be studied in the
economic psychological laboratories of the future for every particular
technique. Then only can the enormous waste of psychical energy
resulting from haphazard methods be brought to an end.
A problem which is still too little considered in industrial life is
the mutual interference of acquired technical activities. If one
connected series of movements is well trained by practice, does it
become less firmly fixed, if another series is studied in which the
same beginning is connected with another path of discharge? I
approached this psychophysical question of learning by experiments
which I carried on for a long while with variations of ordinary habits
of daily life, asking whether a habit associated with a certain
sensory stimulus can function automatically while dispositions for a
different habit, previously acquired, remain in the psychophysical
system.
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