Studies on the telegraphic language: The acquisition of a hierarchy of habits.

Abstract

A field for research is offered in the psychology of occupations.The chief engagement of every one is the acquisition or exercise of one or another association of habits, such as constitutes skill in a game, trade, profession, language, science or the like.With a little license one may call all of these occupations.In mastering an occupation, doubtless the whole man is involved, body and mind, sensation and movement, thought, interest, imagination, will,-innumerable known and unknown aspects of our psycho-physical life.It might be argued that such an affair is too complex for scientific treatment until we have done with more elementary things, the fusion of ideas, the psycho-physic law, the chemistry of the cell, or whatever may be still more elementary.In reply, it may be said that the history of science justifies the study of concrete facts, however simple or complex, whether 01 not the results can at once be correlated with other facts and theories.One studies microscopically, another macroscopically.One studies the chemistry of the cell, another tone sensations,