end over a year or more. In the case of growing children in
school, it sometimes happens that an entire year elapses during which
the learning of an apparently bright student is retarded. In a course
of study in high school or college, it may come on about the third week
and extend a month or more. Something akin to the plateau may come in
the course of a day, when we realize that our efficiency is greatly
diminished and we seem, for an hour or more, to make no progress.

Inasmuch as the plateau is such a common occurrence in human activity,
we should analyze it and see what factors operate to influence it. It
is interesting to note that the plateau generally occurs just before an
abrupt rise in efficiency. This is significant, for it may mean that
the plateau is necessary in learning, especially just before reaching
the really advanced stages of proficiency. Accordingly, when you are
experiencing a plateau in the mastery of some accomplishment, you may
perhaps derive some comfort from the prospect of an approaching rise in
efficiency. On the theory that it is a necessary part of learning, it
has been regarded as a resting place. We are so constituted by nature
that we cannot run on indefinitely; nature sometimes must call a halt.
Consequently, the plateau may be a warning that we cannot learn more
for the present and that the proper remedy is to refrain for a little
while from further efforts in that line. We have possible justification
for this interpretation when we reflect that a vacation does us much
good, and though we begin it feeling stale, we end it feeling much
fresher and more efficient.

But to stop work temporarily is not the only way to meet a plateau, and
fatigue or ennui is probably not the sole or most compelling
explanation. It may be that we should not regard the objective results
as the true measure of learning; perhaps learning is going on even
though the results are not apparent. We discovered something in the
nature of unconscious learning in our discussion of memory, and it may
be that a period of little objective progress marks a period of active
unconscious learning.

Another meaning which the plateau may have is simply to mark places of
greater difficulty. As already remarked, the early period is a stage of
comparative ease, but as the work becomes more difficult, progress is
slower. It is also quite likely that the plateau may indicate that some
of the factors operative at the start are ope