usness to whole groups of words at
once. Only when this new habit has been made automatic by a training
of several months can he advance to a level at which whole groups of
words are perceived as telegraphic units. A time follows in which this
mastery of whole phrases advances rapidly, until a new period of rest
comes, from which, only after years and often quite suddenly, a last
new ascent can be noticed. Instead of concentrating the attention with
conscious strain on single phrases, the operator progresses to a
perfect liberty in which whole sentences are understood automatically.

We also have a model experimental research into the psychological
conditions of learning in the case of writing on a typewriter.[21] By
electrical connections between the typewriting machine and a system of
levers which registered their movements on the rotating drum of a
kymograph, graph, each striking of a key, each completion of a word,
or of a line, could be recorded in exact time-relations. Each glance
at the copy was also registered. It was found that the process of
learning consisted first of a continuous simplification of the
cumbersome methods with which the beginner commences. A steady
elimination of unfit movements, a selection, a reorganization, and
finally, a combination of psychophysical acts to impulses of higher
order, could be traced exactly. Here, too, the curve of learning at
first rises quickly and then more and more slowly. Of course the usual
fluctuations in the growth of the ability can also be found, and above
all the irregular periods of rest in which the learning itself does
not progress, for some of these so-called plateaus which lie between
the end of one ascent and the beginning of the next may cover a month
and more. At the beginning we have the elementary association between
the single letter and the position of the corresponding key, but soon
an immediate connection between the visual impression of the whole
syllable or the whole word and the total group of movements necessary
to strike the keys for it is developed. The more the ability grows,
the more these psychical impulses of higher order become organized
without conscious intention. The study shows that this development of
higher habits has already begun before the lower habits are fully
settled.

How far the special training involves at the same time a general
training which could be of advantage for other kinds of labor has not
yet been studied at al