. Psychology in daily life. FlG. I terpreted in terms of the attention-wave. Con-sciousness is never a placid stream; it moves moreor less boldly in waves like the breakers on theocean beach. There are large waves, and withinthese are wavelets and ripples of various degrees,as is represented schematically in Fig. i. This 72 MENTAL EFFICIENCY change in the form and degree of consciousness weordinarily speak of in terms of attention; hence theexpression, attention-waves. Figuratively, we may say that there is a givenquantity of the mental stream available for anygiven activity, e. g., for percep
. Psychology in daily life. FlG. I terpreted in terms of the attention-wave. Con-sciousness is never a placid stream; it moves moreor less boldly in waves like the breakers on theocean beach. There are large waves, and withinthese are wavelets and ripples of various degrees,as is represented schematically in Fig. i. This 72 MENTAL EFFICIENCY change in the form and degree of consciousness weordinarily speak of in terms of attention; hence theexpression, attention-waves. Figuratively, we may say that there is a givenquantity of the mental stream available for anygiven activity, e. g., for perception. This amountmay be made available in different forms. The ef-fectiveness of the stream depends upon the distribu-tion of the energy, i. e., upon the form of thestream. The contour of the stream of consciousness fora given time, say three seconds, may be representedby three typical attention-wave forms, as in Fig. Fig. 2 If the three areas described by the curves A, B, andCC above the base line were equal, this would de-note the fact that there is merely a difference in dis-tribution of a given quantity of the stream. It isalso assumed that the effectiveness of consciousnessis represented by the height to which the wave risesat the critical moments of action, in this case X and 73 PSYCHOLOGY IN DAILY LIFE Y. A then represents an inferior form of con-sciousness flowing in a stream of small wavelets andnot rising far above the dead level. B representsa better form of consciousness in that the wave risesto a higher level; but the maximum point does notoccur at a favorable time, the crest coming betweenthe two critical moments, X and Y. CO representsan ideal form for this particular case, as each ofthe two crests, C and C, reaches its maximum at acritical moment. In this figure it is seen that CC has two crestsrepresenting work at the effective moments andthat between these there is a wide trough r
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