Volume 2

Adolescence : its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education / by G. Stanley Hall.

  • Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley), 1844-1924.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Adolescence : its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education / by G. Stanley Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    elusions aided by analogies with growth or by the more salient facts of mental disease or moral perversion, so that on the whole the larger and more important features of this half of the picture appear with considerable distinctness. I am well aware that so great is the interest and importance of the field, and such the momentum of challenging questions that at present incite to further research in all parts of this rich domain now so promisingly opened, that great additions to our knowl- edge in the near future are inevitable. At adolescence, each of the senses undergoes certain char- acteristic changes of structure, function, or both. Interests change and with them the organs of apperception, so that aspects and elements different from those hitherto absorbing the complex but already familiar objects of sense become foci of attention. While it is of course impossible to distinguish clearly between what is due to cerebral or psychic modification and that resulting from changes in the sense organs and their immediate centers, it is probable that the former greatly pre- ponderate, although they can not explain all the facts. One of the most important and comprehensive modifications is, that whereas most sense stimuli before this age tend strongly to provoke reflex reactions, after it these tend to be delayed or better organized, as if there were a marked increase of associa- tive or central functions. Before, the projection system pre- dominated, and stimuli, suggestion, and afferent processes gen- erally passed more readily over to the efferent or motor tracts; but now we have increased cerebral irradiations, and there is a marked advance in the development of the long-circuiting func- tions of thought, deliberation, and reflection. This, too, reacts upon sense and makes observation better. The deliverances of each sense also now begin to have a more independent value of their own. Sensations are more objectified and their pleasure and their pain effects are more keenly felt. There is a new sense esthetic or enjoyment of the sensation itself for its own sake. The coneesthesias, or associations of senses on the basis of their organic feelings and tone effects, are now increased. I. Touch.—According to Weber, discriminative dermal sensibility, measured by the distance of compass-points, de- creases with growth. His table is as follows: