The nervous correlate of attention: II

Discusses three aspects of attention: Automatic action, vividness and intensity, and attention as a faculty. Automatic actions are formed by the shortening of nervous pathways, such that the motor and sensory neurons get connected without the intervention of the higher nerve centers. This could explain the observation that habituation reduces "feeling'. There is no difference between vividness and intensity, and both depend on the intensity of the stimulus, the resistance of the nervous path, the presence of simultaneous complementary or competing nervous processes and on the directness of the path. The fundamental law of nervous function and attention, is that a stronger current attracts a weaker one, if the nervous connections and their resistances make it possible. This results in the unity of consciousness. Divergences of this theory from that of Titchener are discussed.