different words of the passage read. In
talking, the ideas keep developing and the spoken words tag along
behind.

[Illustration: Fig. 52.--(From Book.) Practice curve of a young man
learning to typewrite. Each point on the "curve" represents a daily
record in number of strokes per minute. With improvement, the curve
rises.]

In telegraphy and typewriting, it is almost inevitable that the
learner should start with the alphabet and proceed to gradually larger
units. But in learning to talk, or to read, the process goes the other
way. The child understands spoken words and phrases before breaking
them up into their elementary vocal sounds; and he can better be
taught to read by beginning with whole words, or even with whole {326}
sentences, than by first learning the alphabet and laboriously
spelling out the words. In short, the learning process often takes its
start with the higher units, and reaches the smaller elements only for
the purpose of more precise control.

Moderate Skill Acquired in the Ordinary Day's Work

Merely repeating a performance many times does not give the high
degree of skill that we see in the expert telegrapher or typist.
Ordinarily, we practise much less assiduously, are much less zealous,
and have no such perfect measure of the success of our work. For
"practice to make perfect", it must be strongly motivated, and it must
be sharply checked up by some index or measure of success or failure.
If the success of a performance can be measured, and chalked up before
the learner's eyes in the form of a practice curve, so that he can see
his progress, this acts as a strong incentive to rapid improvement.

Ordinarily, we have no clear indication of exactly how well we are
doing, and are satisfied if we get through our job easily and without
too much criticism and ridicule from people around. Consequently we
reach only a moderate degree of skill, nowhere near the physiological
limit, and do not acquire the methods of the real expert.

This is very true of the manual worker. Typesetters of ten or more
years' experience were once selected as subjects for an experiment on
the effects of alcohol, because it was assumed that they must have
already reached their maximum skill. In regard to alcohol, the result
was that this drug caused a falling off in speed and accuracy of
work--but that is another story. What we are interested in here is the
fact that, as soon as these long-practised operators fo