The Trained Memory | Page 6

continually refer than this one. Our
explanation of hay fever a moment ago illustrates our meaning. Get the principle clearly
in your mind, and see how many instances of its operation you can yourself supply from
your own daily experience.
So far as the mere linking together of groups of ideas is concerned, this classifying
quality is developed in some persons to a greater degree than in others. It finds its
extreme exemplar in the type of man who can never relate an incident without reciting all
the prolix and minute details and at the same time wandering far from the original subject
in pursuit of every suggested idea.
[Sidenote: The Law of Contiguity]
Law II. _Similarity and nearness in time or space between two experiential facts causes
the thought of one to tend to recall the thought of the other._
This is the Associative Law of Contiguity considered from the standpoint of recall. The
points of contiguity are different for different individuals. Similarities and nearnesses will
awaken all sorts of associated groups of ideas in one person that are not at all excitable in
the same way in another whose experiences have been different.
Law III. _The greater the frequency and intensity of any given experience, the greater the
ease and likelihood of its reproduction and recall._
[Sidenote: Laws of Habit and Intensity]

This explains why certain groups in any complex are more readily recalled than
others--why some leap forth unbidden, why some come next and before others, why
some arrive but tardily or not at all.
This is how the associative Laws of Habit and Intensity affect the power of recall.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Applications to Advertising]
There is no department of business to which the application of these Laws of Recall is so
apparent as the department of advertising. The most carefully worded and best-illustrated
advertisement may fail to pay its cost unless the underlying principles of choice of
position, selection of medium and size of space are understood. The advertisers in
metropolitan newspapers and magazines of large circulation are the ones who have most
at stake. But whatever the field to be reached, it is well to bear in mind certain facts based
on the Laws of Recall that have been established by psychological experiment.
Most advertisers have a general idea that certain relative positions on the newspaper or
magazine page are to be preferred over others, but they have no conception of the real
differences in relative recall value. When the great cost of space in large publications is
considered the financial value of such knowledge is evident.
By a great number of tests the relative recall value of every part of the newspaper page
has been approximately determined. It has been found, for example, that a given space at
the upper right-hand corner of the page has more than twice the value of the same amount
of space in the lower left-hand corner.
[Sidenote: Effect of Repetitions]
Many advertisers adopt the policy of repeating full-page advertisements at long intervals
instead of advertising in a small way continually. Laboratory tests have shown, on the
contrary, that a quarter-page advertisement appearing in four successive issues of a
newspaper is fifty per cent more effective than a full-page advertisement appearing only
once. It does not follow, however, that an eighth-page advertisement repeated eight times
is correspondingly more effective; for below a certain relative size the value of an
advertisement decreases much more rapidly than the cost. There are, of course,
modifying conditions, such as special sales of department stores, where occasional
displays and announcements make it desirable to use either full pages, or even double
pages, but the great bulk of advertising is not of this character.
[Sidenote: Ratio of Size to Value]
Every year in the United States alone six hundred millions of dollars are expended in
advertising the sale of commodities, and for the most part expended in a haphazard,
experimental and unscientific way. The investment of this vast sum with risk of perhaps
total loss, or even possible injury, through the faulty construction or improper placing of
advertisements should stimulate the interest of every advertiser in the work that

psychologists have done and are doing toward the accumulation of a body of exact
knowledge on this subject.
[Sidenote: Risks in Advertising]

THE SCIENCE OF FORGETTING
[Illustration: TESTING THE MEMORY WITH PROFESSOR JASTROW'S MEMORY
APPARATUS PRIVATE LABORATORY, SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY]
[Illustration: Decorative Header]

CHAPTER V
THE SCIENCE OF FORGETTING
[Sidenote: The Skilled Artisan]
Attention is the instrumentality through which the Laws of Recall operate. Wittingly or
unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously, every man's attention swings in automatic
obedience to the Laws of Recall.
Attention is the artisan that, bit by bit, and with lightning quickness, constructs the
mosaic of consciousness.
Having the