International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

THE CINEMA AND CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 41 concepts. Without perception, the educational cinema will fall short of its purpose, and it is just in the development of this possibility of defining the multiplicity of sensory stimuli that we can make a distinction between the normal and the abnormal child. Like every other psychic process which is developed in the child, this faculty must follow the line of least resistance. A child absorbs an ideas much more easily through the visual sense than through any written or spoken explanation. The child is therefore primarily visual and impressed by movement. The reaction of a child to a moving object is quite sufficient to show this, the impression received in this case being stronger than that caused by colour or light. When we explain an idea to a child in words, we first give it the indeterminate idea, the abstract idea, and then come to the concrete thing whereas the filmed presentment of an idea, a fact, a story, a journey, at once impresses itself on the child's brain in a precise and determinate form. All this is accomplished without effort and what is even better, in a pleasant and entertaining way. In addition to this, the darkness of the room helps to concentrate the attention. In geography, for instance, the idea of the sea and of mountains takes a clear, exact and definite form in the child's brain. The picture, devoid of anything that may distract its attention, becomes a part of its mind. It constitutes a pleasant but at the same time useful exercise of the faculty of attention, and as it is good for the development of any faculty to make it work independently of the others, it may be observed that at the cinema the attention is concentrated solely on the film. A boy, who is unconsciously accustomed to concentrate his attention on the mountains when they appear before him on the screen, will do the same thing quite naturally when he happens to go to the mountains in his native land. He has already learnt to concentrate his attention on this object and by analogy and the spirit of imitation this pro cess will be of use in fixing his mind on the other beauties of nature, to the undeniable benefit of his faculties of attention and observation. The Cinema in Learn The utility of the sound ing Languages. n]m m teaching foreign languages has been abundantly illustrated. (F. Juer Marbach). By means of superpositions and the simultaneous representation of sound, sound images and gesture, the cinema can make the teaching of modern languages both easy and pleasant, and what is more, it can stress details such as the use of prepositions, which are so difficult in languages that are not our own. It serves for the association of the mental image with symbols and sounds of the spoken language, and further, it exactly represents the thing to which the word refers. A boy will read on the screen the word describing the object or action represented : table, seat, etc., walk, eat, take, gather and so on. Naturally, he must always be taken gradually from the simple to the complex. These words will correspond to something real in his mind, and we thus have the association impressed on the brain automatically and without fatigue. This method is particularly useful, in our opinion, for learning the exact meaning of words, which is such a rare thing nowadays, not only among students, but also among learned persons. Certain schools manage to give a practical teaching of languages very rapidly by an objective method, whereas in colleges the students cannot even express themselves properly after years of study of a foreign language. Projections, and Quick The cinema sharpens ness in Perceiving tne facuIty 0f 0bser. Phenomena. yation< and teaches us to fix it quickly on what is happening on the screen. Absorbed by their interest in the scene, the children, who are now in an eminently receptive state, immediately observe the things that strike them. There is nothing to distract