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CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS AND THE CINEMA will be tainted with the consequences of ego-centrisfn $ and of syn= cretism in particular. After the age of 7 to 8, these consequences of ego-centrism do not disappear immediately, but remain crystallised in the most abstract and unmanageable part of the mind, we mean the realm of purely verbal thought. In this way, a child may cease between the ages of 7 and 11 to 1 2 to show any signs of syncretism in his perceptive intelligence, i.e., in those of his thoughts that are connected with immediate observation (whether these are accompanied by language or not), and yet retain very obvious traces of syncretism in his verbal intelligence, i.e., in those of his thoughts that are separate from immediate observation.'
M. Piaget explains the term syncretism thus:
'Children therefore not only perceive by means of general /chemas, but these actually supplant the perception of detail. Thus they correspond to a sort of confused perception, different from and prior to that which in us is the perception of complexity or of forms. To this childish form of perception M. Claparede has given the name of syncretistic perceptions (Arch, de Psych., Vol. VII 1907, p. 195), using the name chosen by Renan to denote that first ''wide and comprehensive but obscure and inaccurate" activity of the spirit where "no distinction is made and things are heaped one upon the other" (Renan). Syncretistic perception therefore excludes analysis, but differs from our general schemas in that it is richer and more confused than they are.'
This does not, of course, mean that there are not children of the respective age group who are further advanced in their language development. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that the essay method is also hampered by the profound difference between speaking and writing (Eine Rede ist keine Schreibe writes Lessing) . This applies not only to our children's essays. It also applies to later parts of this book and the reader is very often asked to read as it were between the lines. Another difficulty with regard to the essay method is the psychological structure of human memory. We have not overlooked this difficulty. There are interesting examples of 'Rationalisations' and other memory phenomena to be found on the pages of this book. But we refrained from drawing attention to those documents as we are primarily interested in the sociological structure of film reactions.1
1 Cf. F. C. Bartlett, Remembering, Cambridge 1932, and Blackburn, Psychology and the Social Pattern, London 1945, where on pp. 43 sqq. a very useful summary of the present stage of memory-psychology is given. A psychologist who undertakes to study film-remembering will do well to bear in mind that the pheno
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