I referred a few of you to Isaac Watts in my comments on your research papers. A few quotes of potential interest below...
For anyone working on attention, distraction, or absorption, there's a lot to potential material to work with here—and in the text at large—so I haven't tagged you as explicitly. (It also may not be relevant to the direction you're heading so only use if it makes sense to you.) For those working on things like reflection, interest, memory, etc., I tried to mark a few key passages, but skim through the whole as I was doing this quite quickly and may have missed something good.
Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind (1743)
Improvement of Mind | Google Books (downloadable, searchable, citable)
*Note: page numbers below may not match this google books version. Simply search for the phrase you are looking for and find the correct page, as well as more context.
Of Conversation
Banish utterly out of all conversation...every Thing that tends to provoke Passion or raise a Fire in the blood. (141)
Mutual Instruction can never be attained in the Midst of Passion, Pride and Clamor, unless we supposed in the Midst of such a Scene there is a loud and penetrating Lecture read on by both sides on the Folly and shameful Infirmities of human Nature. (Amber, Stephanie?)
Chap V. of books
Let it be added also, that not only the Slothful and the Negligent deprive themselves of proper Knowledge for the Furniture of their Memory, but such as appear to have active Spirits, who are ever skimming over the Surface of Things with a volatile Temper will fix nothing in their Mind. Vario will spend whole Mornings in running over loose and unconnected Pages, and with fresh Curiosity is ever glancing over new Words and Ideas that strike his present Fancy: He is fluttering (260-261) over a thousand Objects of Art and Science, and yet treasures up but little Knowledge. There must be the Labour and Diligence of close Attention to particular Subjects of Thought and Enquiry, which only can impress what we read or think upon the remembering Faculty in Man. (261)
*(attention vs. absorption, Eric re: reflection? Eeb, classic "arca" model of "Furniture of their memory?")
Clear and distinct Apprehension of the Things which we commit to Memory, is necessary in order to make them stick and dwell there. If we would remember Words, or learn the Names of Persons or Things, we should have them recommended to our memory by clear and distinct Pronunciation, Spelling, or Writing… Faint glimmering and confused Ideas will vanish like Images seen in Twilight. … It must be confest that meer Sounds and words are much harder to get by Heart than the knowledge of things and real Images. (261)
*(Eric, cloudy vs. clear mirror for reflection possibly about what's being learned as well as about the calm state of the mind?)
DUE Attention and Diligence to learn and know Things which we would commit to our Remembrance….is a Rule of great Necessity… When the Attention is strongly fixed to any particular Subject, all that is said concerning it makes a deeper Impression upon the Mind. There are some persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human Discourses which they hear, when in Truth their Thoughts are wandering half the Time, or they hear with such Coldness and Indifferency and a trifling Temper of Spirit, that it is no wonder the Things which are read or spoken make but a slight impression on the brain and get no firm footing in the Seat of Memory, but soon vanish and are lost. (259, 60)
*Eeb re: memory? Eric re: reflection needed to create an impression on the brain? Mark re: coldness & indifference-->no memory (possibly not relevant to you)
It is needful therefore if we would maintain a long Remembrance of the Things which we read or hear that we should engage our Delight and Pleasure in those Subjects, and use other Methods which are before prescribed in order to fix the Attention. (relationship between pleasure, attention and memory)
The mutual Dependence of Things on each other help the Memory of both. A wise Connexion of the Parts of a Discourse in a rational Method gives great Advantage to the Reader or Hearer in order to his Remembrance of it. Therefore many mathematical Demonstrations in a long Train may be remembered much better than a heap of Sentences which have no Connexion. (264) (anyone using Swift or Tristram Shandy :)
Memory, Distraction, Reading & the Brain
The Goodness of a Memory depends in a great Degree upon the Consistence and the Temperature of that Part of the Brain which is appointed to assist the Exercise of all our sensible and intellectual Faculties. (255)
“So for Instance in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them; all the Traces, Forms or IMages which are drawn there are immediately effaced or closed up again, as though you wrote with your finger on the Surface of a River or a Vessel of Oil” (256) (Eric, helpful?, Eeb?, Anzar re: distraction on perceiving and forgetting a hundred Things in an hour?)
On the contrary, in Old Age, Men have a very feeble Remembrance of Things that were done of late, i.e. the same Day or Week or Year; the Brain is grown so hard that the present Images or Strokes make little or no Impression, and therefore they immediately vanish (256) … Prisco in his seventy eighth Year will tell long Stories of Things done when he was in the Battle at the Boyne almost fifty Years ago...For those Impressions were made when the Brain was more susceptive of them; they have been deeply engraven at the proper Season and therefore they remain. Words and things which he lately spoke or did, they are immediately forgot, because the Brain is now grown more dry and solid in its Consistence, and receives not much more Impression than if you wrote with your Finger on a Floor of Clay, or a plaister’d Wall. (Eric, Eeb? those working on absorption? obsession?)
But in the middle stage of Life, ..from fifteen to fifty Years of Age… the Brain easily receives and long retains the Images and Traces which are impressed upon it. (256) and the natural Spirits are more active to range these little infinite unknown Figures of Things in their proper Cells or Cavities to preserve and recollect them. (257) (Eeb, Eric, Maura, Savannah?)
Whatsoever therefore keeps the Brain in its best Temper and Consistence may be a Help to preserve the Memory; but Excess of Wine or Luxury of any Kind, as well as Excess in the Studies of Learning or the Businesses of Life, may overwhelm the Memory by overstraining and weakening the Fibres of the Brain, over-wasting, the Spirits, injuring the true Consistence of that tender Substance [of the Brain] and confounding the Images that are laid up there. (257) (absorption folks + Byron)
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