Untrainability

How much ‘general’ or ‘transferred’ training of memory is left after deducting the effects of better methods of learning, better adaptation to the conditions of the tests, and special practice within the tests themselves? The authors have no means of telling how much, nor even if there is any. The doctrine of the untrainability of pure memory remains as little disproven by the work of Ebert and Meumann as by that of Winch.

As regards the element of parental emotional indulgence as a possible cause of the untrainability of the child a good deal might be said.

For the first few months, we took turns dashing home from work at lunchtime in a usually fruitless effort to head off his indoor pooping. Our next-door neighbors, a retired couple who were home all day and understandably didn’t enjoy the constant soundtrack of canine yapping, were even less happy about this than we were. In less enlightened times, everyone might have chalked up the behavior to canine willfulness, Murphy’s untrainability, or perhaps to whatever we were serving for breakfast.