These difficulties may be largely overcome, however, by the application
of the principles governing good incentives. This must mean that the
choice of types of attention and therefore the provision of situations
calling them out should be in this order: immediate free attention,
derived free attention, forced attention. All three are necessary in the
education of any child, but each should be used in its proper place.

The conditions which insure the best attention of whatever type have to
do with both physical and mental adjustments. On the physical side there
is need for the adaptation of the sense organ and the body to the
situation. For this adaptation to be effective the environmental
conditions must be controlled by the laws of hygiene. A certain amount
of bodily freedom yields better results than rigidity because the latter
draws energy from the task in hand for purposes of inhibition. On the
mental side there is need for preparation in terms of readiness of the
nerve tracts to be used. James calls this "ideational" preparation. This
simply means that one can attend better if he knows something of what he
is to attend to. Experimental evidence proves without doubt that if the
subject knows that he is to see a color, instead of a word, his
perception of it is much more rapid and accurate than if he does not
have this preparation. This same result is obtained in much more complex
sensory situations, and it also holds when the situation is
intellectual. Contrary to expectation, great quietness is not the best
condition for the maximum of attention; a certain amount of distraction
is beneficial.

The problem of interest and of attention, from the point of view of
teaching, is not simply to secure attention, but rather to have the
attention fixed upon those activities which are most desirable from the
standpoint of realizing the aim or purpose of education. As has already