ATTITUDE. The term is mostly used in psychology to denote a certain disposition or preparedness to attend to certain objects or certain parts of objects rather than others. This is one of the most important subjective conditions of attention (q.v.). Its influence manifests itself not only in waking life but even in sleep. A mother's attitude is "set" for her child, and she will hear the child's movements though deaf to other, louder noises. The term is also used sometimes in a physical or physio logical sense to denote a certain condition of partial stimulation or nascent excitation of nerve centres, which may help to explain the phenomena of habit (q.v.).