The Story of the Mind Part 4

The results were now very interesting. During the month ending June 15th the child showed no decided preference for either hand in reaching straight before her within the easy reaching distance of ten inches, but a slight balance in favour of the left hand; yet she was right-handed to a marked degree during the same period as regards movements which required effort or strain, such as grasping for objects twelve to fifteen inches distant. For the greater distances, the left hand was used in only five cases as against seventy-four cases of the use of the right hand; and further, all these five cases were twelve-inch distances, the left hand being used absolutely not at all in the forty-five cases at longer distances.

In order to test this further, I varied the point of exposure of the stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to attract the hand on one side or the other, and so to determine whether the growth of such a preference was limited to experiences of convenience in reaching to adjacent local objects, etc.

The deviation to the left in front of the body only called out the right hand to greater exertion, while the left hand fell into still greater disuse. This seems to show that "dextrality" is not derived from the experience of the individual in using either hand predominantly for reaching, grasping, holding, etc., within the easiest range of that hand. The right hand intruded regularly upon the domain of the left.

Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained, a clew which seems to suggest that the hand preference is influenced by the stimulus to the eye, I introduced hand observations into a series of experiments already mentioned above on the same child's perception of the different colours; thinking that the colour stimulus which represented the strongest inducement to the child to reach might have the same effect in determining the use of the right hand as the increased distance in the experiments already described. This inference is proved to be correct by the results.

It should be added that in all cases in which both hands were used together, each hand was called out with evident independence of the other, both about the same time, and both carried energetically to the goal. In many other cases in which either right or left hand is given in the results, the other hand also moved, but in a subordinate and aimless way. There was a very marked difference between the use of both hands in some cases, and of one hand followed by, or accompanied by, the other in other cases. It was very rare that the second hand did not thus follow or accompany the first; and this was extremely marked in the violent reaching for which the right hand was mainly used. This movement was almost invariably accompanied by an objectless and fruitless symmetrical movement of the other hand.

The results of the entire series of experiments on the use of the hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the words in which they were summarily reported some time ago:

1. I found no continued preference for either hand as long as there were no violent muscular exertions made (based on 2,187 systematic experiments in cases of free movement of hands near the body--i. e., right hand, 577 cases; left hand, 568 cases--a difference of 9 cases; both hands, 1,042 cases; the difference of 9 cases being too slight to have any meaning); the period covered being from the child's sixth to her tenth month inclusive.

2. Under the same conditions, the tendency to use both hands together was about double the tendency to use either (seen from the number of cases of the use of both hands in the figures given above).

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in violent efforts in reaching became noticeable in the seventh and eighth months.

Experiments during the eighth month on this cue gave, in 80 cases, right hand, 74 cases; left hand, 5 cases; both hands, 1 case. This was true in two very distinct cla.s.ses of cases: first, reaching for objects, neutral as regards colour (newspaper, etc.), at more than the reaching distance; and, second, reaching for bright colours at any distance. Under the stimulus of bright colours, from 86 cases, 84 were right-hand cases and 2 left-hand. Right-handedness had accordingly developed under pressure of muscular effort in the sixth and seventh months, and showed itself also under the influence of a strong colour stimulus to the eye.

4. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or to creep; hence the development of one hand more than the other is not due to differences in weight between the two longitudinal halves of the body.

As she had not learned to speak or to utter articulate sounds with much distinctness, we may say also that right or left-handedness may develop while the speech centres are not yet functioning. Further, the right hand is carried over after objects on the left side, showing that habit in reaching does not determine its use.

_Theoretical_.--Some interesting points arise in connection with the interpretation of these facts. If it be true that the order of rise of mental and physiological functions is constant, then for this question the results obtained in the case of one child, if accurate, would hold for others apart from any absolute time determination. We should expect, therefore, that these results would be confirmed by experiments on other children, and this is the only way their correctness can be tested.

If, when tested, they should be found correct, they would be sufficient answer to several of the theories of right-handedness heretofore urged, as has been already remarked. The rise of the phenomenon must be sought, therefore, in more deep-going facts of physiology than such theories supply. Furthermore, if we go lower in the animal scale than man, a.n.a.logies for the kinds of experience which are urged as reasons for right-handedness are not present; animals do not carry their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals shake hands!

A full discussion would lead us to the conclusion that dextrality is due to a difference in development in the two hemispheres of the brain, that these differences are hereditary, and that they show themselves toward the end of the first year.

It is a singular circ.u.mstance that right-handedness and speech are controlled by the same hemisphere of the brain and from contiguous areas. It would explain this--and at the same time it seems probable from other considerations--if we found that right-handedness was first used for expression before speech; and that speech has arisen from the setting aside, for further development, of the area in the brain first used for right-handedness. Musical expression has its seat in or near the same lobe of the brain.

_The Child's Mental Development in General_.--The actual development of the child, as observations from many sources indicate it, may be sketched very briefly in its main outlines. It is probable that the earliest consciousness is simply a ma.s.s of touch and muscular sensations experienced in part before birth. Shortly after birth the child begins to connect his impressions with one another and to show Memory. But both memory and a.s.sociation are very weak, and depend upon intense stimulations, such as bright lights, loud noises, etc. The things which most effect him at these early stages are those which bring him into conditions of sharp physical pain or give him acute pleasure. Yet it is a remarkable fact that at birth the pain reflex is wanting. His whole life up to about the fourth month turns upon his organic and vegetative needs. At three months the young child will forget his mother or nurse after a very few days. Attention begins to arise about the end of the first quarter year, appearing first in response to bright lights and loud sounds, and being for a considerable time purely reflex, drawn here and there by the successive impressions which the environment makes. With lights and sounds, however, movements also attract the infant's attention very early; and the pa.s.sage from reflex attention to a sort of vague interest seems to arise first in connection with the movements of the persons about him. This interest goes on to develop very rapidly in the second half year, in connection more particularly with the movements which are a.s.sociated with the child's own comfort and discomfort. The a.s.sociation of muscular sensations with those of touch and sight serves to give him his first clear indications of the positions of his own members and of other objects. His discrimination of what belongs to his own body is probably aided by so-called "double touch"--the fact that when he touches his own body, as in touching his foot with the hand, he has two sensations, one in the foot and the other in the hand. This is not the case when he touches other objects, and he soon learns the distinction, getting the outlines of his own body marked out in a vague way. The learning of the localities on his body which he can not see, however, lags far behind. The movements of his limbs in active exploration, accompanied by sight, enables him to build up his knowledge of the world about him. Learning this he soon falls to "experimenting" with the things of s.p.a.ce. Thus he begins to find out how things fit together, and what their uses are.

On the side of his movements we find him going through a series of remarkable adaptations to his environment. At the beginning his movements are largely random discharges, or reflexes of an instinctive character, such as sucking. Yet in the first month he shows the beginning of adaptation to the suggestions of his daily life, the first manifestations of acquired Habit. He learns when and how long he is expected to sleep, when and how much to eat; he very soon finds out the peculiar touch and vocal tones of this person or that, and acts upon these distinctions. He gets to know the meaning of his food bottle, to understand the routine movements of persons about the room, and the results of violations of their order. His hat, wraps, carriage, become in the first half year signals to him of the outdoor excursion. He no longer bobs his head about when held erect, and begins to control his natural processes. The remarkable thing about all these adaptations is that they occur before the infant can in any sense be said to have a Will; for, as has been said, the fibres of the brain necessary to voluntary action--in the cortex of the hemispheres--are not yet formed.

The realization of this extraordinary adaptiveness of the very young child should save parents many an anxious day and sleepless night.

There is practically nothing more easy than to impress upon the child whatever habits of daily--and nightly!--routine one wishes to give him, if he be taken early enough. The only requirements are knowledge of what is good for him, and then _inviolable regularity_ in everything that concerns him. Under this treatment he will become as "obstinate" in being "good" as the opposite so-called indulgent or capricious treatment always make him in being "bad." There is no reason whatever that he should be walked with or held, that he should be taken up when he cries, that he should be trotted when he awakes, or that he should have a light by night. Things like this are simply bad habits for which the parents have themselves to thank. The child adapts himself to his treatment, and it is his treatment that his habits reflect.

During the second half-year--sooner or later in particular cases--the child is ready to begin to imitate. Imitation is henceforth, for the following few years, the most characteristic thing about his action.

He first imitates movements, later sounds, especially vocal sounds.

His imitations themselves also show progress, being at first what is called "simple imitation" (repeating a distinction already spoken of in the chapter on animals), as when the child lies in bed in the morning and repeats the same sound over and over again. He hears his own voice and imitates it. In this sort of imitation he simply allows his instinct to reproduce what he hears without control or interference from him. He does not improve, but goes on making the same sounds with the same mistakes again and again. But a little later he begins what is called "persistent imitation"--the "try-try-again,"

already spoken of--which is a very different thing. Persistent imitation shows unmistakably the presence of will. The child is not satisfied with simple imitation or mere repet.i.tion, whether it be good or bad in its results. He now sees his errors and aims consciously to improve. Note the child's struggles to speak a word right by imitation of the p.r.o.nunciation of others. And he succeeds. He gradually gets his muscles under control by persistence in his try-try-again.

Then he goes further--about the beginning of his second year, usually.

He gets the idea that imitation is the way to learn, and turns all his effort into imitations experimentally carried out. He is now ready to learn most of the great processes of his later culture. Speech, writing, this special accomplishment and that, are all learned by experimental imitation.

The example of the child's trying to draw or write has already been cited. He looks at the copy before him; sets all his muscles of hand and arm into ma.s.sive contraction; turns and twists his tongue, bends his body, winds his legs together, holds his breath, and in every way concentrates his energies upon the copying of the model. In all this he is experimenting.

He produces a wealth of movements, from which, very gradually, as he tries and tries again, the proper ones are selected out. These he practises, and lets the superfluous ones fall away, until he secures the requisite control over hand and arm. Or suppose a child endeavouring, in the crudest fas.h.i.+on, to put a rubber on the end of a pencil, after seeing some one else do it--just the sort of thing a year-old child loves to imitate. What a chaos of ineffective movements! But with repeated effort he gets nearer and nearer to it, and finally succeeds.

On the side of action, two general principles have been formulated in child psychology, both ill.u.s.trated in the cases and experiments now given: The one, Motor Suggestion, is, as we saw, a principle of general psychology. Its importance to the child is that by it he forms Habits, useful responses to his environment, and so saves himself many sad blunders. The other principle is that of Imitation; by it the child learns new things directly in the teeth of his habits. By exercising in an excessive way what he has already learned through his experimental imitations, he is continually modifying his habits and making new adaptations. These two principles dominate the active life of the adult man as well.

_Personality Suggestion._--A further set of facts may be cited to ill.u.s.trate the working of Suggestion, now in the sphere of the receptive life. They are important as showing the child's progress in learning the great features of personality.

One of the most remarkable tendencies of the very young child in its responses to its environment is the tendency to recognise differences of personality. It responds to what have been called Suggestions of Personality. As early as the second month it distinguishes its mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns characteristic methods of holding, taking up, patting, kissing, etc., and adapts itself, by a marvellous accuracy of protestation or acquiescence, to these personal variations. Its a.s.sociations of personality come to be of such importance that for a long time its happiness or misery depends upon the presence of certain kinds of "personality suggestion." It is quite a different thing from the child's behavior toward things which are not persons. Things come to be, with some few exceptions which are involved in the direct gratification of appet.i.te, more and more unimportant; things may be subordinated to regular treatment or reaction. But persons become constantly more important, as uncertain and dominating agents of pleasure and pain. The sight of movement by persons, with its effects on the infant, seems to be the most important factor in this peculiar influence; later the voice comes to stand for a person's presence, and at last the face and its expressions equal the person in all his attributes.

I think this distinction between persons and things, between agencies and objects, is the child's very first step toward a sense of personality. The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows stronger and stronger in his dealings with persons--an uncertainty aroused by the moods, emotions, changes of expression, and shades of treatment of the persons around it. A person stands for a group of quite unstable experiences. This period we may, for brevity of expression, a.s.suming it to be first in order of development, call the "projective" stage in the growth of the child's personal consciousness.

It is from this beginning that the child goes on to become fully conscious of what persons are. And when we observe his actions more closely we find no less than four steps in his growth, which, on account of the importance of the topic, may be stated in some little detail.

1. The first thing of significance to him, as has been said, is _movement_. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention are directed to moving things--a swaying curtain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement that brings him his bottle, movement that regulates the stages of his bath, movement that dresses him comfortably, movement that sings to him and rocks him to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the feature of importance to him, of immediate satisfaction or redemption from pain, is this--movements come to succour him. Change in his bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his life, for by it the rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; and these things are accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the one he sees and feels about him. This, I take it, is the earliest reflection in his consciousness of the world of personalities about him. At this stage his "personality suggestion" is a _pain-movement-pleasure_ state of mind; to this he reacts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick.

Undoubtedly this a.s.sociation gets some of its value from the other similar one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by movements that he gets rid of pains and secures pleasures.

Many facts tend to bear out this position. My child cried in the dark when I handled her, although I imitated the nurse's movements as closely as possible. She tolerated a strange presence so long as it remained quietly in its place; but let it move, and especially let it usurp any of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or mother, and her protests were emphatic. The movements tended to bring the strange elements of a new face into the vital a.s.sociation, pain-movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its familiar course; this const.i.tuted it a strange "personality."

It is astonis.h.i.+ng, also, what new accidental elements may become parts of this a.s.sociation. Part of a movement, a gesture, a peculiar habit of the nurse, may become sufficient to give a.s.surance of the welcome presence and the pleasures which the presence brings. Two notes of my song in the night stood for my presence to H., and no song from any one else could replace it. A lighted match stopped the crying of E.

for food in her fourteenth week, although it was but a signal for a process of food preparation lasting several minutes; and a simple light never stopped her crying under any other circ.u.mstances.

2. With this first start in the sense of personality we find also the beginning of the recognition of different personalities. It is evident that the sense of another's presence thus felt in the infant's consciousness rests, as all a.s.sociations rest, upon regularity or repet.i.tion; his sense of expectancy is aroused whenever the chain of events is started. This is soon embodied largely in two indications: the face and the voice. But it is easy to see that this is a very meagre sense of personality; a moving machine which brought pain and alleviated suffering might serve as well. So the child begins to learn, in addition, the fact that persons are in a measure individual in their treatment of him; that their individuality has elements of uncertainty or _irregularity_ about it. This growing sense is very clear to one who watches an infant in its second half year. Sometimes its mother gives it a biscuit, but sometimes she does not. Sometimes the father smiles and tosses the child; sometimes he does not. Even the indulgence of the grandmother has its times and seasons. The child looks for signs of these varying moods and methods of treatment; for his pains of disappointment arise directly on the basis of that former sense of regular personal presence upon which his expectancy goes forth.

This new element of the child's sense of persons becomes, at one period of its development, quite the controlling element. His action in the presence of the persons of the household becomes hesitating and watchful. Especially does he watch the face, for any expressive indications of what treatment is to be expected; for facial expression is now the most regular as well as the most delicate indication.

Special observations on H.'s responses to changes in facial expression up to the age of twenty months showed most subtle sensibility to these differences; and normal children all do. Animals are also very expert at this.

All through the child's second year, and longer, his sense of the persons around him is in this stage. The incessant "why?" with which he greets any action affecting him, or any information given him, is witness to the simple puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of persons. Of course he can not understand "why"; so the simple fact to him is that mamma will or won't, he knows not beforehand which. He is unable to antic.i.p.ate the treatment in detail, and he has not of course learned any principles of interpretation of the conduct of father or mother lying back of the details.

But in all this period there is germinating in his consciousness--and this very uncertainty is an important element of it--the seed of a far-reaching thought. His sense of persons--moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncertain but self-directing persons--is now to become a sense of agency, of power, which is yet not the power of the regular-moving door on its hinges or the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of _personal agency_ is now forming, and it again is potent for still further development of the social consciousness. It is just here, I think, that imitation becomes so important in the child's life. This is imitation's opportunity. The infant watches to see how others act, because his own weal and woe depends upon this "how"; and inasmuch as he knows not what to antic.i.p.ate, his mind is open to every suggestion of movement. So he falls to imitating. His attention dwells upon details, and by the principle of adaptation which imitation expresses, it acts out these details for himself.

It is an interesting detail, that at this stage the child begins to grow capricious himself; to feel that he can do whatever he likes.

Suggestion begins to lose the regularity of its working, for it meets the child's growing sense of his own agency. The youthful hero becomes "contrary." At this period it is that obedience begins to grow hard, and its meaning begins to dawn upon the child as the great reality.

For it means the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of some one else.

3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among the persons who constantly come into contact with him grows on apace, in spite of the element of irregularity of the general fact of personality. As he learned before the difference between one presence and another, so now he learns the difference between one _character_ and another. Every character is more or less regular in its irregularity. It has its tastes and modes of action, its temperament and type of command. This the child learns late in the second year and thereafter. He behaves differently when the father is in the room. He is quick to obey one person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud, pulls his companions, and behaves reprehensibly generally, when no adult is present who has authority or will to punish him. This stage in his "knowledge of man" leads to very marked differences of conduct on his part.

4. He now goes on to acquire real _self-consciousness_ and _social feeling_. This stage is so important that we may give to it a separate heading below.

It may not be amiss to sum up what has been said about Personality-Suggestion. It is a general term for the information which the child gets about persons. It develops through three or four roughly distinguished stages, all of which ill.u.s.trate what is called the "projective" sense of personality.[2] There is, 1. A bare distinction _of persons from things_ on the ground of peculiar pain-movement-pleasure experiences. 2. A sense of the irregularity or capriciousness of the behaviour of these persons, which suggests _personal agency_. 3. A distinction, vaguely felt perhaps, but wonderfully reflected in the child's actions, between the modes of behaviour or _personal characters_ of different persons. 4. After his sense of his own agency arises by the process of imitation, he gets what is really _self-consciousness_ and _social feeling_.

[Footnote 2: It is very remarkable that in the child's bashfulness we find a native nervous response to the presence of persons. And it is curious to note that, besides the general gregariousness which many animals have, they show in many instances special responses of the presence of creatures of their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs seem to recognise dogs by _smell_. So with cats, which also respond instinctively with strong repulsion to the smell of dogs. Horses seem to be guided by _sight_. Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on hearing the cries of their kind or their young.]

_Self-consciousness._--So far as we have now gone the child has only a very dim distinction between himself as a person and the other persons who move about him. The persons are "projective" to him, mere bodies or external objects of a peculiar sort cla.s.sed together because they show common marks. Yet in the sense of agency, he has already begun, as we saw, to find in himself a mental nucleus, or centre. This comes about from his tendency to fall into the imitation of the acts of others.

Now as he proceeds with these imitations of others, he finds himself gradually understanding the others, by coming, through doing the same actions with them, to discover what they are feeling, what their motives are, what the laws of their behaviour. For example, he sees his father handle a pin, then suddenly make a face as he p.r.i.c.ks himself, and throws the pin away. All this is simply a puzzle to the child; his father's conduct is capricious, "projective." But the child's curiosity in the matter takes the form of imitation; he takes up the pin himself and goes through the same manipulation of it that his father did. Thus he gets himself p.r.i.c.ked, and with it has the impulse to throw the pin away. By imitating his father he has now discovered what was inside the father's mind, the pain and the motive of the action.

This way of proceeding in reference to the actions of others, of which many examples might be given, has a twofold significance in the development of the child; and because of this twofold significance it is one of the most important facts of psychology. Upon it rest, in the opinion of the present writer, correct views of ethics and social philosophy.

1. By such imitation the child learns to a.s.sociate his own sense of physical power, together with his own private pleasures and pains, with the personal actions which were before observed, it is true, in other persons but not understood. The act of the father has now become his own. So one by one the various attributes which he has found to be characteristic of the persons of his social circle, become his, in his own thought. He is now _for himself_ an agent who has the marks of a Person or a Self. He now understands _from_ _the inside_ all the various personal suggestions. What he saw persons do is now no longer "projective"--simply there, outside, in the environment; it has become what we call "subjective." The details are grouped and held together by the sense of agency working itself out in his imitative struggles.

This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. It is not an inborn thing with the child. He gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a distinct and separate self, first known and then compared with other persons. On the contrary, it is gradually built up in the child's mind from the same material exactly as that of which he makes up his thought of other persons. The deeds he can do he first sees others doing; only then can he imitate them and find out that he also is a being who can perform them.

So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of Self is constantly changing, constantly being enriched. We have not the same thought of self two days in succession. To-day I think of myself as something to be proud of, to-morrow as something to be ashamed of. To-day I learn something from you, and the thought that it is common to you and to me is the basis of my sympathy with you. To-morrow I learn to commit the unworthy act which Mr. A. commits, and the thought that he and I are so far the same is the basis of the common disapproval which I feel of him and me.