FOUR: PSYCHICAL DEVELOPMENTS.
§20. PSYCHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD.
1. The fact that the psychical development of man is regularly slower
than that of most animals is to be seen in the much more gradual maturing
of his sense-functions. The child, to be sure, reacts immediately
after birth to all kinds of sense-stimuli, most clearly to impressions of
touch and taste, with the least certainty to those of sound. Still, it is
impossible to doubt that the special forms of the reaction-movements in all
these cases are due to inherited reflexes. This is especially true for the
child's crying when afected by cold and tactual impressions, and for the
mimetic reflexes when he tastes sweet, sour, or bitter substances. It is
probable that all these impressions are accompanied by obscure sensations
and feelings, yet the character of the movements can not be explained from
the feelings whose symptoms they may be considered to be, but must be
referred to connate central reflex tracts.
Probably nothing is clear in consciousness until the end of the [p. 284]
first month, and even then, as the rapid change of moods shows, sensations
and feelings must be relatively very changeable. It is at about this time
that we begin to observe symptoms of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings
in the child's laughter and in lively rhythmical movements of his arms and
legs after certain impressions. Even the reflexes are not completely
developed at first -- a fact which we can easily understand when we learn
from anatomy that many of the connecting fibres between the cerebral
centres do not develop until after birth. Thus the associative
reflex-movements of the two eyes are wanting. From the first each of the
eyes by itself generally turns towards a light, but the movements of the
two eyes are entirely irregular, and it is only in the course of the first
three months that the normal coordination of the movements of the two eyes
with a common fixation-point, begins to appear. Even then the developing
regularity is not to be regarded as a result of complete visual
perceptions, but, quite the reverse, as a symptom of the gradual
functioning of a reflex-centre, which then renders clear visual perceptions
possible.
2. It is, generally speaking, impossible to gain any adequate
information about the qualitative relations of psychical elements in
the child's consciousness, for the reason that we have no certain objective
symptoms. It is probable that the number of different tonal sensations,
perhaps also the number of color-sensations, is very limited. The fact that
children two years old not infrequently use the wrong names for colors
ought not however, to be looked upon as unqualified evidence, that they do
not have the sensation in question. It is much more probable that lack of
attention and a confusion of the names is the real explanation in such
cases.
Towards the end of the first year the differential of feelings
and the related development of the various emotions [p. 285] take
place, and show themselves strikingly in the characteristic expressive
movements that gradually arise. We have unpleasurable feelings and joy,
then in order, astonishment, expectation, anger, shame, envy, etc. Even in
these cases the dispositions for the combined movements which express the
single emotions, depend upon inherited physiological attributes of the
nervous system, which generally do not begin to function until after the
first few months, in a way analogous to the combined innervation of the
ocular muscles. As further evidence of this we have the fact that not
infrequently special peculiarities in the expressive movements are
inherited by whole families.
3. The physical conditions for the rise of spacial ideas are
connate in the form of inherited reflex-connections which make a relatively
rapid development of these ideas possible. But for the child the spacial
perceptions seem at first to be much more incomplete than they are in the
case of many animals. There are manifestations of pain when the skin is
stimulated, but no clear symptoms of localization. Distinct grasping
movements develop gradually from the aimless movements that are observed
even in the first days, but they do not, as a rule, become certain and
consciously purposive until aided by visual perceptions, after the twelfth
week. The turning of the eye toward a source of light as generally observed
very early, is to be regarded as reflex. The same is true of the gradual
coordination of ocular movements. Still it is probable that along with
these reflexes there are developed spacial ideas, so that all we can
observe is the gradual completion of these ideas from very crude
beginnings, for the process is continuous and is always interconnected with
its original physiological substratum. Even in the child the sense of sight
shows itself to be decidedly more rapid in its development than the sense
of touch, for the symptoms [p. 286] of visual localization are certainly
observable earlier than those of tactual localization, and the grasping
movements, as mentioned above, do not reach their full development until
aided by the sense of sight. The field of binocular vision is much
later in its development than that of monocular vision. The latter shows
itself in the discrimination of directions in space. The beginnings of the
development of a field for binocular vision coincide with the first
coordination of ocular movements and belong, accordingly, to the second
half of the first year. The perception of size, of distance, and of various
three-dimensional figures remains for a long time very imperfect.
Especially, distant objects are all thought to be near at hand, so that
they appear relatively small to the child.
4. Temporal ideas develop along with the spacial ideas. The
ability to form regular temporal ideas and the agreeableness of these to
the child shows itself in the first months in the movements of his limbs
and especially in the tendency to accompany rhythms that are heard, with
similar rhythmical movements. Some children can imitate correctly, even
before, they can speak, the rhythmical melodies that they hear, in sounds
and intonations. Still, the ideas of longer intervals are very imperfect
even at the end of the first year and later, so that a child gives very
irregular judgements as to the duration of different periods and also as to
their sequence.
5. The development of associations and of simple apperceptive
combinations goes hand in hand with that of spacial and temporal ideas.
Symptoms of sensible recognition (p. 237) are observable from the very
first days, in the rapidly aquired ability to find the mother's breast and
in the obvious habituation to the objects and persons of the environment.
Still, for a long time these associations cover only very short intervals
of time, at first only hours, then days. Even in [p. 287] the third and
fourth years children either forget entirely or remember only imperfectly
persons who bay been absent for a few weeks.
The case with attention is similar. At first it is possible to
concentrate it upon a single object only for a very short time, and it is
obvious that passive apperception which always follows the predominating
stimulus, that is the one whose affective tone is strongest (p. 217), is
the only form present. In the first weeks, however, a lasting attention
begins to show itself in the way the child fixates and follows objects for
a longer time, especially if they are moving; and at the same time we have
the first trace of active apperception in the ability to turn voluntarily
from one impression to another. From this point on, the ability becomes
more and more fully developed; still, the attention, even in later
childhood, fatigues more rapidly than in the case of adults, and requires a
greater variety of objects or a more frequent pause for rest.
6. The development of self-consciousness keeps pace with that of
the associations and apperceptions. In judging of this development we must
guard against accepting as signs of self-consciousness any single symptoms,
such as the child's discrimination of the parts of his body from objects of
his environment, his use of the word "I", or even the recognition of his
own image in the mirror. The adult savage who has never seen his own
reflected image before, takes it for some other person. The use of the
personal pronoun is due to the child's imitation of the examples of those
about him. This imitation comes at very different times in the cases of
different children, even when their intellectual development in other
respects is the same. It is, to be sure, a symptom of the presence of
self-consciousness, but the first beginnings of self-consciousness may have
preceded this discrimination [p. 288] in speech by a longer or shorter
period of time as the case may be. Again, the discrimination of the body
from other objects is a symptom of exactly the same kind. The re cognition
of the body is a process that regularly precedes that of the recognition of
the image in the mirror, but one is as little a criterion of the beginning
of self-consciousness as the other. They both presuppose the existence of
some degree of self-consciousness beforehand. Just as the developed
self-consciousness is based upon a number of different conditions (p. 221),
so in the same way the self-consciousness of the child is from the first a
product of several components, partly ideational in character, partly
affective and volitional. Under the first head we have the discrimination
of a constant group of ideas, under the second the development of
certain interconnected processes of attention and volitional acts. The
constant group of ideas does not necessarily include all parts of the body,
as, for example, the legs, which are usually covered, and it may, as is
more often the case, include external objects, as, for example, the clothes
generally worn. The subjective affective and volitional components, and the
relations that exist between these and the ideational components in
external volitional acts, are the factors that exercise the decisive
influence. Their greater influence is shown especially by the fact that
strong feelings, especially those of pain, very often mark in an
individual's memory the first moment to which the continuity of his
self-consciousness reaches back. But there can be no doubt that a form of
self-consciousness, even though less interconnected, exists even before
this first clearly remembered moment, which generally comes in the fifth or
sixth year. Still, since the objective observation of the child is not
supplied at first with any certain criteria, it is impossible to determine
the exact moment when self-consciousness begins. Probably the traces of it
[p. 289] begin to appear in the first weeks; after this it continually
becomes clearer under the constant influence of the conditions mentioned,
and increases in temporal extent just as consciousness in general does.
7. The development of will is intimately connected with that of
self-consciousness. It may be inferred partly from the development of
attention described above, partly from the rise and gradual perfection of
external volitional acts, whose influence on self-consciousness has
just been mentioned. The immediate relation of attention to will appears in
the fact that symptoms of active attention and voluntary action come at
exactly the same time. Very many animals execute immediately after birth
fairly perfect impulsive movements, that is, simple volitional acts. These
are rendered possible by inherited reflex-mechanisms of a complex
character. The new-born child, on the contrary, does not show any traces of
such impulsive acts. Still, we observe in the first days the earliest
beginnings of simple volitional acts of an impulsive character, as a result
of the reflexes caused by sensations of hunger and by the sense-perceptions
connected with appeasing it. These are to be seen in the evident quest
after the sources of nourishment. With the obvious growth of attention come
the volitional acts connected with impressions of sight and hearing: the
child purposely, no longer merely in a reflex way, follows visual objects,
and turns his head towards the noises that he hears. Much later come the
movements of the outer muscles of the limbs and trunk. These, especially
the muscles of the limbs, show from the first lively movements, generally
repeated time and time again. These movements are accompanied by all
possible feelings and emotions, and when the latter become differentiated,
the movements begin gradually to exhibit certain differences characteristic
for the quality of the emotions. The chief [p. 290] difference consists in
the fact that rhythmical movement accompany pleasurable emotions, while
arrhythmical and, as rule, violent movements result when the emotions are
unpleasurable. These expressive movements, which must be looked upon as
reflexes attended by feelings, then, as soon as the attention begins to
turn upon the surroundings, pass as occasion offers into ordinary
voluntary expressive movements. Thus, the child shows through the
different accompanying symptoms that he not only feels pain, annoyance,
anger, etc., but that the wishes to give expression to these emotions. The
first movements, however, in which an antecedent motive is to be recognized
beyond a doubt, are the graying movements which begin in the twelfth
to the fourteenth week. Especially at first, the foot takes part in these
movements as well as the hand. We have here also the first clear symptoms
of sense-perception, as well as the first indications of the existence of a
simple volitional process made up of motive, decision, and act. Somewhat
later intentional imitative movements are to be observed. Simple mimetic
imitations, such as puckering the lips and frowning, come first, and then
pantomimetic, such as doubling up the fist, beating time, etc. Very
gradually, as a rule not until after the beginning of the second half of
the first year, complex volitional acts develop from these simple
ones. The oscillation of decision, the voluntary suppression of an intended
act or one already begun, commence to be clearly observable at this period.
Learning to walk, which usually begins in the last third of the
first year, is an important factor in the development of voluntary acts in
the proper sense of the term. Its importance is due to the fact that the
going to certain particular places furnishes the occasion for the rise of a
number of conflicting motives. The learning itself is to be regarded as [p.
291] a process in which the development of the will and the effect of
inherited dispositions to certain particular combinations of movements are
continually interacting upon each other. The first impulse for the movement
comes from volitional motives; the purposive way in which it is carried
out, however, is primarily an effect of the central mechanism of
coordination, which in turn is rendered continually more and more purposive
as a result of the individual's practice directed by his will.
8. The development of the child's ability to speak follows that
of his other volitional acts. This, too, depends on the cooperation of
inherited modifications in the central organ of the nervous system on one
hand, and outside influences on the other. The most important outside
influences in this case are those that come from the speech of those about
the child. In this respect the development of speech corresponds entirely
to that of the other expressive movements, among which it is, from its
general psycho-physical character, to be classed. The earliest
articulations of the vocal organs appear as reflex phenomena, especially
accompanying pleasurable feelings and emotions, as early as the second
month. After that they increase in variety and exhibit more and more the
tendency to repetition (for example, ba-ba-ba, da-da-da, etc.). These
expressive sounds differ from those of many animals only in their greater
and continually changing variety. They are produced on all possible
occasions and without any intention of communicating anything, so that they
are by no means to be classed as elements of speech. Through the influence
of those about the child these sounds generally become elements of speech
after the beginning of the second year. This result is brought about
chiefly by certain imitative movements. It comes, in the form of
sound-sensations, from two sides. On the one hand, the child imitates
adults, on the other, adults imitate the child. In fact, as a rule, it is
the adults who [p. 292] begin the imitating; they repeat the involuntary
articulations of the child and attach a particular meaning to them, as, for
example, "pa-pa" for father, "ma-ma" for mother, etc. It is not until
later, after the child has learned to use these, sounds in a particular
sense though intentional immitation, that he repeats other words of the
adults' language also, and even then he modifies them to fit the stock of
sounds that he is able to articulate.
Gestures are important as means by which adults, more
instinctively than voluntarily, help the child to understand the words they
use. These are generally indicative gestures towards the objects; less
frequently, ordinarily only in the case of words meaning seine activity
such as strike, cut, walk, sleep, etc., they take the form of depicting
gestures. The child has a natural understanding for these gestures, but not
for words. Even the onomatopoetic words of child-speech (such as bow-bow
for dog, etc.) never become intelligible to him until the objects have been
frequently pointed out. The child is not the creator of these words, but it
is rather the adult who seeks instinctively to accommodate himself in this
respect also to the stage of the child's consciousness.
All this goes to show that the child's learning to speak is the result
of a series of associations and apperceptions in whose formation both the
child and those about to take part. Adults voluntarily designate particular
ideas with certain words taken from the expressive sounds made by the
child, or with onomatopoetic words made arbitrarily after the pattern of
the first class. The child apperceives this combination of word and idea
after it has been made intelligible to him with gestures, and associates it
with his own imitative articulative movements. Following the pattern of
these first apperceptions and associations the child their forms others, by
imitating of his own accord more and more the words and [p. 293] verbal
combinations that he accidentally hears adults using, and by making the
appropriate associations with their meanings. The whole process is thus the
result of a psychical interaction between the child and those about him.
The sounds are at first produced by the child alone, those about him take
up these sounds and make use of them for purposes of speech.
9. The final development that comes from all the simpler processes thus
far discussed, is that of the complex function of apperception, that
is the relating and comparing activities, and the activities of imagination
and understanding made up of these (§ 17).
Apperceptive combination in its first form is exclusively the
activity of imagination, that is the combination, analysis, and
relating of concrete sensible ideas. Thus, individual development
corroborates what has been said in general about the genetic relation of
these functions (p. 266). On the basis of the continually increasing
association of immediate impressions with earlier ideas, there arises in
the child, as soon as his active attention is aroused, a tendency to form
such combinations voluntarily. The number of memory-elements freely
combining with the impression and added to it, furnish us with a measure
for the fertility of the individual child's imagination. As soon as this
combining activity of imagination has once begun to operate, it shows
itself with an impulsive force that the child is unable to resist, for
there is not as yet, as ill the case of adults, any activity of the
understanding to prescribe definite intellectual ends regulating and
inhibiting the free sweep of the ideas of imagination.
This unchecked relating and coupling of ideas in imagination is
connected with volitional impulses aiming to find for the ideas some
starting-points in immediate sense-perception, however vague these
starting-points may be. This is what gives rise to the child's
play-impulse. The earliest games of the [p. 294] child are those of
pure imagination; while, on the contrary, those of adults (cards, chess,
lotto, etc.) are almost as exclusively intellectual games. Only where
aesthetical demands exert an influence are the games of adults the
productions of the imagination (drama, piano-playing, etc.), but even here
they are not wholly untrammeled like those of the child, but are regulated
by the understanding. When the play of a child takes its natural course, it
shows at different periods of its development all the intermediate stages
between the game of pure imagination and that in which imagination and
understanding are united. In the first years this play consists in the
production of rhythmical movements of the arms and legs, then the movements
are carried over to external objects as well, with preference to such
objects as give rise to auditory sensations, or such as are of bright
colors. In their origin these movements are obviously impulsive acts
aroused by certain sensational stimuli and dependent for their purposive
coordination on inherited traits of the central nervous organs. The
rhythmical order of the movements and of the feelings and sound-impressions
produced by them, obviously arouse pleasurable feelings, and this very soon
results in the voluntary repetition of the movements. After this, during
the first years, play becomes gradually a voluntary imitation of the
occupations and scenes that the child sees about him. The range of
imitation then widens and is no longer limited to what is seen, but
includes a free reproduction of what is heard in narratives. At the same
time the interconnection between ideas and acts begins to follow a more
fixed plan. This is the regulative influence of the activity of
understanding, which shows itself in the games of later childhood in
perscribed rules. This development is often accelerated through the
influence of those about the child and through artificial forms of play
generally invented by adults and not always suited to the child's
imagination; [p. 295] still, the development is to be recognized as natural
and necessarily conditioned by the reciprocal interconnection of
associative and apperceptive processes, since it agrees with the general
development of the intellectual functions. The way in which the processes
of imagination are gradually curtailed and the functions of understanding
more and more employed, renders it probable that the curtailing is due not
so much to a quantitative decrease of imagination as to an obstruction of
its action through abstract thinking. When this has once set in, because of
the predominating exercise of abstract thinking, the activity of
imagination may itself through lack of use be interfered with. This view
seems to be supported by the fact that savages usually have all through
their lives an imaginative play-impulse related to that of the child.
10. From imaginative forms of thought as a starting point the
functions of understanding develop very gradually in the way already
described (p. 264). Aggregate ideas that are presented in sense-perception
or formed by the combination, activity of imagination are divided into
their conceptual components, into objects and their attributes, into
objects and their activities, or into the relations of different objects to
one another. The decisive symptom for the rise of the functions of
understanding is therefore the formation of concepts. On the other
hand, actions that can be explained from the point of view of the observer
by logical reflection, are by no means proofs of the existence of such
reflection on the part of the actor, for they are very often obviously
derived from associations, just as in the case of animals. In the same way
there may be the first beginnings of speech without abstract thinking in
any proper sense, since words refer originally only to concrete sensible
impressions. Still, the more perfect use of language is not possible until
ideas are conceptually analyzed, related, and transferred, even [p. 296]
though the processes are in each case entirely concrete and sensible. The
development of the functions of understanding and that of speech
accordingly go hand in hand, and the latter is an indispensable aid in
retaining concepts and fixing the operations of thought.
10a. Child-psychology often suffers from the same mistake that is made
in animal psychology: namely, that the observations aren't interpreted
objectively, but are filled out with subjective reflections. Thus, the
earliest ideational combinations, which are in reality purely associative,
are regarded as acts of logical reflection, and the earliest mimetic
expressive movements, as, for example, those of a new-born child due to
taste-stimuli, are looked upon as reactions to feelings, while they are
obviously at first nothing but connate reflexes which may, indeed, be
accompanied by obscure concomitant feelings, but even these can not be
demonstrated with certainty. The ordinary view as to the development of
volition and of speech, labors under a like misconception. Generally there
is a tendency to consider the child's language, because of its
peculiarities, as a creation of his own. Closer observation, however, shows
that it is created by those about him, though in doing this they use the
sounds that the child himself produces, and conform as far as possible to
big stage of consciousness. Thus it comes that some of the very detailed
and praise-worthy accounts of the mental development of the child in modern
literature can serve only as sources for finding objective facts. Because
they stand on the basis of a reflective popular psychology, their
psychological deductions require correction along the lines marked out
above.