The Story of the Mind

J >> James Mark Baldwin >> The Story of the Mind

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3. It follows, however, from the principle of growth itself that the
order of development of the main mental functions is constant, and
normally free from great variations; consequently, the most fruitful
observations of children are those which show that such an act was
present _before another_. The complexity becomes finally so remarkable
that there seems to be no before or after at all in mental things; but
if the child's growth shows a stage in which any process is clearly
absent, we have at once light upon the laws of growth. For instance:
if a single case is conclusively established of a child's drawing an
inference before it begins to use words or significant vocal sounds,
the one case is as good as a thousand to show that thought may develop
in some degree independently of spoken language.

4. While the most direct results are acquired by systematic
experiments with a given point in view, still general observations
carefully recorded by competent persons, are important for the
interpretation which a great many such records may afford in the end.
In the multitude of experiences here, as everywhere, there is
strength. Such observations should cover everything about the
child--his movements, cries, impulses, sleep, dreams, personal
preferences, muscular efforts, attempts at expression, games,
favourites, etc.--and should be recorded in a regular daybook at the
time of occurrence. What is important and what is not, is, as I have
said, something to be learned; and it is extremely desirable that any
one contemplating such observations should acquaint himself beforehand
with the principles of general psychology and physiology, and should
seek also the practical advice of a trained observer.

As yet many of the observations which we have in this field were made
by the average mother, who knows less about the human body than she
does about the moon or the wild flowers, or by the average father, who
sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who
has never slept in the same room with him--let alone the same bed!--in
his life; by people who have never heard the distinction between
reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adaptation and
conscious choice. The difference between the average mother and the
good psychologist is this: she has no theories, he has; he has no
interests, she has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and not be
able to make a single trustworthy observation; he maybe able, from one
sound of one yearling, to confirm theories of the neurologist and
educator, which are momentous for the future training and welfare of
the child.

As for experimenting with children, only the psychologist should
undertake it. The connections between the body and the mind are so
close in infancy, the mere animal can do so much to ape reason, and
the child is so helpless under the leading of instinct, impulse, and
external necessity, that the task is excessively difficult--to say
nothing of the extreme delicacy and tenderness of the budding tendrils
of the mind. But others do experiment! Every time we send a child out
of the home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the most
serious and alarming kind. He goes into the hands of a teacher who is
often not only not wise unto the child's salvation, but who is,
perchance, a machine for administering a single experiment to an
infinite variety of children. It is perfectly certain that a great
many of our children are irretrievably damaged or hindered in their
mental and moral development in the school; but we can not be at all
sure that they would fare any better if they were taught at home! The
children are experimented with so much and so unwisely, in any case,
that possibly a little intentional experiment, guided by real insight
and psychological information, would do them good.

_Methods of experimenting with Children._--In endeavouring to bring
such questions as the degree of memory, recognition, association,
etc., present in an infant, to a practical test, considerable
embarrassment has always been experienced in understanding the child's
vocal and other responses. Of course, the only way a child's mind can
be studied is through its expressions, facial, lingual, vocal,
muscular; and the first question--i.e., What did the infant do? must
be followed by a second--i.e., What did his doing that mean? The
second question is, as I have said, the harder question, and the one
which requires more knowledge and insight. It is evident, on the
surface, that the further away we get in the child's life from simple
inherited or reflex responses, the more complicated do the processes
become, and the greater becomes the difficulty of analyzing them, and
arriving at a true picture of the real mental condition which lies
back of them.

To illustrate this confusion, I may cite one of the few problems which
psychologists have attempted to solve by experiments on children: the
determination of the order of rise of the child's perceptions of the
different colours. The first series of experiments consisted in
showing the child various colours and requiring him to name them, the
results being expressed in percentages of correct answers to the whole
number. Now this experiment involves no less than four different
questions, and the results give absolutely no clew to their
separation. It involves:

1. The child's distinguishing different colours displayed
simultaneously before it, together with the complete development of
the eyes for colour sensation. 2. The child's ability to recognise or
identify a colour after having seen it once. 3. An association between
the child's colour seeing and word hearing and speaking memories, by
which the proper name for the colours is brought up in his mind. 4.
Equally ready facility in the pronunciation of the various names of
the colours which he recognises; and there is the further
embarrassment, that any such process which involves association of
ideas, is as varied as the lives of children. The single fact that
speech is acquired long after objects and some colours are
distinguished, shows that results reached by this method have very
little value as far as the problem of the first perception of colours
is concerned.

That the fourth element pointed out above is a real source of
confusion is shown by the fact that children recognise many words
which they can not readily pronounce. When this was realized, a
second phase in the development of the problem arose. A colour was
named, and then the child was required to pick out that colour. This
gave results different from those reached by the first method, blue
and red leading the list in correct answers by the first method, while
by this second method yellow led, and blue came near the end of the
list.

The further objection that colours might be distinguished before the
word names are learned, or that colour words might be interchanged or
confused by the child, gave rise to what we may call the third stage
in the statement of the problem. The method of "recognition" took the
place of the method of "naming." This consisted in showing to a child
a coloured disk, without naming it, and then asking him to pick out
the same colour from a number of coloured disks.

This reduces the question to the second of the four I have named
above. It is the usual method of testing for colour blindness, in
which, from defects of vision, certain colours can not be perceived at
all. It answers very well for colour blindness; for what we really
want to learn in the case of a sailor or a signal-man is whether he
can recognise a given signal when it is repeated; that is, does he
know green or red to be the same as his former experience of green or
red? But it is evident that there is still a more fundamental question
in the matter--the real question of colour perception. It is quite
possible that a child might not recognise an isolated colour when he
could really very well distinguish the colours lying side by side. The
last question, then, is this: When does the child get the different
colour _Sensations_ (not recognitions), and in what order?

To solve this question it would seem that experiments should be made
upon younger children. The results described above were all secured
after the children had made considerable progress in learning to
speak.

To meet this requirement another method may be used which can be
applied to children less than a year old. The colours are shown, and
the child led to grasp after them. This method is of such a character
as to yield a series of experiments whose results are in terms of the
most fundamental movements of the infant; it can be easily and
pleasantly conducted; and it is of wide application. The child's hand
movements are nearly ideal in this respect. The hand reflects the
child's first feelings, and becomes the most mobile organ of his
volition, except his organs of speech. We find spontaneous arm and
hand movements, reflex movements, reaching-out movements, grasping
movements, imitative movements, manipulating movements, and voluntary
efforts--all these, in order, reflecting the development of the mind.

To illustrate this method, I may cite certain results reached by
myself on the questions of colour and distance perception, and
right-handedness in the child.

_Distance and Colour Perception._--I undertook at the beginning of my
child H.'s ninth month to experiment with her with a view to arriving
at the exact state of her colour perception, and also to investigate
her sense of distance. The arrangements consisted in this instance in
giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a
band passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back of her
chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their movements.
Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed before her, at
varying distances, front, right, and left. This was regulated by a
framework, consisting of a horizontal rod graded in inches, projecting
from the back of the chair at a level with her shoulder and parallel
with her arm when extended straight forward, and carrying on it
another rod, also graded in inches, at right angles to the first. This
second rod was thus a horizontal line directly in front of the child,
parallel with a line connecting her shoulders, and so equally distant
for both hands. This second rod was made to slide upon the first, so
as to be adjusted at any desired distance from the child. On this
second rod the colours, etc., were placed in succession, the object
being to excite the child to reach for them. So far from being
distasteful to the infant, I found that, with pleasant suggestions
thrown about the experiments, the whole procedure gave her much
gratification, and the affair became one of her pleasant daily
occupations. After each sitting she was given a reward of some kind. I
give the results, both for colour and distance, of 217 experiments. Of
these 111 were with five colours and 106 with ordinary newspaper
(chosen as a relatively neutral object, which would have no colour
value and no association, to the infant).

_Colour._--The colours range themselves in the order of
attractiveness--blue, red, white, green, and brown. Disregarding
white, the difference between blue and red is very slight, compared
with that between any other two. This confirms the results of the
second method described above. Brown, to my child--as tested in this
way--seemed to be about as neutral as could well be. A similar
distaste for brown has been noticed by others. White, on the other
hand, was more attractive than green. I am sorry that my list did not
include yellow. The newspaper was, at reaching distance (9 to 10
inches) and a little more (up to 14 inches), as attractive as the
average of the colours, and even as much so as the red; but this is
probably due to the fact that the newspaper experiments came after a
good deal of practice in reaching after colours, and a more exact
association between the stimulus and its distance. At 15 inches and
over, the newspaper was refused in 93 per cent of the cases, while
blue was refused at that distance in only 75 per cent, and red in 83
per cent.

_Distance._--In regard to the question of distance, the child
persistently refused to reach for anything put 16 inches or more away
from her. At 15 inches she refused 91 per cent of all the cases, 90
per cent of the colour cases, and, as I have said, 93 per cent of the
newspaper cases. At nearer distances we find the remarkable uniformity
with which the safe-distance association works at this early age. At
14 inches only 14 per cent of all the cases were refused, and at 13
inches only about 7 per cent. There was a larger percentage of
refusals at 11 and 12 inches than at 13 and 14 inches, a result due to
the influence of the brown, which was refused consistently when more
than 10 inches away. The fact that there were no refusals to reach for
anything exposed within reaching distance (10 inches)--other
attractive objects being kept away--shows two things; (1) the very
fine estimation visually of the distance represented by the
arm-length; and (2) the great uniformity at this age of the phenomenon
of Motor Suggestion upon which this method of child study is based,
and which is referred to again below. In respect to the first point,
it will be remembered that the child does not begin to reach for
anything that it sees until about the fourth or sixth week; so it is
evident at what a remarkably fast rate those obscure factors of size,
perspective, light and shade, etc., which signify distance to the eye,
become associated with arm movements of reaching. This method, applied
with proper precautions, obviates many of the difficulties of the
others. There are certain requirements of proper procedure, however,
which should never be neglected by any one who experiments with young
children.

In the first place, the child is peculiarly susceptible to the appeals
of change, novelty, chance, or happy suggestion; and often the failure
to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction or to discomfort rather
than to lack of intrinsic interest. Again, fatigue is a matter of
considerable importance. In respect to fatigue, I should say that the
first signs of restlessness, or arbitrary loss of interest, in a
series of stimulations, is sufficient warning, and all attempts at
further experimenting should cease. Often the child is in a state of
indisposition, of trifling nervous irritability, etc.; this should be
detected beforehand, and then nothing should be undertaken. No series
longer than three trials should be attempted without changing the
child's position, resting its attention with a song, or a game, etc.,
and thus leading it fresh to its task again. Furthermore, no single
stimulus, as a colour, should be twice repeated without a change to
some other, since the child's eagerness or alertness is somewhat
satisfied by the first effort, and a new thing is necessary to bring
him out to full exercise again. After each effort or two the child
should be given the object reached for to hold or play with for a
moment; otherwise he grows to apprehend that the whole affair is a
case of "Tantalus." In all these matters very much depends upon the
knowledge and care of the experimenter, and his ability to keep the
child in a normal condition of pleasurable muscular exercise
throughout.

In performing colour experiments, several requirements would appear to
be necessary for exact results. Should not the colours chosen be equal
in purity, intensity, lustre, illumination, etc.? In reference to
these differences, I think only that degree of care need be exercised
which good comparative judgment provides. Colours of about equal
objective intensity, of no gloss, of relatively evident spectral
purity, under constant illumination--this is all that is required. The
variations due to the grosser factors I have mentioned--such as
condition of attention, physical unrest, disturbing noises, sights,
etc.--are of greater influence than any of these more recondite
variations in the stimulus. Intensity and lustre, however, are
certainly important. It is possible, by carefully choosing a room of
pretty constant daylight illumination, and setting the experiments at
the same hour each day, to secure a regular degree of brightness if
the colours themselves are equally bright; and lustre may be ruled out
by using coloured wools or blotting-papers. The papers used in the
experiments given above were coloured blotting-papers. The omission of
yellow is due to the absence, in the neighbourhood, of a satisfactory
yellow paper.

The method now described may be further illustrated by the following
experiments on the use of the hands by the young child.

_The Origin of Right-handedness._--The question, "Why are we right or
left-handed?" has exercised the speculative ingenuity of many men. It
has come to the front anew in recent years, in view of the advances made
in the general physiology of the nervous system; and certainly we are
now in a better position to set the problem intelligently and to hope
for its solution. Hitherto the actual conditions of the rise of
"dextrality" in young children--as the general fact of uneven-handedness
may be called--have not been closely observed. It was to gain light,
therefore, upon the facts themselves that the experiments described in
the following pages were carried out.

My child H. was placed in a comfortable sitting posture, the arms left
bare and free in their movement, and allowed to reach for objects placed
before her in positions exactly determined and recorded by the simple
arrangement of sliding rods already described. The experiments took
place at the same hour daily, for a period extending from her fourth to
her tenth month. These experiments were planned with very great care and
with especial view to the testing of several hypotheses which, although
superficial to those who have studied physiology, yet constantly recur
in publications on this subject. Among these theories certain may be
mentioned with regard to which my experiments were conclusive. It has
frequently been held that a child's right-handedness arises from the
nurse's or mother's constant method of carrying it, the child's hand
which is left free being more exercised, and so becoming stronger. This
theory is ambiguous as regards both mother and child. The mother, if
right-handed, would carry the child on the left arm, in order to work
with the right arm. This I find an invariable tendency with myself and
with nurses and mothers whom I have observed. But this would leave the
child's left arm free, and so a right-handed mother would be found with
a left-handed child! Again, if the mother or nurse be left-handed, the
child would tend to be right-handed. Or if, as is the case in civilized
countries, nurses largely replace the mothers, it would be necessary
that most of the nurses be left-handed in order to make most of the
children right-handed. Now, none of these deductions are true. Further,
the child, as a matter of fact, holds on with both hands, however it is
itself held.

Another theory maintains that the development of right-handedness is
due to differences in weight of the two lateral halves of the body;
this tends to bring more strain on one side than the other, and to
give more exercise, and so more development, to that side. This
evidently assumes that children are not right or left-handed before
they learn to stand. This my results given below show to be false.
Again, we are told that infants get right-handed by being placed on
one side too much for sleep; this can be shown to have little force
also when the precaution is taken to place the child alternately on
its right and left sides for its sleeping periods.

In the case of the child H., certain precautions were carefully
enforced. She was never carried about in arms at all, never walked
with when crying or sleepless; she was frequently turned over in her
sleep; she was not allowed to balance herself on her feet until a
later period than that covered by the experiments. Thus the conditions
of the rise of the right-handed era were made as simple and uniform as
possible.

The experiments included, besides reaching for colours, a great many
of reaching for other objects, at longer and shorter distances, and in
unsymmetrical directions. I give some details of the results of the
experiments in which simple objects were used, extending over a period
of four months, from the fifth to the ninth in her life. The number of
experiments at each sitting varied from ten to forty, the position of
the child being reversed as to light from windows, position of
observation, etc., after half of each series.

No trace of preference for either hand was discernible during this
period; indeed, the neutrality was as complete as if it had been
arranged beforehand, or had followed the throwing of dice.

I then conceived the idea that possibly a severer distance test might
affect the result and show a marked preferential response by one hand
over the other. I accordingly continued to use a neutral stimulus, but
placed it from twelve to fifteen inches away from the child. This
resulted in very hard straining on her part, with all the signs of
physical effort (explosive breathing sounds resulting from the setting
of the larynx, rush of blood to the head, seen in the flushing of the
face, etc.). The number of experiments in each series was
intentionally made very small, from one to twelve, in order to avoid
fatigue.

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.

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