It has accordingly seemed to me worth while to find whether a child's reaching movements would reflect with any degree of regularity the modifications of its sensibility, [1] and, if so, how far this could be made a method of experimenting with young children. I may adduce one or two considerations which tend to show that some such 'dynamogenic ' method is theoretically valid.
There are some results already recognized in the psychology of sense and movement which lend confirmation to this idea. The facts that the most motile organs have acutest sensibility, notably the hand and fingers; that certain marked types of action, such as imitation, arise early in connection with the hand; that the central organic preparation for volition is secured first in the arrangements for hand movements, [3] -- all these facts indicate that the hand.
Fere maintains that sensory stimulations of all kinds increase the maximum hand pressure. Colours seen have regular, and each its peculiar, effect upon movement. Tones have similar influence. The ticking of a watch is more clearly perceived if movements are made at the same time. Further, the reaction-time of hand movements is shorter if the stimulus sound, etc.
There is an enlargement of the hand, through increased blood pressure, when a loud sound is heard. The fact of muscle reading, and its experimental demonstration by Gley and Jastrow, together with the series of facts shown by recent experiments in so-called 'unconscious movements' by diseased patients, [4] -- these, and a variety of other facts upon which the law of 'dynamogenesis' rests, seem to afford justification for the view that the infant's hand movements in reaching and grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of its sensory experiences.
Magendie [5] long ago suggested measuring changes in sensibility by the corresponding changes in blood pressure. Further, it is not necessary to embarrass ourselves with the question whether the hand movements are voluntary or not. However we may differ as to the circumstances of the rise of volition, it is still true that after its rise the child's reactions are for a long time quite under the lead of its sensory life.
It lives so fully in the immediate present and so closely in touch with its environment, that the influences which lead to movement can be detected with great regularity. In this case the sensations which are stimuli to movement become what we may also call 'effort stimuli,' and the child's efforts with his hands become indications of the relative degree of discrimination, attractive-. Suppose we hang up a piece of meat over Carlo's head and tell him to jump for it. His first jump falls short of the meat.
He jumps again and clears a greater distance. Why does he jump farther the second time? Not because he argues that a harder jump is necessary to secure the meat; but because by the first jump he got more smell, blood colour, and appetite stimulus from the meat. Now suppose it to be a red rag instead of meat, and Carlo refuse to jump a second time. This is not because he concludes the rag would choke him, but because he gets a kind of sensation which takes away what appetite stimulus he had before.
The thing is a thing of sensational dynamogeny of 'suggestion,' and the child's state of mind up to his twenty-fourth month, more or less, is just about the same. The presence of different colour sensations as shown by the number and persistence of the child's efforts to grasp the colour: the problem of colour perception.
The relative attractiveness of different colours measured in the same way: the problems of colour preference and distinction. The relative exactness of distance estimation as shown by the child's efforts to reach over distances for objects. The relative attractiveness of different visual outlines stars, circles, etc. The presence and character of 'accompanying movements' at different stages of motor development. The strength of desire and voluntary inhibition as shown in the relative persistence of movements of grasping.
The relative strength of disparate sensations at different periods of child life, as shown by their comparative expression in movement. I am quite aware of the meagreness of this list; but one has only to remember the fact that there is no such thing yet as a psycho-physics of the active life, that this side of psychology is almost terra incognita to the experimentalist. I have applied it to some of them in a more or less incomplete way, in the case of my two children, H.
In each case below I take occasion to say to what extent the results are of real, or only of methodological, value. When this method is reduced to its lowest terms, as applied to children old enough to reach out for objects which they.
The reactions will vary in some way with the distance of the object exposed, and also in some way with the kind of stimulus. For example, a child of perhaps eight months of age reaches after an orange, when it is eleven inches in front of him, with great regularity; but very irregularly, or possibly not at all, when it is fourteen inches away.
Again, he reaches for a colour, red, when perhaps he would not for a colourless object. If we take the simplest cases -- cases in which observation shows the responses of the child to be regular, the conditions of quiet, comfortable position, interest, etc. By quality is meant the so-called sensational character of the stimulating object. If, then, we further inquire into the drawing-out influence of various stimulations, it is evident that it will vary with the quality q , and, in some inverse ratio, with the distance d.
I state this formula, not to be mathematical, but simply, by ringing the changes possible through substitution of values, to illustrate the applications of the method and the limits of the general principle of reaction.
If q be kept constant, experiments will determine the law by which the influence of d changes. Again, experiments at different ages would show the effect on d of experience in associating visual distance with muscular distance.
Again, keeping d. An interesting point emerges when we inquire the effect of zero and infinity values. For, as a matter of fact, distance then has no influence; the whole possible variation in D in successive experiments with different q 's is due to the q -values themselves.
It is asked at once why the influence of d is not equally ruled out in any series of experiments in which d is kept constant, say at twelve inches. The answer is: because in each such series the influence of d changes from the fact of practice, habit, and slight fatigue. If the child reaches for a blue- q at twelve inches, and just gets it, he may then reach for a green- q with greater avidity at twelve inches than he would otherwise have reached for the same green- q at nine inches.
So psychology interferes with mathematics. The distance inhibits movement altogether. But just here another psychological factor interferes with the mathematics; in some cases the inhibition of d does not work, and the child oversteps all its experience in violent straining and cries.
These two so-called psychological 'interferences' are referred to again later on, the latter being, I think, the main external channel of the rise of right- or left-handedness. This method, like all other psychological methods' must be used with a thousand cautions and as many failures and the last condition of such experiments, as the first condition of all work with children, is sympathetic insight into their mental movements.
Only such sympathy and insight can cope with the subtle responses which a wide-awake child makes to the most trifling variations in our treatment of him. I shall now give further facts and experiments illustrating the regularity of the child's reactions, and so put in evidence the general principle of 'dynamogenesis,' upon which all motor development, both in the child and in the race, must ultimately rest.
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Permission is granted for inclusion of the electronic text of these pages, and their related images in any index that provides free access to its listed documents. Editors' notes Baldwin's Mental Development is a central text in the development of social psychology in North America and recently has re-emerged as a primary source in artificial intelligence, being part of the set of Baldwin publications documenting what is now known as " the Baldwin effect. Related Documents James Mark Baldwin.
And 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 a wild flower, or by the average 35 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 in his life; by people who have never heard the distinction between reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adaptation and conscious selection.
On the contrary, give us theories, theories, always theories I Let every man who has a theory 36 pronounce his theory! The child's ability to recog- 38 -nize or identify a colour after having seen it once; 3. The further objection that colours might be distinguished before the word-association is established at all, or that colour-words might be interchanged or confused by the child,[3] is also seen by Binet,[4] and his attempt to eliminate that source of error constitutes what we may call the third stage in the 39 statement of the problem.
Lehmann finds coloured wools are recognized when the colours are those whose names are known Benennungsassociation , 40 and that shades which have not peculiar names, or whose names are not known, are not recognized. My first discussion of it was in Science, New York, April 21, A good instance of such confusion, between red and blue, and its correct interpretation, is given by Miss Shinn, Notes on the Development of a Child, Part I.
Professor Preyer later wrote me, that he also saw this in ; but his experiments appear of doubtful success see Mind of the Child , English translation, Pt. See the discussion of the question of tone recognition, below, Chap. Tracy; see his book, The Psychology of Childhood , p. Expositiory This colour question may suffice to make clear the essentials of a true experimental method. The child's hand movements are, I think, the most nearly ideal 41 in this respect. The facts that the most motile organs have acutest sensibility, notably the hand and fingers; that certain marked types of action, such as imitation, arise early in connection with the hand; that the central organic preparation for volition is secured first in the arrangements for hand movements, [3] -- all these facts indicate that the hand 42 movements are the best index of general and special sensibility in the infant.
In this case the sensations which are stimuli to movement become what we may also call 'effort stimuli,' and the child's efforts with his hands become indications of the relative degree of discrimination, attractive- 43 -ness, etc. The following questions, I think, might be taken up by some such method as this: -- 1. The relative attractiveness of different colour combinations. The relative use of right, left, and both hands. The rise of imitative movements. The rise of voluntary movements.
The inhibiting influence of elementary associations, especially pains, punishments, etc. Observation is thus argued as a core skill for anti-oppressive practice. Contact us with your comments and for any problems using the website.
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