Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
Some of the other varieties of human locomotion, such as running and
jumping, are probably native. Others, like hopping and skipping, are
probably learned. As to climbing, there is some evolutionary reason
for suspecting that an instinctive tendency in this direction might
persist in the human species, and certainly children show a great
propensity for it; while the acrobatic ability displayed by those
adults whose business leads them to continue climbing is so great as
to raise the question whether the ordinary citizen is right when he
thinks of man as essentially a land-living or surface-living animal.
As to swimming, the theory is sometimes advanced that this too is a
natural form of locomotion for man, and that, consequently, any one
thrown into deep water will swim by instinct. Experiments of this sort
result badly, the victim clutching frantically at any support, and
sometimes dragging down with him the theorist who is administering
this drastic sort of education. In short, the instinctive response of
a man to being in deep water is the same as in other cases of sudden
withdrawal of solid support; it consists in clinging and is attended
by the emotion of fear.
{154}
Vocalization.
Crying at birth proves voice-production to be a native response, but
we are more interested just here in the playful cooing and babbling
that appear when the child is a few weeks or months old. This cheerful
vocalization is also instinctive, in all probability, since the baby
makes it before he shows any signs of responding imitatively to the
voices of other people. It seems to be one form of the random activity
that goes with euphoria. The child derives satisfaction not so much
from the muscular activity of vocalization as from the sounds that he
produces, so that deaf children, who begin to babble much like other
children, lag behind them as the months go by, from not deriving this
auditory satisfaction from the vocal activity. Though whistling,
blowing a horn, shaking a rattle and beating a drum are not native
responses, it is clear that the child naturally enjoys producing
sounds of various sorts.
The baby's cheerful babbling is the instinctive basis on which his
speech later develops through a process of learning.
Manipulation.
While the first random activity of the baby has nothing to do with
external objects, but simply consists of free movements of the arms
and legs, after a time these give place to manipulation of objects.
The baby turns things about, pulls and pushes them, drops them, throws
them, pounds with them. Thus he acquires skill in handling things and
also learns how things behave. This form of playful activity contains
the germ of constructiveness and of inventiveness, and will come into
view again under the head of "imagination."
Exploration or curiosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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