The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect, International Education; Series Edited By William T. Harris, Volume IX.Preyer, William T.
Science
The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect, International Education; Series Edited By William T. Harris, Volume IX.
Preyer, William T.
Child development; Child psychology
Of isolated vowels, _a_ only was correctly repeated on command. Of
syllables, besides those of the previous month, _moe_ and _ma_; and here
the child's excessive gayety over the success of the experiment is
worthy of remark. He made the discovery that his parrot-like repetition
was a fresh source of pleasure, yet he could not for several weeks
repeat again the doubled syllables, but kept to the simple ones, or
responded with all sorts of dissimilar ones, like _attob_, or said
nothing. The syllable _ma_ was very often given back as _hoema_ and
_hoemoe_; _pa_ was never given back, but, as had been the case
previously, only _ta_ and _tai_ were the responses, made with great
effort and attention, and the visible purpose of repeating correctly. To
the word "danke," pronounced for him with urgency innumerable times, the
response is _dakkn_, given regularly and promptly, and this in the
following months also. If all persuasion failed, and the child were then
left to himself without any direction of his attention, then not
infrequently new imitations of sounds would be given correctly--e. g.,
when I said "bo"--but these, again, would no longer succeed when called
for. Indeed, such attempts often broke down utterly at once. Thus the
child once heard a hen making a piteous outcry, without seeing the
creature, and he tried in vain to imitate the sound, but once only, and
not again. On the other hand, he often succeeds in repeating correctly
movements of the tongue made for him to see, as the thrusting out of the
tongue between the lips, by reason of the extraordinary mobility of his
tongue and lips; he even tries to smack in imitation. The more frequent
partial contractions of the tongue, without attempts at speaking, are
especially surprising. On one side, toward the middle of the tongue,
rises a longitudinal swelling; then the edges are brought together, so
that the tongue almost forms a closed tube; again, it is turned
completely back in front. Such flexibility as this hardly belongs to the
tongue of any adult. Besides, the lips are often protruded a good deal,
even when this is not required in framing vocables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account