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
Another example is given by G. Lindner (1882): "The mother of a
two-year-old child had made for it out of a postal-card a sled
(Schlitten), which was destroyed after a few hours, and found its way
into the waste-basket. Just four weeks later another postal-card comes,
and it is taken from the carrier by the child and handed to the mother
with the words,'_Mamma, Litten!_' This was in summer, when there was
nothing to remind the child of the sled. Soon after the same wish was
expressed on the receipt of a letter also."
I have known like cases of attention, of recollection, and of
intelligence in the third year where they were not suspected. The
child, unnoticed, hears all sorts of things said, seizes on this or
that expression, and weeks after brings into connection, fitly or
unfitly, the memory-images, drawing immediately from an insufficient
number of particular cases a would-be general conclusion.
Equally certain with this fact is the other, less known or less
noticed, that, _even before the first attempts at speaking, such a
generalizing and therefore concept-forming combination of
memory-images regularly takes place_.
All children in common have inborn in them the ability to combine all
sorts of sense-impressions connected with food, when these appear
again individually, with one another, or with memory-images of such
impressions, so that adaptive movements suited to the obtaining of
fresh food arise as the result of this association. In the earlier
months these are simple and easier to be seen, and I have given
several examples (Vol. I, pp. 250, 260, 329, 333). Later such
movements, through the perfecting of the language of gesture and the
growth of this very power of association, become more and more
complicated: e. g., in his sixteenth month my boy saw a closed box,
out of which he had the day before received a cake; he at once made
with his hands a begging movement, yet he could not speak a word. In
the twenty-first month I took out of the pocket of a coat which was
hanging with many others in the wardrobe a biscuit and gave it to the
child. When he had eaten it, he went directly to the wardrobe and
looked in the right coat for a second biscuit. At this period also the
child can not have been thinking in the unspoken words, "Get
biscuit--wardrobe, coat, pocket, look," for he did not yet know the
words.
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