ace must accompany the bitter taste; and the body must start at a
sudden noise. At other times, bodily movements may be produced in a more
spontaneous way. Here the physical energy stored within the system gives
rise to bodily activity and causes those random impulsive movements so
evident during infancy and early childhood. When these movements, which
are the only ones possible to very early childhood, are compared with
the movements of a workman placing the brick in the wall or of an artist
executing a delicate piece of carving, there is found in the latter
movements the conscious idea of a definite end, or object, to be
reached. To gain control of one's movements is, therefore, to acquire an
ability to direct bodily actions toward the attainment of a given end.
Thus a question arises as to the process by which a child attains to
this bodily control.

=Ideas of Movements Acquired.=--Although, as pointed out above, a
child's early instinctive and impulsive movements are not under
conscious control, they nevertheless become conscious acts, in the sense
that the movements are soon realized in idea. The movements, in other
words, give rise to conscious states, and these in turn are retained as
portions of past experience. For instance, although the child at first
grasps the object only impulsively, he nevertheless soon obtains an
idea, or experience, of what it means to grasp with the hand. So, also,
although he may first stretch the limb impulsively or make a wry face
reflexively, he secures, in a short time, ideas representative of these
movements. As the child thus obtains ideas representative of different
bodily movements, he is able ultimately, by fixing his attention upon
any movement, to produce it in a voluntary way.

=Development of Control: A. Ideo-motor Action.=--At first, on account of
the close association between the thought centres and the motor centres
causing the act, the child seems to have little ability to check the
act, whenever its representative idea enters consciousness. It is for
this reason that young children often perform such seemingly
unreasonable acts as, for instance, slapping another person, kicking and
throwing objects, etc. In such cases, however, it must not be assumed
that these are always deliberate acts. More often the act is performed
simply because the image of the act arises in the child's mind, and his
control of the motor discharge is so weak that the act follows
immediately up