FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139  
140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   >>   >|  
hen 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. The gain in the understanding of words heard is recognizable in this, that when the child hears the appropriate word, he takes hold, with thumb and forefinger, in a most graceful manner, of nose, mouth, beard, forehead, chin, eye, ear, or touches them with the thumb. But in doing this he often confounds ear and eye, chin and forehead, even nose and ear. "O" serves in place of "Ohr" (ear); "Au" in place of "Auge" (eye). In both cases the child soon discovered that these organs are in pairs, and he would seize with the right hand the lobe of my left and of my right ear alternately after I had asked "Ear?" How easily in such cases a new sound-impression causes confusion is shown by the following fact: After I had at one time pointed out one ear, and had said, "Other ear," I succeeded, by means of repetition, in getting him to point out this other one also correctly every time. Now, then, the thing was to apply what had been learned to the eye. When one eye had been pointed out, I asked, "Where is the other eye?" The child grasped at an ear, with the sight of which the sound "other" was now associated. Not till long after (in the twentieth month) did he learn to apply this sound of himself to different parts of the body. On the other hand, he understands perfectly t
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139  
140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
tongue
 

correctly

 

forehead

 
pointed
 

attempts

 

organs

 

alternately

 

touches

 

serves

 

forefinger


graceful

 
discovered
 

manner

 
confounds
 
grasped
 

twentieth

 

understands

 

perfectly

 

learned

 

confusion


easily

 

impression

 

succeeded

 

repetition

 

turned

 
succeeds
 

repeating

 

movements

 

imitate

 

creature


thrusting

 

imitation

 
frequent
 

mobility

 

reason

 

extraordinary

 

outcry

 

piteous

 

sounds

 

imitations


direction
 
attention
 

infrequently

 

utterly

 

making

 
Indeed
 

longer

 
succeed
 
called
 

partial