The Educability of a Two-Year-Old
- Author:
Helen Squier Skerrett, M.A.
In an article entitled “The Trainability of the Human Infant,” published in the Psychological Clinic for May, June, 1922, I showed that a certain baby at from five to seven months old had a sufficient amount of active trainability to profit very definitely from our attempt to teach him to hold his own bottle. Within certain well-defined fields and limits, therefore, even an infant in arms is trainable. Whether or not this trainability has, by the age of two years, become sufficiently general in its scope to justify a formal attempt to teach any of the things commonly included in the realm of education it is the purpose of this present article to discuss. 1. The Memory Span of a Two-Year-Old.
It is usually conceded that the memory span?the number of units comprehended by the span of attention?and the ease with which one or more than the memory span can be taught any specific subject, is a fairly good index of educability. A child with a memory span of only one would be regarded as quite uneducable. A child with a memoiy span of two would be regarded, unless there was some evidence to the contrary at hand, as somewhat trainable, but still not educable.
When Bob was twenty-two months old, I could not, by any of the usual methods, or even by any means which I could devise myself, find any evidence that his memory span was more than two. There were, in fact, times when it did not appear to be even quite two. Sometimes he would repeat two digits after me correctly, but he was as likely as not to get the order of the digits reversed. He could sometimes put one specific picture block on another at command, and I noticed a decided improvement in this as his amount of practice in the exercise increased. When he was twenty-two months and four days old he was given a book containing sixteen different animal pictures, six of which he recognized at sight, and ten whose names he had to learn. His interest in the book was so great that he carried it everywhere with him, and named over the animals whenever he could find somebody to help him. Twenty-four hours after he had first seen the book he could name every animal in it. While we have no data to show a constant correlation between the length of the memoiy span and the degree of retention, yet it seemed to me quite impossible for a child to memorize ten new names in twenty-four hours with the memory span of barely two that Bob was exhibiting at this time. The fact that I could not get him to repeat three digits even on ten repetitions seemed to me to make the discrepancy between his memory span and his performance with the picture book all the greater.
I therefore determined to make a very careful study of Bob’s memory span. But still he never gave me more than two digits correctly, and sometimes not even two in correct order. He could sometimes imitate two simple movements in succession, but never more than two. His tapping of blocks after me was hopelessly confused. I got nowhere by repeating a favorite word two, three, or four times and asking him to say it after me. He could obey a command involving two things, but never more than two. About two weeks after his performance with the picture book he began to develop a decided echolalia. I could not carry on a conversation without having him repeat several words after me every once in a while. There were three major differentia I noticed about this echolalia: (1) the words he repeated were just as likely to be disconnected as arranged in meaningful phrases. (2) His echolaliac repetitions were always given in a monotonous, measured tone just above a whisper, and were easily distinguishable from his ordinary speech. (3) The number of syllables he repeated in echolalia was markedly greater than any number I had ever gotton as the result of a direct request. I made a careful check on this last point. One day I happened to use the phrase “teething ring,” and he repeated it after me mechanically. I then asked him to say “teething ring,” but even after several attempts, the best I could get from him was “teeth ring.” A little later I happened to say, ” I guess not,” and heard him repeat it after me. At once I requested him to say “I guess not.” But the best I could get from him was “I?not.” About a week later the sentence, “Not in that high grass, It’s too wet” became, in his echo, “High?grass?too? wet.” Five minutes later, I asked him to say “High grass too wet,” but the best I could get from him even after several repetitions was “high too wet.”
It seemed to me apparent from the nature of his conscious repetitions that the phrases he echoed were without any real significance to him. That is, he had heard the words in special groups so seldom, that groups of words or even two syllables or words did not tend to form single units for him as they do for older children, and as they began to do for him about a month later than this; I had many examples of four and even five distinct units in an echoed sentence, but the “high too wet” was the longest conscious repetition I could get from him at this stage of the game. He was then able to repeat any single word after me, but he was not yet talking in sentences. Shortly after this, however, the echolalia decreased to a marked extent, and the number of words he said in groups consciously, to express some thought of his own, increased rapidly. It was not, however, until he was really talking in conected phrases, or “head lines,” at twenty-four months, that I could get him to repeat simple sentences consciously. At twenty-four months he gave Terman’s “I have a little dog” as “I have little dog,” and “the dog runs after the cat” as “the dog runs after cat.” But still I could not get a memory span for digits of more than two.
When he was two years and six days old, Bob was present for the first time when I was teaching another boy. He watched the performance with the keenest interest, but did not once make a sound during the half-hour lesson. I had occasion to get the memory span of the other boy, and, in so doing, to get the other boy to repeat series of three and four digits some twelve or fourteen times. Bob said nothing at the time, but the next day he was imitating several different sounds he had heard in the course of the lesson. I assumed the manner I had been using the previous day and asked Bob to repeat 1-2. He did this correctly, and I then asked for 1-2-3. He repeated this also, with exact imitation of my measured tone and concentrated manner. Thereafter he gave me 5-3-1 and 8-4-2, thus showing beyond a doubt that his memory span for digits was a good three. A week later I got several more repetitions of three numbers, and two repetitions of four numbers on four trials. On the day when Bob was twenty-five months old, I got the series 1-2-3-4 and 8-4-2-5 on the second repetition of each series. On this same day, at the same sitting, however, Bob could not always give me two picture blocks that I asked for, when there were eight of these blocks on a table before him. In fact, he would repeat such a command as “Give me the lion and the deer” after me, and then fail to give me the two animals called for, though he never failed to respond correctly when I asked him for only one animal. He was more successful in putting one animal on another at command. On that same day he could touch two parts of his body when I touched the corresponding parts of mine, but he could not touch three parts in succession in imitation of my movements.
Conclusion.
It seems to me incredible that a child of two years could rise from an inability to repeat three digits on ten repetitions to the ability to repeat four digits on two repetitions in the short period of months. The fact that his ability to repeat three digits correctly and four on a short number of repetitions made itself manifest for the first time immediately after he had watched another boy struggling with the memory span for digits has in it, I think, the solution to the apparent discrepancies in the situation. There is a certain amount of technique required even in the simplest performance. The totally untrained child of two years has not had sufficient practice in any phase of activity to be able to express himself automatically. That is, no matter what he is doing, a part of his attention must be given to the mechanism of his performance, rather than to the actual thing which he is trying to do. This one fact alone is sufficient to cut down his reproduction span by at least one unit. If we can by training or example make any specific reproduction route function automatically, we can get, by means of that route only, a reproduction span that is probably about equal to the comprehension span. But the other reproduction routes are practically unaffected by this specialized instruction, and will continue to give a smaller reproduction span than the probable comprehension span until they, too, have become automatic.
I find in my notes just one very specific bit of evidence, that not all that goes into a child’s brain comes out again: When Bob was about a year old, there were certain stunts which he learned to do. His attendant would ask, in the good old historic fashion, “How big are you?” and then say, “So big.” Whereupon Bob would raise his hands above his head. When he was doing this stunt, however, he was quite incapable of saying the words “So big.” It happened that this particular stunt was dropped during the period when Bob was learning to talk. I am absolutely sure that during that time he did not once hear the expression “So big.” After he had become a more or less expert conversationalist, however, I happened one day to ask him, “How big are you?” He answered in words “So big” without putting his hands above his head. Apparently the necessary mental image for the phrase was in his possession before his speech mechanism had become sufficiently efficient for the vocalization of the phrase.
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