Train Ability and Emotional Reaction in the Human Infant
- Author:
Helen Sqtjier Skerrett, M.A.
The Starting Point of Trainability.
For the purposes of this article, trainability may be differentiated into two classes, which we will call active and passive trainability. By active trainability I mean the response which the subject gives to a definite attempt to teach. By passive trainability I mean that adaptation to environment which is essential to all mental development, and which the human infant exhibits from birth. Active trainability is of course simply a specialized application of passive trainability.
It was purely by means of passive trainability that Bob, who is to be the hero of our story, learned to reach out for definite objects, with real purpose behind his reaching. We stimulated him with objects held up before him with the idea of teaching him to do this, but apparently he made just as great progress with the objects which happened to be around him as he did with those which were held up for his inspection. That is, a teacher as such could do practically nothing to speed up his rate of progress. His acquisition of the ability to reach out after definite objects seemed to be dependent more upon his internal development than upon any factors in his environment except the actual presence of the necessary objective stimuli.
It was not until four days before he was five months old that we could be absolutely sure that he had an accurate mental image of the end to be achieved when he reached out after an object, and at this time his reaching was still done in a clumsy fashion. During the next two weeks, however, his manual skill increased very markedly.
When he was five months and nine days old, wo started systematically to teach him to hold his own bottle. This is a height of achievement which most babies do not attain until somewhere around the ninth month; so that, if Bob made any very pronounced progress at five months, we would be quite justified in believing that our attempt to teach had, to some extent at least, speeded up his rate of progress.
At the beginning of his first lesson, he had apparently no association between the action of his own hands and the flow of warm milk into his mouth. If by any chance the bottle got out of his mouth, he would simply cry until it was rescued for him, no matter how near it his hands might be. As a first step in instruction, his attendant held him in a half reclining position, and placed his hands in the proper position on the bottle. He held his hands in place for a time, but there did not seem to be any definite volition behind his holding. It was rather an instinctive grasping of an object which his hands happened to touch. At the end of the second lesson, however, he could take the nipple out of his mouth and put it back again, provided his hand nearest the nipple retained a firm grasp on the bottle. In his third lesson, he did succeed in holding the bottle in the proper position for the period of two minutes. During his fourth lesson, he locked his hand firmly around the neck of the bottle and did not once remove it during the feeding. He had apparently learned the proper association between the flow of milk into his mouth, and the position of his hand upon the bottle. The attendant’s method of instruction, be it understood, was to replace his hands every time he took them away from the bottle, and to make sure that he was holding the bottle at the proper angle. At the end of four days of teaching, he had learned to reach out both hands for the bottle, and to put the nipple accurately into his mouth. At the end of a month of less systematic teaching, he had reached the point where he could reach out for the bottle, place the nipple in his mouth, and hold the bottle properly throughout a feeding if he was made to. By the end of another week, or when he was slightly over six months old, he was holding his bottle throughout every feeding, with real proficiency. Judging by the “average” baby, we were able, therefore, by means of a definite attempt to teach, to speed up Bob’s rate of acquisition of a specific, socially useful performance by from one to three months.
But just what had he himself contributed to the experiment, and just what had it been necessary?and possible?to bring to it from other sources? And would he have profited to the same extent by this attempt to teach had it been tried when he was three months instead of five and six months old?
Two of his contributions he had had ready all his life?the ability to suck when a nipple was placed in his mouth, and the ability to grasp any object which was placed in the palm of his hand. But for the first month or so of his life, at least, this grasping of objects was not much related to consciousness. From the evidence of my note book it was not until the age of about four months that Bob held anything long enough to show that he was conscious of and willing to hold it; and it was not until about five months that he could reach out for a definite object.
Had we tried the experiment when Bob was only three months old, it is almost certain that we could have made no headway worth noting. While the primal sucking and grasping instincts were functioning sufficiently well for our purposes, the ability to reach out for a definite object was by no means well enough developed to enable Bob to reach out and grasp and hold and regulate a certain specific object every time it was presented to him. And it is extremely doubtful whether or not Bob could have formed the necessary associations in consciousness at three months. It is quite evident, therefore, that the determining factor in the experiment was Bob’s general ability to reach out for a specific object and manipulate it at will. This was the performance peg upon which we could hang our specialized instruction. During the first year of life, the greater part of a child’s development is due to his a priori neural synthesis. Unless he is ripe for a certain type of action or response, no amount of interference from the outside will cause him to exhibit that type of reaction or response. It is when we can, to some extent at least, regulate his development from without, that we may safely say he has reached the starting point of trainability. This comes very much earlier for one type of response than it does for another. We can teach a subject of any kind only in that field where his own development has proceeded to the point where he can make some contribution upon which we can build our instruction. Essentially, active trainability must involve the adaptation to a particular use of some general ability of the subject, of which some specific performance of the subject may be symptomatic.
An Unusual Emotional Reaction.
Up to the age of six months, Bob exhibited simply the stereotyped forms of emotional reaction?the initial fear of falling and loud noises, rage at being restrained or feeling hunger or pain, and pleasure in being held or talked to. For the first two weeks after he was six months old, he exhibited an unreasoning and uncontrollable fear of strange houses, though he readily made friends with strange people in his own house. During this same period, he showed some fear at being taken for a ride behind a horse, and violent fear of high wind and a thunder shower.
It so happened that he had no experience whatsoever with flowers until he was seven months and ten days old. On that day, his attendant held a daisy out before him. He clutched the flower with interest and tried to put it into his mouth, without any apparent emotional reaction whatever. Shortly afterward, his attendant carefully removed the thorns from the stem of a freshly cut rose, and held the flower to his nose. Instead of giving the flower the interested investigation he usually accorded objects brought to his attention, he at once set up a loud violent cry, which did not cease until his attendant had removed the rose. In a few minutes, when he was again calm, his attendant held the rose for him to grasp. He grasped it reflexly, but again wept when he caught a slight whiff of the odor of the flower. Thereafter, until bedtime, the very sight of the rose was enough to start his most violent crying. The crying was like that he shows in fear, except that it was not preceded by the puckering of the lips of the fear cry, and was decidedly panicky. When he was calm, his attendant carried him to a vase of daisies. He reached out his hand for the flowers, giving them the same neutral interest he accorded all new objects. But as soon as he had grasped one of them, he set up the same loud cry the rose had produced. Strangely enough, however, he was unable to unclasp his hand and so drop the daisy, but clung tightly to it, and continued to scream until his attendant had taken the daisy from him, when he gave a few relieved sobs and returned to his normal self. His attendant tried the same experiment with a pansy, with the same result. Thereafter, the sight of any flower in the room was sufficient to start his most violent crying.
The next morning he reached out his hand for the rose, apparently without any recollection of the unpleasant experience of the previous evening. The moment he caught a whiff of the fragrance, however, he again began to cry violently, and, as he held the flower with his right hand, made panicky clutches at it with his left hand, apparently in an effort to get it away. After that, the sight of a pansy was sufficient to start his tears again.
An hour later, after he had been asleep, he was put down on the table beside a bouquet of daisies and stars of Bethlehem. He reached out eagerly for them, and drew a star of Bethlehem out of the vase, apparently without any but a slightly pleasurable feeling tone. His attendant carried him away from the bouquet, and he grasped the flower firmly, and soon put it into his mouth. His attendant placed a daisy in the other hand, and then removed the star and replaced it with a pansy. This also failed to upset him. His attendant then carried him over to the rose. He reached out his hand for it, and grasped it calmly. In a few seconds he carried it sufficiently near his nose to catch a faint whiff of the perfume. At once he began to tremble violently, and cried just as he had before. This time he managed to drop the rose. When he was calm, his attendant placed the daisy in his hand, but he refused to have anything to do with it, and managed to drop it at once, without, however, crying. The pansy was placed in his hand, whereupon he showed distinct signs of nervousness, drawing in quick breaths and crying and fretting a little; but this time his cries ceased as he found he did not smell that objectionable odor. His attendant then tried the rose again. He took it from her, but when it got close to his nose, he cried again, but this time not so violently. He seemed to have lost his fear of the thing, but he continued to dislike it.
His attendant allowed him to smell a large, strong scullion, and he made no objection to it whatever. The smell of vanilla affected him pleasurably rather than otherwise.
Whether or not this is an example of the very close connection between some odors and the emotions may be a subject for dispute. There certainly can be no doubt of the very general emotional disturbance which was caused by the fragrance of the rose. That it was the odor of the rose which caused the disturbance is shown by the fact that he was not at all disturbed by the daisy he examined before he had had experience with the rose, and that when he had been away from the rose for a time he was not disturbed by it until he very evidently caught a whiff of its fragrance. The instantaneous association which Bob formed between the olfactory and touch sensations arising from the rose, and the touch sensations arising from the other flowers, is most interesting. It seems to me that the general excitation caused by the emotional disturbance may have been a large factor in the formation of the association. Either he learned to discriminate between the appearance of the flowers to such an extent that his visual sensations were stronger than his tactile sensations, or the association wore down as he became more accustomed to the chief cause of the trouble. There can be no doubt that his initial fear of the rose was to some extent at least of the same character as his fear of the strange houses, the ride in the carriage, and the thunder storm: namely, an instinctive fear of the strange.
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