The Story of the Mind

by James Mark Baldwin

During the second half-year—sooner or later in particular cases—the child is ready to begin to imitate. Imitation is henceforth, for the following few years, the most characteristic thing about his action. He first imitates movements, later sounds, especially vocal sounds. His imitations themselves also show progress, being at first what is called "simple imitation" (repeating a distinction already spoken of in the chapter on animals), as when the child lies in bed in the morning and repeats the same sound over and over again. He hears his own voice and imitates it. In this sort of imitation he simply allows his instinct to reproduce what he hears without control or interference from him. He does not improve, but goes on making the same sounds with the same mistakes again and again. But a little later he begins what is called "persistent imitation"—the "try-try-again," already spoken of—which is a very different thing. Persistent imitation shows unmistakably the presence of will. The child is not satisfied with simple imitation or mere repetition, whether it be good or bad in its results. He now sees his errors and aims consciously to improve. Note the child's struggles to speak a word right by imitation of the pronunciation of others. And he succeeds. He gradually gets his muscles under control by persistence in his try-try-again.

Then he goes further—about the beginning of his second year, usually. He gets the idea that imitation is the way to learn, and turns all his effort into imitations experimentally carried out. He is now ready to learn most of the great processes of his later culture. Speech, writing, this special accomplishment and that, are all learned by experimental imitation.

The example of the child's trying to draw or write has already been cited. He looks at the copy before him; sets all his muscles of hand and arm into massive contraction; turns and twists his tongue, bends his body, winds his legs together, holds his breath, and in every way concentrates his energies upon the copying of the model. In all this he is experimenting.

He produces a wealth of movements, from which, very gradually, as he tries and tries again, the proper ones are selected out. These he practises, and lets the superfluous ones fall away, until he secures the requisite control over hand and arm. Or suppose a child endeavouring, in the crudest fashion, to put a rubber on the end of a pencil, after seeing some one else do it—just the sort of thing a year-old child loves to imitate. What a chaos of ineffective movements! But with repeated effort he gets nearer and nearer to it, and finally succeeds.

On the side of action, two general principles have been formulated in child psychology, both illustrated in the cases and experiments now given: The one, Motor Suggestion, is, as we saw, a principle of general psychology. Its importance to the child is that by it he forms Habits, useful responses to his environment, and so saves himself many sad blunders. The other principle is that of Imitation; by it the child learns new things directly in the teeth of his habits. By exercising in an excessive way what he has already learned through his experimental imitations, he is continually modifying his habits and making new adaptations. These two principles dominate the active life of the adult man as well.

Personality Suggestion.—A further set of facts may be cited to illustrate the working of Suggestion, now in the sphere of the receptive life. They are important as showing the child's progress in learning the great features of personality.

One of the most remarkable tendencies of the very young child in its responses to its environment is the tendency to recognise differences of personality. It responds to what have been called Suggestions of Personality. As early as the second month it distinguishes its mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns characteristic methods of holding, taking up, patting, kissing, etc., and adapts itself, by a marvellous accuracy of protestation or acquiescence, to these personal variations. Its associations of personality come to be of such importance that for a long time its happiness or misery depends upon the presence of certain kinds of "personality suggestion." It is quite a different thing from the child's behavior toward things which are not persons. Things come to be, with some few exceptions which are involved in the direct gratification of appetite, more and more unimportant; things may be subordinated to regular treatment or reaction. But persons become constantly more important, as uncertain and dominating agents of pleasure and pain. The sight of movement by persons, with its effects on the infant, seems to be the most important factor in this peculiar influence; later the voice comes to stand for a person's presence, and at last the face and its expressions equal the person in all his attributes.

I think this distinction between persons and things, between agencies and objects, is the child's very first step toward a sense of personality. The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows stronger and stronger in his dealings with persons—an uncertainty aroused by the moods, emotions, changes of expression, and shades of treatment of the persons around it. A person stands for a group of quite unstable experiences. This period we may, for brevity of expression, assuming it to be first in order of development, call the "projective" stage in the growth of the child's personal consciousness.

It is from this beginning that the child goes on to become fully conscious of what persons are. And when we observe his actions more closely we find no less than four steps in his growth, which, on account of the importance of the topic, may be stated in some little detail.

1. The first thing of significance to him, as has been said, is movement. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention are directed to moving things—a swaying curtain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement that brings him his bottle, movement that regulates the stages of his bath, movement that dresses him comfortably, movement that sings to him and rocks him to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the feature of importance to him, of immediate satisfaction or redemption from pain, is this—movements come to succour him. Change in his bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his life, for by it the rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; and these things are accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the one he sees and feels about him. This, I take it, is the earliest reflection in his consciousness of the world of personalities about him. At this stage his "personality suggestion" is a pain-movement-pleasure state of mind; to this he reacts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick. Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the other similar one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by movements that he gets rid of pains and secures pleasures.