The Play of Man

by Karl Groos

(a) Optical Percepts

According to Tracy[544] there are few points so generally accepted without question by child psychologists in general as that of the beginning of imitation in the second half year. Yet this agreement is not so universal as might be wished. Thus Baldwin says that experiment with his own children has left him utterly unable to confirm the results reported by Preyer, who thought that he could establish the presence of imitation in the third or fourth month. Baldwin, like Egger, could not be sure of it before the ninth month.[545] Strümpell, on the other hand, thought he recognised the beginnings of it in the twelfth week. “Careful observation assured me that the child was sympathetically excited by the movements of adults in speaking. When any one was talking to him he watched the mouth instead of the eyes, as formerly; and as he watched, his own mouth moved softly, the lips assuming different positions, which undoubtedly resulted from movements in the inner part of the mouth.”[546] Baldwin may be right in regarding such very early observations as frequently misleading, since the correspondence with a model is apt to be accidental, though I do not think that this supposition explains away all cases. However, enjoyment of imitation and consequently play with it is undoubtedly of later origin. This observation of Preyer may be called playful. “In the tenth month correct copies of various movements are constantly produced, and that with full consciousness. In the often repeated hand and arm movement of ‘shaking ta-ta’ the child gazes earnestly at the person showing him the signal, and suddenly repeats it correctly.”[547] This is not the unconscious or involuntary copying of strange models which is so common with young and old. The question no doubt arises in the child’s mind, “How is that done?” and when followed by the successful accomplishment of the task, is further succeeded by the joyful feeling of “I can, too,” and playful use of the imitative faculty. The same is the case with the following instances: “As I, with the intention of amusing the child, waved my right hand to and fro before him, he suddenly began to move his own right hand in the same way, and from that time imitation slowly but surely progressed. On the day following, he was much quicker in repeating the attempt, and evidently wondering at the novelty of his experience, watched attentively now my hand and now his own.... At fifteen months the child learned to put out a candle flame. He blew six or seven times in vain, and kept grasping at the flame, laughing when it eluded him, and straining after it, while puffing and blowing with distended cheeks and lips unnecessarily protruded.... A large ring which I slowly laid on his head and took off again the child seized and unhesitatingly set it on his own head (sixteen months).”[548] Sigismund says: “The child learns all his little arts from his nurse: shaking good-bye, patting, kissing his hand, bowing, dancing, etc. But he copies of his own accord movements and attitudes which strike and please him. He walks with his father’s stick, tries to smoke a pipe, puts wood on the fire, scribbles with a pencil, and, in short, imitates whatever he sees done about him.”[549]

From a psychological standpoint there are various distinctions to be made in these instances. Sometimes it is the movement itself which forms the centre of interest, while again the result of the movement is the thing aimed at, making the muscular exertion only a means to the end (as in blowing out the light).[550] It is significant that the pleasure derived from imitation is more conspicuous in the first case; and another important question is, whether more of curiosity or more of pleasure in competition is involved, since the one likens imitative activity to intellectual experimentation, and the other assimilates it to rivalry. In the one case the child’s attention is fixed on the question, “How is that done?” He is interested in the modus operandi as in the solution of a riddle. In the latter case the movement made in his presence arouses him like a challenge: “You can’t do that!” And his whole effort is directed to the proof that he can. The two factors do not necessarily exclude one another; they may work together. The exhilarating effect is heightened by strong emphasis of the fighting element; the stronger the consciousness that the task was difficult, though now achieved, the more will both child and adult enjoy the imitation—another support to our theory of the comic.

In later life, at least among civilized people, the impulse to playful imitation of the movements of others is not so strong,[551] except in the case of teasing mimicry. Most adult imitation is either of the character of involuntary adaptation, or for some specific end, and is thus partly within and partly without the sphere of play. When, for instance, the southerner who goes north to live, gradually controls his lively gesticulation, it is done unconsciously and involuntarily, unless he assists in the process because he does not wish to appear ridiculous. There may be some imitative play in the indulgence of air-castle building, founded on external models, though careful discrimination would be needed to detect it always. Then there is the callow youth who copies a leader of fashion in his manner of walking, talking, and acting, and finds sufficient satisfaction in the success of his efforts without any further aim. Sometimes, too, that imitation founded on serious effort is manifested in trifling ways. I do not know whether such amusement is now dispensed with in teaching writing; my experience was that the higher classes at school as well as the children tried to model their hand after that of some admired student, teacher, or friend. Sully’s remark that imitation is sometimes “the highest form of flattery” is applicable here.

(b) Playful Imitation of Acoustic Percepts

A group occupying a position midway between the foregoing and that which is now to be treated of consists of such imitations as find their antecedent in movement which appeals to the eye and yet whose real effect is in the repetition of acoustic impressions. Preyer records the following unsuccessful effort at the end of the first year: “At this period, if any one struck with a salt spoon on a glass, making it sound, my child would take up the spoon and attempt to hit the glass in the same way, but he could not get the tone.”[552] Quite similar is Baldwin’s observation: “H——’s first clear imitation was on May 24th (beginning of ninth month) in knocking a bunch of keys against a vase as she saw me do it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she repeated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a week later when, from lapse of time, she had partly forgotten how to use the keys.”[553] This sort of imitation, where, as in putting out the light, the result is more important than the movement itself, is more enduring than simple movement imitation, because the end attained is itself a source of pleasure.

The most important phase of acoustic imitation is that which aids in the child’s acquirement of speech. In studying experimentation we found that voice practice is an indispensable antecedent of learning to talk. Add to this the imitative impulse and the equipment is complete for acquiring a mother tongue. The child imitates all the kinds of sound that he hears—the howling of the wind, animal calls, coughing and sneezing—but of course he hears most constantly the sounds of his native language, and so it naturally follows that he gives it particular attention, which constantly increases as he becomes aware of his parents’ delight in his acquirements and as he perceives their practical use.

Sigismund has asked whether imitation of singing may not serve as an introduction to language lessons. He says: “The first real imitation which I observed in my boy was not repetition of articulate speech, but of a musical tone. When he was fourteen months old and had as yet imitated nothing (?), I occasionally sang to him a popular song whose melody began with a downward quarter (F-C), which interval recurred frequently and forcibly in the song. I was greatly surprised when the child, though very drowsy, sang this measure correctly, an octave higher. The following day the same thing happened, and this time without any example.... Is it the rule or the exception that the infant sings imitatively before he speaks so? Many mothers whom I have questioned were uncertain whether such singing had occurred at all, but they had probably simply failed to notice it. The result of my own investigations and observation points to the probability that children, like birds, more easily comprehend and repeat singing tones than speech.”[554] Ufer justly replies to this that while children do indeed often sing before they can talk, we have no reason to affirm that this is the rule. The child observed by Miss Shinn, for example, first made feeble efforts to imitate singing in its fortieth month.[555] It is always unsafe to attach too much importance to isolated cases. It is characteristic of man that many of his inherited capacities are left afloat, as it were, and must be anchored by individual experience, thus affording opportunity for the development of varied individuality. Consequently, it is hardly possible to be too cautious in drawing conclusions for phylogenetic evolution from ontogenetic development.

It is self-evident that not all the sound imitations which underlie the acquirement of speech are playful in a psychological sense. Words are often babbled mechanically without any special enjoyment. Moreover, as soon as the child has overcome the difficulties of the first stage of his language study and knows how to express his wants, he often makes use of expressions whose model exists only in his memory, without any playful intention. Still, a considerable part of the effort to learn to speak is properly imitative play. Preyer’s description shows us how the child put his whole soul in the attempt to understand the lip movements, and in another place (fifteen months) he says, “If he hears a new word, ‘cold,’ for example, which he can not repeat he is angry or turns his head away and cries.”[556] This demonstrates the presence of fighting play; when the effort to be able to say “I can, too,” fails in its aim, consciousness of defeat is betrayed by ill humour. Older children, too, often obtain new acquisitions in speech in a playful fashion. I kept a series of notes on Marie G—— in this connection, extending from the third to the seventh year, and they show this unmistakably. While she lived in Giessen she mimicked the dialect of the servants and many of the peculiarities of Hessian speech, and enjoyed copying the expressions of her playmates in talking to her dolls. In one note, which records the observations of a single day, I find four distinct efforts of this kind, and for many months she adopted the rather forward manner of speaking, practised by a boy of whom she was thrown with for a while. Hardly had we become settled in Basel before she made a rhyme illustrating the local accent here.