The biography of a baby

by Milicent Washburn Shinn

There were signs that her experiences gathered more and more into groups in her mind, by association. I have spoken of her earlier association between the nursing position and being fed; now she would check her hungry crying as soon as she felt herself lifted; and a few days later, as soon as her mouth was washed out—a ceremony that invariably came before nursing. At seven weeks old she opened her mouth for the nipple on being laid in the proper position. The food association group was enlarging; but sight did not yet enter into it: the look of the breast did not seem to bring the faintest suggestion of satisfied hunger, and the baby would lie and cry with her lips an inch from it. This is natural, for she could never really have seen it at this stage of the development of vision.

I have said that in such associations there is a germ of memory. There is a sort of habit memory, too, that appears very early. Impressions that have been received over and over gather a sort of familiarity in the baby’s mind; and while he does not yet recognize the familiar things themselves, yet he feels a change from them as something strange—it jars somehow the even current of his feelings. Or where impressions have been especially agreeable, they are vaguely missed when they are absent. The consciousness of difference between society and solitude, which our baby had showed at the end of the first month, was habit memory of this sort.

Professor Preyer thinks that his baby showed habit memory as early as the first week, perceiving a new food to be different from the old. Our baby (who knew no food but mother’s milk) experienced a new taste once or twice, when dosed for colic, and never showed the faintest sense of novelty at it till she was six weeks old. Then she was given a little sugar for hiccoughs, and made a face of what seemed high disgust over it; but this particular face has been observed more than once, and is known to be common in babies at a new taste, even a pleasant one. It seems to be caused by a sort of surprise affecting the face muscles.

A few days later the baby showed surprise more plainly. She lay making cheerful little sounds, and suddenly, by some new combination of the vocal organs, a small, high crow came out—doubtless causing a most novel sensation in the little throat, not to speak of the odd sound. The baby fell silent instantly, and a ludicrous look of astonishment overspread her face. Here was not only evidence of the germs of memory, but also the appearance of a new emotion, that of genuine surprise; and, like fright, it is one that is closely related to simple nerve shock. From being startled to being surprised (as to being frightened) is not a long step.

I have just spoken of the baby as making little sounds. This was a new accomplishment. Until a few days before, she had made no sounds except some inarticulate fretting noises, the occasional short outcry when startled, and the “dismal and monotonous” cry that began with the first day. This original cry was clearly on the vowel â (as in fair), with a nasal prefix—ngâ; but late in the sixth week it began to be varied a little. In the fretting, too, a few syllables appeared. The new sounds were mostly made in the open throat, and grew out of the old ngâ by slight changes in the position of the vocal organs—ng, and hng, and hng-â; but now and then there was a short wă, gă, or hă, or even a lip sound, as m-bă.

It has been said that the broad Italian ä is of all sounds the easiest, the one naturally made from an open throat: but the records show both German and American babies beginning with the flat â or shorter ă. Our baby scarcely used any other vowel sound for weeks yet.

Little sounds of content, too, began in the sixth week—mainly inarticulate grunts and cooing murmurs; but in the course of the seventh week, besides the sudden crow, there were a few tiny shouts,—a-a-ha,—a gurgle, and some hard g sounds, ga, and g-g-g, which passed in the eighth week into a roughened gh, a sort of scraping, gargling sound, not in the English language.

Our baby had a leaning to throat sounds; but other babies begin with the lip sounds, and some, it is said, with the trilling l and r. It seems to be only chance what position of the vocal organs is first used; but after once beginning to articulate, the baby seems to pass from sound to sound by slight changes (probably made accidentally in using the old sounds), and so goes through the list with some regularity.

This practice in sounds may be at first quite without will, a mere overflow of energy into the vocal organs; but it is highly important none the less, for any creature that is to use human speech must get the speaking muscles into most delicate training. Think what fine and exact difference in muscular contractions we must make to be able to say “ball,” and be sure that it will not come out “pall”!

For a week or two now the baby made a good deal of progress in control of her body. She strove valiantly every day to keep her head erect, and made some little advance. In the bath she began to push with her feet against the foot of the tub, so hard that her mother could not keep the little head from bumping on the other end. She pulled downward with her arms when her mother held them up in wiping her. These pushing and pulling movements may have been made for the pleasure of the feeling, or they may have been involuntary. Perhaps they were accidental movements, passing gradually into voluntary ones. In either case, as they developed, the old irregular movements of legs and arms passed away, as those of the head and face had done before.