Children can not express their states of desire, etc., because they do not yet control the requisite co-ordination for the corresponding looks and gestures.
Paramimia (Paramimetic Asemia).—Many patients can make use of looks and gestures, but confound them.
Children have not yet firmly impressed upon them the significance of looks and gestures; this is shown in their interchanging of these; e. g., the head is shaken in the way of denial when they are affirming something.
Emotive Language (Affectsprache) in Aphrasia.—In Aphrasia it happens that smiling, laughing, and weeping are no longer controlled, and that they break out on the least occasion with the greatest violence, like the spinal reflexes in decapitated animals. (Hughlings-Jackson.)
Emotive language may continue when the language of ideas (Begriffssprache) is completely extinguished, and idiotic children without speech can even sing.
In children, far slighter occasions suffice normally to call forth smiles, laughter, and tears, than in adults. These emotional utterances are not yet often voluntarily inhibited by the child that can not yet speak; on the contrary, they are unnecessarily repeated.
Apraxia.—Many patients are no longer in condition, on account of disturbed intellect, to make right use of ordinary objects, the use of which they knew well formerly; e. g., they can no longer find the way to the mouth; or they bite into the soap.
Children are not yet in condition, on account of deficient practice, to use the common utensils rightly; e. g., they will eat soup with a fork, and will put the fork against the cheek instead of into the mouth.
[4. Development of Speech in the Child.]
We may now take up the main question as to the condition of the child that is learning to speak, in regard to the development and practicability of the nerve-paths and of the centers required for speech. For the comparison of the disturbances of speech in adults with the deficiencies of speech in the child, on the one hand, and the chronological observation of the child, on the other hand, disclose to us what parts of the apparatus of speech come by degrees into operation. First to be considered are the impressive and expressive paths in general.