Details

Subject(s)

• Child psychology [Browse]
• Child development [Browse]

Series

Heath's pedagogical library. [More in this series]

Summary note

"The young animal, before the end of the first day of his life, does what it takes the child a year to accomplish. The human infant, for example, requires weeks to attain the power of holding his head in equilibrium, while the young chicken runs about and picks up grains of wheat before the first day of his life is over. This, however, carefully considered, is a token rather of the superiority than of the inferiority of the human being. It is clear that the child of two years does what the animal never will accomplish to the end of his days. The object of the present essay is to discuss infant psychology. When and how do mental phenomena take their rise in the infant consciousness? How far are they conditioned by heredity, and how far by education, including suggestion? What is the nature of the process by which the automatic and mechanical pass over into the conscious and voluntary? These are some of the questions to which the following pages may help to furnish an answer. That they may do so, it has been thought best to gather together, so far as possible, the best work that has been done in actual observation of children up to the present time, arrange this under appropriate headings, incorporate the results of several observations made by the writer himself, and present the whole in epitomized form, with copious references and quotations. The inquiry proceeds along the line usually followed by psychologists, and treats the mental endowment, from the genetic point of view, in the following order: sensation, emotion, intellect, volition; child-language, on account of its paramount importance, being treated in a chapter by itself. It was intended at first to add a chapter on the moral nature of the child, but as the work progressed, it became more and more evident that, to treat this important phase of child-life adequately, would require not only more space than is at our disposal at present, but an advance into later stages of life than are embraced in the present work, which is intended only as a manual of infant psychology in an approximately strict sense of the words." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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