The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    also thinking of his thoughts concerning these things. At first his part in this interchange of ideas is mainly passive. But he soon begins to give as well as take. He answers questions as well as asks them, imparts instruction, sug- gests lines of action, explains difficulties, etc. He thus becomes increasingly aware of others as dependent on him for the development of their trains of thought, just as he is dependent on others. As regards imitation, the main point to be noted is that we cannot know what it feels like to perform an action except in so far as we have performed more or less similar actions ourselves. Thus in imitating what others do we obtain the means of interpreting their outward behaviour as expressive of their inner experience in the way of cognition, feeling, and emotion. A child sees his nurse throw a ball and at- tempts to do the same thing himself. So far as he is success- ful he has lived through the experience connected with the act imitated. Hence, when he again perceives his nurse throwing a ball, her outward behaviour has for him a new significance. He knows what his nurse feels like in throw- ing a ball, because he has thrown a ball himself. From the close of the first year imitation plays a progressively larger part in the activity of the child, until a stage is reached in which it pervades almost his whole behaviour. Nearly all childish plays bear this character. A little boy will push a chair before him as a puff-puff, at the same time puff-puffing himself. He will mimic his father smok- ing a pipe, or the movements of his mother playing a piano. He will use a playmate as a substitute for a horse, and provide substitutes for whip and reins. He will array tin soldiers against each other for battle. The little girl will dress and undress her doll, feed it, scold it, slap it, fondle, put it to bed, soothe it to sleep, take it out in a
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