An Introduction to Child Psychology

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Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1918 - 317 pages

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Page 63 - We may, then, define an instinct as an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention to, objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such action.
Page 13 - Bureau shall investigate and report . . . upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people...
Page 151 - ... character of the developing child, but what most influences him is the peculiarly affective state which is totally unknown to his parents and educators. The concealed discord between the parents, the secret worry, the repressed hidden wishes, all these produce in the individual a certain affective state with its objective signs which slowly but surely, though unconsciously, works its way into the child's mind, producing therein the same conditions and hence the same reactions to external stimuli.
Page 65 - Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind ; it would lie inert and motionless like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn.
Page 6 - like horses on the road, Must well be lash'd before they take the load ; They may be willing for a time to run, But you must whip them ere the work be done...
Page 97 - Animals possess two of the important elements of language — the spontaneous reflex cry of emotion or need; the voluntary cry of warning, threat, or summons. From these two sorts of utterance, man, endowed already with a richer vocal apparatus and a more developed brain, evolved numerous varieties by means of stress, reduplication, intonation. The warning or summoning cry...
Page 92 - Play is a better stimulant to growth and development than work because it meets nature's demands in a natural and timely way." To be sure, there have been scientific voices raised in support of the theory that play is a necessity! Over two hundred years ago Lord Kames, a Scottish philosopher, declared that "play is necessary for man in order to refresh himself after labor.
Page 70 - I regard play as the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race, persisting in the present, as rudimentary functions sometimes of and always akin to rudimentary organs.
Page 14 - Station, having as its objects the investigation of the best scientific methods of conserving and developing the normal child, the dissemination of the information acquired by such investigation, and the training of students for work in such fields.
Page 52 - The fact that the descendants of both the normal and the feebleminded mother have been studied and traced in every conceivable environment, and that the respective strains have been true to type, tends to confirm the belief that heredity has been the determining factor in the formation of their respective characters.

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