390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



same thing was noticed in the other children of the family, and 

 the mother tells me that her mother observed it in her children. 

 I have found a further illustration of this indifference to the 

 position of a picture in the two children of another friend of 

 mine. Prof. Petrie tells me that he once watched an Arab boy 

 looking at a picture-book. One, a drawing of horses and chariot, 

 happened to have a different position from the rest, so that the 

 book being held as before, the horses seemed to be going upward ; 

 but the boy was not in the least incommoded, and without attempt- 

 ing to turn the book round easily made it out. These facts are 

 curious as illustrating the skill of the young eye in deciphering. 

 They may possibly have a further significance as showing how 

 what we call position the arrangement of a form in relation to a 

 vertical line is a comparatively artificial view of which a child 

 as yet takes little if any account. He may be able to concentrate 

 his attention so well on form proper that he is indifferent to the 

 point how the form is placed. Yet this matter is one which well 

 deserves further investigation.* 



A further question arises as to whether this " recognition " of 

 pictures by children toward the end of the first year necessarily 

 implies a grasp of the idea of a picture that is, of a representa- 

 tion or copy of something. The first reactions of a child, smiling, 

 etc., on seeing mirror images and pictures, do not seem to show 

 this, but merely that he is affected much as he would be by the 

 presence of the real object, or, at most, that he recognizes the pic- 

 ture as a kind of thing. The same is, I think, true of the so-called 

 recognition of pictures by animals. 



That children do not, at first, seize the pictorial or representa- 

 tive function is seen in the familiar fact that they will touch pic- 

 tures us they touch shadows and otherwise treat them as if they 

 were tangible realities. Thus Pollock's little girl attempted to 

 smell at the trees in a picture and " pretended " to feed some pic- 

 torial dogs. 



When the first clear apprehension of the pictorial function is 

 reached it is difficult to say. Miss Shinn thought that her niece 

 " understood the purport of a picture quite well " at the age of 

 forty-five weeks. She draws this conclusion from the fact that at 

 this date the child, in answer to the question, " Where are the 

 flowers ? " leaned over and touched the painted flowers on her 

 aunt's gown, and then looked out to the garden with a cry of 

 desire.f But this inference seems to me very risky. All that the 

 child's behavior proves is that she " classed " real and painted 



* Prof. Petrie reminds me that a like absence of the perception of position shows itself 

 in the way in which letters are drawn in early Greek and Phoenician writings. 

 f Op. cit., i, p. 72. 



