SECTION J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHILD PSYCH- 

 OLOGY AND THEIR BEARING ON SOME 

 PROBLEMS OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. C. W. VALENTINE, D.Phil., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



The values of the study of the early years of childhood I take to be at 

 least three. 



First, there is the fascinating interest it has for those who love children 

 or who marvel at the wonder of a developing mind ; and this is motive 

 enough for the genuine scientist. The importance of child psychology as 

 a foundation for a science of education is also obvious. But for the ' pure ' 

 science of psychology, to use the current term, it also has wider values. 



Most important, perhaps, is the fact that the most reliable evidence 

 as to what is genuinely innate in human nature must be found in the 

 study of human infancy. Even McDougall's brilliant contribution to the 

 study of human instincts does not, I think, supply altogether satisfactory 

 criteria of the innate impulses,^ valuable as they are as first suggestions. 

 For the fact that a similar impulse is displayed in (apparently) instinctive 

 activities of higher animals does not prove that in man that impulse is 

 instinctive or innate. McDougall himself only claims that it afEords 

 strong presumption. Nor does the possibility of morbid exaggeration of 

 an impulse give us a satisfactory clue, for many actions exaggerated to an 

 abnormal degree owe at least their specific nature to experience, as the 

 study of the unconscious has shown. 



The spontaneous occurrence of a new type of activity in the infant, 

 of such a nature that it could not have been learned through experience, 

 affords, I would maintain, the only certain proof of the genuine innateness 

 of an impulse — unless some activity developing later can satisfy that 

 criterion. Thus the foundations of child psychology are also some of the 

 main foundations of human psychology as a whole. 



A further value of the study of infancy lies in the fact that the ele- 

 mentary functions may be observed in greater isolation than they can be 

 later. The instinctive impulses are seen in their crudest form, less 

 cumbered than they are later by accretions from experience. Elementary 

 cognitive processes, too, appear in their simpler forms and may be studied 

 in their origins. The slow building up of ideas is impressed upon us. 

 Thus twelve months elapsed (from nearly two years of age to nearly three 



^ Social Psychology, 9th edition, p. 49. 



