190 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



mother objected that she was too old, which brought the remark, ' //you 

 were a little girl you could.' And again, about the same age, she said 

 ' 7/ mummy died, I'd be alone with my daddy.' 



Here are further examples of a type of thought-process taking place 

 when working in a familiar medium, at an age some six or seven years 

 before the age at which it still fails sometimes to function efiectively. The 

 fact is that it is a mistake to attempt to make sweeping generalisations 

 as to what takes place in childhood and what in adults. All the kinds 

 of errors which are thought particularly characteristic of children occur 

 in adult thought, frequently in some adults, less frequently in others. I 

 have found graduate students who, like Piaget's nine-year-olds, will 

 refuse to posit an incredible hypothesis for the sake of testing the formal 

 accuracy of a syllogism. And even a Fellow of the Royal Society may 

 base a generalisation about educational methods on his own experience 

 when a boy and that of one or two children at the present day. 



What does seem to be especially true of the child of, say, three years, 

 is that these various types of thought process do occur only very 

 sporadically at first : hence again the necessity of careful daily observation 

 if the first appearances are to be noted. 



I have tried to exemplify the way in which the study of the first three 

 or four years of life is necessary for the foundation of child psychology and 

 the fact that it may have important contributions to make to general 

 psychology. It must be admitted that the field of infant psychology is 

 still largely unexplored and that the method and technique are still 

 greatly in need of improvement. When they are more perfected I venture 

 to predict a rich harvest from this relatively neglected ground. 



