Child Behavior

This little book deals with “”child behavior,”” not in the general sense, but in that used by the “behavioristic” school of psychologists, to mean, that is, there action of the organism regarded as a machine upon appropriate stimulus. It is mainly a report of a careful and intelligent series of experiments carried out by the author upon the comparative reaction of normal and of weak-minded children to a conditioned stimulus a reaction, that is, which follows not on its natural stimulus, but on one that has been artificially associated with the natural one. Thus the Russian physician, Krasnogorski, reported in I907-8 a series of experiments with young children, by which he satisfied himself that reflexes naturally following on the sight of food, such as swallowing or opening the mouth, could be excited by some stimulus that had been associated with the food, as the sound of a pipe, the touch of a camel’s- hair brush. The clinical value of the experiment would consist in the establishment of a difference in this respect between the normal child and one with latent abnormality. Dr. Mateer, who is psychologist of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, repeated the experiments very fully, and believes that the test may be useful as supplementing others now in use. A notable trait of her book is the clear perception of the need of personal understanding and good, sympathetic handling of the child in all such experimentation, a matter important not only to the child, but to the success of the experiment.” — Reviwed by MELICENT W. SHINN, in THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY.