The auto-excited or spontaneous movements are the predominant pre-natal movements in the child, and are numerous and striking enough in the early weeks of post-natal life to have attracted the attention of many observers of early infancy.[1] In the opinion of Preyer, the slow and apparently laborious bending and stretching of the arms which accompany the first crying just after birth belong to this class of movements. Probably, the stiff and convulsive arm movements which one may often notice when the infant is nursing, belong to the class of automatic movements. So also we may describe as automatic some features of the general bodily tension which often appears in connection with unsuccessful efforts to nurse; for example, the curious asymmetry of closing one hand tightly while the fingers of the other hand were spread far apart, observed on R.'s seventh day. Still another illustration of automatic movements is found in the quick contractions of the arm muscles—drawing the hands toward the face or chest, followed by slow re-
- ↑ For these early spontaneous movements, Dr. A. A. Mumford in Brain, 1897, suggests the term "Survival Movements," and urges that they are vestiges of an earlier stage of existence. Cf. Robinson, "Darwinism in the Nursery," Nineteenth Century for November, 1891; also, Buckman, "Babies and Monkeys," Nineteenth Century, November, 1894.
Mind Vol. II, p. 182, footnote. Cf. King, The Psychology of Child Development, p. 23ff
