(Fourth week) When trying to open a door, the child turns the knob back and forth rapidly, but does not understand that he must at the same time pull in order to get the door open. He gets the plunger or bolt out of the catch, but does not at the same time pull toward himself, and so fails to get the door open.
Twenty-eighth month (second week).—The child seizes the knob of a door, gives it a turn to the right and pulls the door open almost as quickly and skilfully as an adult would. All tugging, twisting, pulling, pushing have disappeared, and the child opens a door almost as well as a grown person, not quite so quickly or gracefully perhaps—but practice will soon give speed, and will wear off the rough edges of the performance.
Learning to turn leaves in books and magazines.—As early as the middle of the sixteenth month, R. was interested in opening and shutting a book. On a certain day in the third week of this month the child opened and shut a small school-reader twenty-nine times. The interest at that time was in the motion, in what he could do with the book. The movement belonged to the class of "persistent" imitation, as described by Baldwin, and the delight was not unlike that which Baldwin's child found "in putting the rubber on a pencil and off again, each act being a new stimulus to the eye."[1]
Three months later, probably owing to his having been
- ↑ Mental Development, Vol. I, p. 132.
