Page:First steps in mental growth (1906).djvu/60

 on his shoes it was thought that it might be possible to teach him to lace them too. But shoe lacing is too intricate and involved a feat for the three year old. He grasps the idea that the strings go in the holes, but the order is too difficult for him; so "lacing" shoes is merely taking a string and putting it in any unoccupied eyelet.

Picking up and manner of holding cups, glasses, bowls, saucers, etc.—The baby's method of grasping and picking up cups, bowls or saucers, affords a curious and interesting illustration of the so-called survival movements from a pre-human ancestry. When an adult or a child, well past the years of infancy, picks up with one hand a jar, crock, or bowl, which is too large to clasp around the outside with one hand, he places the thumb inside the bowl and grasps the rim of the vessel with the thumb and fingers. But the baby employs the so-called simian method of grasping and picking up cups, bowls, and saucers. The hand is extended, palm downward, toward the desired object—dish, cup or saucer—the fingers, not the thumb, are placed inside the vessel, and the rim is pressed against the palm of the hand in order to pick up the object so grasped. The first note with reference to R.’s method of grasping a cup in order to pick it up was made in the early part of the thirteenth month. At that time the child used the simian method, as described above, and that method of seizing cups or bowls was employed until the last quarter of the third