Page:First steps in mental growth (1906).djvu/63

 was clearly what one would call left-handed. Toys were picked up with the left hand, a ball was thrown or tossed with the left hand, the left hand was used more in reaching. Left hand movements were surer and more graceful as well as more numerous. At this point, we began systematically to break up the growing preference for the left hand, and to encourage the child to use the right hand rather than the left. Articles were refused him when he reached with the left hand for them, and care was taken when giving the child toys and other articles to place them in his right hand. Either as the result of our training or as the outcome of native tendencies, the right hand began, in the latter part of the fifteenth month, to return to its former place of ascendancy. In the last week of the fifteenth month, I counted forty-nine instances of reaching for toys. Twenty-four were with the right hand, twenty-one with the left, and four with both hands. The preference for the right hand indicated by these figures is not great enough to be significant further than to show the returning prestige of the right hand. From the sixteenth month forward the right hand came gradually to be used more, though both hands were used. A note made in the nineteenth month, for example, reads, "Uses both hands in reaching, picking up, and throwing things, but the right hand is used more." Another note made in the twentieth month reports, "Ball throwing and spoon holding are decidedly