ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

for imitative words. Among the most primitive peoples of aboriginal America, the Athabaskan tribes of the Mackenzie River speak languages in which such words seem to be nearly or entirely absent, while they are used freely enough in languages as sophisticated as English and German. Such an instance shows how little the essential nature of speech is concerned with the mere imitation of things."

D. The Social Behavior Theory. It is impossible to give a complete exposition of this theory before explaining the mechanism by which the individual learns to speak, which will be the subject under consideration in Chapter III. The essential contribution of this theory, however, is that speech came about in the race as the direct result of one man's attempt to use the random activity associated with emotional experiences, in a symbolic way, for the purpose of controlling the behavior of other individuals when necessary for the satisfaction of his own personal wants and necessities. This theory contains one element omitted by the other three, and this element, viz., the drive for social control, furnishes the key to an understanding of the development of speech. The rest of this chapter and all of the next chapter are in reality expositions of this social behavior theory. Before proceeding, it may be well to state that most authorities agree that speech in the race and in the individual begins with random visible and audible behavior, elements of which are found by trialand-chance success to be useful in the control of the social environment.

II. SPEECH IN THE LOWER ANIMALS

Many of the lower animals have a sort of rudimentary speech. Of course we do not mean to assert that the speech of the lower animals is strictly comparable in complexity and development to the speech of human beings. As we shall see, it is true, however, that speech in an elementary form is present among lower animals, and that a study of it at this level may shed considerable light on speech among human beings.

CHAPTER III

SPEECH IN THE INDIVIDUAL

I. FACTORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH
A. Biological Urges

B. The Capacity for Stimulation

C. The Capacity for the Fixation of Responses
D. The Capacity for Conditioning Responses
E. Native and Acquired Responses in Speech

II. SPEECH AS AN OVERLAID FUNCTION

III. STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH
A. The Stage of Unsatisfaction

B. The Stage of Gesture

1. Beginnings of Gesture in Biologically Serviceable Move

ments

2. Reduction of Gesture to Clues

C. The Stage of Prelinguistic Vocalization
1. Random Sounds

2. Adult Reversion to Tone Code

D. The Stage of Articulate Language

1. Fixation of Circular Responses

2. The Place and Function of Imitation in the Learning of Speech

3. Further Conditioning

IV. SPEECH AND THOUGHT

I. FACTORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH

[ocr errors]

A. Biological Urges. Any living organism is always striving to fulfill its biological functions. The demands of hunger, sex, and comfort, or freedom from pain constitute biological urges. Out of these instinctive demands, called by some psychologists "prepotent reflexes" and "autonomic interests," we get the inner drive, which furnishes the first cornerstone in the development of speech.

B. The Capacity for Stimulation. The essential characteristic of the living being is a capacity for stimulation or reaction. The greatest difference between an inanimate object and a living organism is that the living organism is capable of reacting to stimuli, while the inanimate object is incapable of so reacting. This simple fact furnishes the second cornerstone in our understanding of the speech function, because out of this tendency to respond to stimulation arise all of the elements which later become fixated and grouped into the patterns which we call "speech habits." This capacity for reacting to stimulation is dependent upon the possession of certain specialized structures, the most important of which are the receptors (sense organs), the nervous system, and the effectors (muscles and glands). The different forms of energy which call the various receptors into action are known as stimuli. An organism's possession of different kinds of receptors makes it susceptible to different kinds of forces in its environment.

There are two kinds of stimuli which call forth responses: (1) the adequate stimulus, and (2) the substitute stimulus.

"The stimulus that commonly arouses the sense organ to its characteristic function is called the adequate stimulus. Light has an effect upon the eye that it does not have upon the ear or upon the skin. Gases emanating from a flower act only upon the olfactory sense organs. .. The physical forces that stimulate the sense organs differ in kind. Light, heat, gravity, sound, and impact, are a few of these, and each acts upon some sense organ or another."1 Each of these is an adequate stimulus for responses of the particular receptors involved in reacting to them.

What happens when a receptor is aroused to its characteristic function? Briefly, this: A nerve impulse is generated in the receptor, this impulse passes along the nerves to some center, and thence outward over another nerve pathway to the effector. Then the activity of the muscle or gland brings

1 Smith and Guthrie, General Psychology, p. 3. D. Appleton and Company.

about the adjustment of the organism. Every human activity, whether simple or complex, involves this threefold process. There are three general classes of receptors: (a) Those which receive stimuli directly from the outer world, such as the eyes, ears, and nose. These together with the sense endings of touch and temperature in the skin are called exteroceptors. (b) The receptors which line the surface of the digestive tract - the mouth, pharynx, œsophagus, stomach, and intestines are called interoceptors. (c) The receptors which are present in the muscle fibers, tendons, joints, walls of blood vessels and semicircular canals are called the proprioceptors. Between these sense organs and the muscles and glands of the body there are literally billions of nerve cells, which make possible an almost infinite number of interconnections between receptors and effectors. The external or skeletal muscles in general enable the organism to change its position and to manipulate elements in the outer environment. These muscles are usually called the "striped" or "voluntary" muscles.

In addition to these muscles, we have "unstriped," "involuntary," or visceral muscles, and the glands. The function of this second type of effector is to make possible certain internal responses characteristic of emotional states, which support and reinforce the action of external or skeletal muscles. It is to be noted here that we are provided with more means of contact with our environment than was supposed by the originator of the term, "the five senses." We have many more than five kinds of receptors. We come into the world with relatively few fixed and predetermined connections between receptors and effectors but with an almost infinite capacity for forming connections. Only those connections which are biologically vital are inherited.

We have

C. The Capacity for the Fixation of Responses. now seen that we are born able to respond to stimulation, that we have certain biological functions to perform, and that these biological necessities constitute the unseen motive power

which in a general way directs and controls our behavior. Now, since speech is a matter of habit, we are face to face with the necessity of explaining how it is that habits arise, how it comes about that, having once responded to stimulation, we are more likely to respond to similar stimulation with a repetition of our former activity. The mechanism here is not very well understood, but perhaps the following quotation from Watson will be of some help to us. He says:2

"Habits start, as we have seen, with the so-called random movements. . . . Among those random movements is one group or combination which completes the adjustment, the 'successful' one. All others, from a superficial standpoint, seem to be unnecessary. But it must be remembered that the organism cannot respond in any other way than his equipment allows him to. When put in front of a problem the solution to which cannot be effected by an immediate instinctive act or by the one belonging to his past habit acquisitions, the whole organism begins to work in each and every part but without working together. Not only are the arms, legs, and trunk active but the heart, stomach, lungs, and glands as well. We know that when the new habit is formed the organism as a whole acts smoothly, each part reaction hangs together with every other part reaction, all tending to facilitate and make possible the smooth working of the group of acts effecting the final adjustment. The formation of the simplest habit is an enormously complicated affair."

Watson goes on to explain that many apparently simple acts require a great deal of coordination of body parts, and that each repetition tends to accomplish a closer telescoping of the part reactions and a reduction in the activity which does not contribute to the efficiency of the completed habit. He suggests that the successful responses are fixated because, in the first place, when we are faced with a problem which we have solved before, the successful responses are, in point of time, the latest through which we have gone, and therefore the nerve

2 John B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, p. 293. J. B. Lippincott Company.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »