24) is effected. Now all of our first seeings and
hearings and touchings and smellings and tastings are of this
kind. In any legitimate sense of the words mental or
intellectual or cognitive, they are lacking in these qualities,
and no amount of repetitious exercise could bestow any
intellectual properties of observation, judgment, or intentional
action (volition) upon them.
(2) Consequently the training of our original impulsive
activities is not a refinement and perfecting achieved by
"exercise" as one might strengthen a muscle by practice. It
consists rather (a) in selecting from the diffused responses
which are evoked at a given time those which are especially
adapted to the utilization of the stimulus. That is to say,
among the reactions of the body in general
occur upon stimulation of the eye by light, all except those
which are specifically adapted to reaching, grasping, and
manipulating the object effectively are gradually eliminated--or
else no training occurs. As we have already noted, the primary
reactions, with a very few exceptions are too diffused and
general to be practically of much use in the case of the human
infant. Hence the identity of training with selective response.
(Compare p. 25.) (b) Equally important is the specific
coordination of different factors of response which takes place.
There is not merely a selection of the hand reactions which
effect grasping, but of the particular visual stimuli which call
out just these reactions and no others, and an establishment of
connection between the two.
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