rse, that no child speaks before
the age of 2, for many children have made their first trials at
speaking at as early an age as 15 months, and many begin to talk by the
time they are a year and a half old. At the age of two, however, not
only the precocious child but the child of slower-than-average
development should be able to talk in at least brief, disjointed
monosyllables.
Before taking up the possibility of a child exhibiting symptoms of
defective speech with the first utterance, let us familiarize ourselves
with the fundamentals underlying the production of the first spoken
words.
The mother, who for months, perhaps, has been listening with eager
interest and fond anticipation for her child's first word to be spoken,
has little comprehension of the vast amount of education and training
which the infant has absorbed in order to perfect this first small
utterance. Months have been spent in listening to others, in taking in
sounds and recalling them, in impressing them upon the memory by
constant repetition, until finally after a year and a half, or more,
perhaps, the circuit is completed and the first word is put down as
history.
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS: It must be remembered that perfect co-ordination
of speech is the result of many mental images, not of one. In saying
the word "salt," for instance, you have a graphic mental picture of
what salt looks like; a second picture of what the word sounds like; a
"motor-memory" picture of the successive muscle movements necessary to
the formation of the word; another picture that recalls the taste of
salt, and still another that recalls the movements of the hand
necessary to write the word.
These pictures all hinging upon the word "salt" were gradually acquired
from the time you began to observe. You tasted salt. You saw it at the
same time you tasted it. There you see was an association of two ideas.
Thereafter, when you saw salt, you not only recognized it by sight, but
your brain recalled the taste of salt, without the necessity of your
really tasting it. Or, on the other hand, if you had shut your eyes and
someone had put salt on your tongue, the taste in that case would have
recalled to your mind the graphic picture of the appearance of salt.
As you grew older and learned to speak, your vocal organs imitated the
sound of the word "salt" as you heard it expressed by others and thus
you learned to speak that word. At that stage, your brain was capable
of calli
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