contrary, are the latest of all. The ability to trace ‘copies’[1] recognized, arises only after considerable progress has been made in speaking, and the progress in speaking is, in turn, relatively much later in its rise than visual and auditory recognition. So the probable order in which these different elements of the speech faculty would come under the jurisdiction of the “law of sensori-motor association” is about this: auditory, visual, speech-motor, hand-motor (writing) memories.
This means that auditory and visual memories get a good ‘start’ on the other varieties in the genetic process. They acquire considerable influence over the attention, which is largely reflex at that early period, and they become in turn relatively easy of revival, before the specific motor memories are well begun. Here is sufficient reason for the existence of auditory and visual speech types. Habits thus arise which, on the mental side, express the readiest sensori-motor associations. They amount to what some have called ‘pre-perceptions,’ or better, perhaps, ‘pre-apperceptions.’ On the physical side these habits represent preferential dynamic tensions among those paths of discharge whose convergence is towards the brain seat of attention. The law signalized above, tends of course, as life advances, to consolidate these particular sensori-motor couples: and they become permanent traits of the mental life, unless the other speech connections, which are subsequently brought into use, be of sufficient strength to supersede them. This latter, however, may happen in any of several instances: either from inherited tendency, or from the strength of other motor habits, as walking, etc., or, in course of time, by dint of continued practice.
It would seem, accordingly, that the ‘auditory speech’ type should be found most frequently among unliterary people and among those who have not had extended linguistic training or large practice in writing and reading. The particular influences which are lacking in this type are present in the ‘motor type.’
- ↑ What I have called “tracery imitation,” Science, XIX, 1892, p. 19 f, discussed also by Goldscheider under the equivalent phrase, malende Reproduction in Archiv für Psychiatrie, XXIV, 1892, p. 503.
