Pre-school learning

‘At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms…’—what and how does he learn? What activities of his produce a relatively permanent effect on later activities? What knowledge, understanding, or skill does he obtain by study, instruction, or experience? A mother thinking of her own children may doubt whether one can generalize in view of the differences among the children even of one family. And any one struck by the quite rapid change from week to week—later, month to month—in a young infant may wonder how one can analyse such a rapid, and often wayward, process. And yet people have recognized in widely separated historical periods the fact of infant impressionability—the fact that what happens in the first years of life has particular power and significance for later development and learning.