The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    MliNTAL PEKOEPTS, OF WOUDS. meanings. At this early stage, as Prof. Bain points out,1 the child will turn his head towards his brother when he hears the name Johnny pronounced; though it is very improbable that the word Johnny rises up in his memory when he spontaneously looks at his brother. The child has not yet acquired the motor picture of the word. He is as yet at the stage at which the education of the receptive centre is obviously ahead of that of the productive or motor. In the process of learning a foreign lan- guage, we all have experience of a stage in our educational pro- gress that is somewhat similar to this. I mean the stage at which we can read and understand the language, but cannot yet speak it. The sensory word-pictures have already been extensively acquired, and they have been associated with the ideas of which they are the symbols; but the motor pictures have not yet been acquired to the same extent. Until the motor pictures are also fully acquired, we are not able to call up words readily in our minds when we wish to use them in conversation. Practice in speaking the language will alone be able to give us this facility. The sensory images are thus of special importance in relation to the reception and interpretation of speech, the motor images in relation to its production. A foreign language is not perfectly acquired until both sets of images have beeu securely imprinted. Our mental percepts of words are not perfect until both sets of images are revived simultaneously, and are blended together into one in the consciousness. How this blending is effected is as difficult of explanation as is the blending of the sensory and motor images into the percept of an object. But everything goes to show that in this case again there is no special centre for the process of blending: the images remain in situ, and seem to be taken cognizance of simultaneously by the presiding consciousness or intelligence, the nature of which is so great a mystery to us. Here I come to say a few words about a problem regarding which much that is interesting has been written. What is the nature of the Internal Speech which we employ in the process of thinking ? Some hold that we do much of our thinking without the aid of words. Thus Bastian2 says:— There can be no doubt that when 1 Fortnightly Review, vol. v., 18G9, p. 494. 2 Ibid., 1869, note to p. (52.