ABSTRACT
Complexity of communication starts with an exchange of chiefly cutaneous and kinesthetic sensorimotor responses, to which those of the reciprocal mouth–breast relationship are soon added, as well as an interchange through visual contact. Both have gone through stages of incipience, partial accomplishment, and approach a final capacity for independent performance. It is the stage of incipience that has emerged from a period of play activity. The attainment of walking and the acquisition of speech occur in approximately the same era, that is, toward the end of the first year and the beginning of the second. How much a creature benefits from such variations in early experiences, in contrast to being bound by mere repetition, seems to me to be an indication of the very dawning of thought and the earliest precursor of imagination. Walking and talking are definite constituents in the process of separation of infant from mother, which is demanded by the growth and increasing strength of the infant.
