ABSTRACT
It is evident that a child, in actively submitting to its mother's commands, must place its motor self under the integrative control of motor stimuli evoked by the mother. This control consists, in the first place, of dictation by the mother as to which parts of the motor self shall be reinforced. That is to say, the determining cause which influences the child to reinforce the motor discharge innervating his grasping muscles will consist of the mother's command rather than the object which is grasped. If the infant is grasping a rod and the rod is pulled in a direction opposite to the child's grasp upon it, his motor self reinforces itself as a response to motor stimuli evoked by the antagonistic moving of the rod. Let us suppose, on the other hand, that the child is holding one end of a steamer rug, which he is helping his mother to fold after a picnic on the beach. The rug is heavy, and the mother must exert a considerable pull on her end of the rug in order to straighten it out. The child, having no dominant set, or primary emotional response toward the rug, allows it to slip a little way through his fingers, as the weight of the rug and the mother's pull upon it move it in a direction antagonistic to his grasp.
