ABSTRACT
“A visitor entered wearing a soft wool skirt; Sarah touched the skirt, looked at the visitor, then ran to the crib and felt her (similarly textured) blanket.” “… Sarah, touching my tongue, looked at me, at her hand, and then stuck out her own tongue and touched it.” These entries are from a log kept by Dr. Rosemary Cogan, Sarah's first surrogate mother, dated March 27, 1965, when Sarah was estimated to be 18 months old. Not yet trained in language, Sarah could acknowledge the match between the skirt and blanket only in the way she did, by contacting both items in the same interval of time. Had she been trained in language, she need not have rushed from one item to the other, but could have acknowledged the relation between the skirt and blanket by touching the skirt while saying “blanket.” Whether the subject says “blanket” while touching the skirt, or rushes from skirt to blanket, the same triumph is celebrated: the discovery of an equivalence.
