Note N — Chapter IV · LABORATORY TESTS

It was Charles Darwin[7] who first pointed out that the expressive movements (of the coarser sort) to be noted in nearly every race and people show a great, though by no means complete, similarity. The similarity is most pronounced in the shaking of the head to signify negation and nodding to denote affirmation. It will be noted that the former is essentially of the nature of a turning toward, and the latter a turning away.[8] These same movements have been reported in the case of the blind and deaf Laura Bridgman,[9] and we have been explicitly assured that they were a spontaneous development, and not acquired by imitation. For it is by imitation and never before the completion of the first year, that our children acquire these movements. On account of his unreliability, we can put but little stock in the statement of Garner,[10] a writer on the speech of monkeys, that these same gestures have been observed in the case of those animals. My experiments show that the same movements, greatly diminished in scope, as a rule accompany the mere thought of "yes," "no," etc. I cannot, however, regard the assertion as an established fact that every thought process whatsoever is connected with some form of muscular movement, as has been generalized by the French physiologist Féré,[11] and the American psychologist Wm. James.[12]