The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1905-01-06
Upright Vision Is Acquired.
~~~~~~~~~~-~~~~-~~~~~~~~~c~>~
Scientists Hold That Children All
See Upside Down at First.
Chicago Tribune


Local physicians at Lakeview. Ia,
have been interested in the case Of s.
year-old Paul Taylor, who sees things
upside down. He does not belong TO
| the fancifuI race of the Head Hop
pers either Simply looking out upon
the world of every day he gets the i'm
preston that the sky is where the
ground ought to be, and he sees other
| boys running and playing, all with
! their heads hanging down into the sky
and their feet sticking like a hys to
| the ground above. When he writes his
letters with his right hand the SELF
| fences run from right TO left, while
the letters themselves appear upside
down.
Odd beyond even this Interesting
statement the average reader viii con-
slider the theory of DR.. Albert B. Hale,
who maintains that every other child
at one period of it's life saw things in
just this way. and continued to do 80
. for a more or less heightened period.
until it's educated faculties admitted
of it's sub-conscious reversal of the in
Verted image pictured upon the retina-
DR.. Hale is one Of the admitted author
tiles upon this subject in Chicago, and
has made an exhaustive study of the
phenomenon of mirror writing in
children and i'm the mentally unbal-
anced. This mirror writing" is such
as the Iowa hoy produces, and OF its
effect and its cause DR.. Hale says.
The outer world is impressed upon
the retina i'm an inverted image. 1t IS
only by experience. laboriously &C
quired. that W. learn to interpret this
image and to produce upright writing.
The child and the feeble-minded, lack
ing this experience or unable TO acquire
il. reproduce the visual image in in
correct spatial relation, hence in mir
ror" or completely inverted writing.
The adult who may be suddenly de-
prived OF this experience is reduced TO
primitive conditions. and hence pro-
duces the same results thai we see in
the child"
I'm a general way il may be said that
the infant has no senses. said DR..
Hale. 1T sees nothing more than a
blurred light in a room; il has no sense
of touch; when il is larger il may even
walk into a closed door as il in expec-
tation Of its giving way. and when the
door does not fail aside 1t may walk
into the wall in the same MANNER
learning everywhere as II goes.
"In this gaining of knowledge, it may
be said that sight is the last Of the
senses to be awakened to normal pitch
IL might be estimated that the normal
child is still correcting his vision when
he has been walking and talking for
weeks or months. Long after famiI-
arity with the letters of the alphabet
have enabled the child TO produce all
save S, n and z IN their correct pro-
portion and shape. one may find the
child turning the and Il wrong way,
too, and beginning the letter ~ with
down stroke. Not infrequcntly an
adult. unused to writing. Will pant
sign and make these letters wrong-ali
because of an uncorrected child. vision
OF them"
The manner in which the inverted
image on the retina is made upright 10
the brain receiving the impression Is
something over which the doctors dis
agree. one of the earliest of these ex-
plantations was that the one nerve fbi G
connecting the retina with the brain
brought the upper portion of the fetina
into contact lower down on the brain
surface, while the lower portion of the