Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-07

There are five times as many lazy
boys as girls.
Poor children are more satisfied with
their lot than rich children.
The unwanted child unconsciously
wants to die.
The earliest memories are Of puzzling
things.
These are a few of the recent find
ings of European psychological labora-
tories contained In a report on current
progress in child studies issued by the
Committee on Child Development of
the National Research Council here.
The comparative laziness of boys and
girls in school is the tentative con-
clusion of the Russian psychologist, p.
P. Blonsky, from a study of the lazy
pupils in a large Moscow public school.
Periodically enough, he found that the
boys were lazier because they were
naturally more active. Blonsky &C.
cepted the teachers classification Of
laziness-not necessarily his own
Out of a total of 1851 children ap-
proximately 20 per cent of the boys and
4 per cent of the girls were reported as
lazy" by the school authorities. All
were given medical examinations and,
contrary to expectations, were found
exceptionally healthy.
Called "MotOr Hunger"
Blonsky attributes the difference to
motor hunger" The children normally
are unusually active, but have no pa
thence or tenaciousneSS. They seek an
outlet for their vigor, but never have
been trained to serious endeavor. The
children were between and is years
old. When charged with being lazy 80
per cent of them denied it.
This type, he says, lis harmed by the
form of schooling which requires long
hours of unbroken mental activity"
Blonsky also reported experiments to
determine the earliest memories of
human being, the incidents which are
recalled in later years from the thresh-
hold of conscious life. Several hundred
of these early memories we're collected
from children IL and IL years old and
from adults.
The most marked of these, he reports,
come from the labyrinth sense" a
vaguely defined sensation of puzzlement
which frightens the child Antipathies
and pathological fears of later life often
have their beginning here, Blonsky says.
Next In Importance, but coming little
later, he found memories Of those ex-
periences causing pain, dislike for the
source of pain often lingering late in
life after the incident itself was for
gotten.
Self preservation Impulse.
The great majority Of early memories,
he found, were due to the Self-preser-
walton impulse, which takes precedence
over everything else in the life of the
child. Thus, he found, deep emotional
experiences of early childhood which
are not associated with self-preserva-
ton do not cause memories.
The unwelcome child dies easily and
willingly" according to report of re-
cent experiments by the italian psy-
chologist, Sander Ferenczi. Such q
child, he says, senses the aversion or
impatience of parents, with the result
tensiied. Such children who survive
infancy, he says, tend to grow up con-
firmed pessimistS,f with an easily
awakened aversion for life, which may
result in suicide.
An investigation of clothing prefer
ences by children of various ages was
reported by Eve Macaulay in the British
Journal of. Medical Psychology. From
s to g. she found, they we're most i'm
pressed by color. Design and decoration
enter their consciousness only from 10
to IL. Modesty In dress, she reports,
enters into the consideration of the
lower social classes, but no so much In
the higher social strata.
The study of the degree Of content
ment of children in families of various
sizes was made by the German psy-
chologist, A. Busemann. He found not
only that poor children were more con-
tented than rich children, but that the
only child was the most dissatisfied of
all All the children studied were girls.
Most desired either younger sister,