Experimental Child Study. By Florence L. Goodenough and John E. Anderson. New York:  The Century Company, 1931. Pp.  546.

The field of interest in child development has been expanding notably during the past few years, in both its scientific and practical aspects, and

the young child or the preschool child has been one of the main foci for intensive study. The amount of work done is enormous and the results obtained somewhat controversial.

This book is an attempt to orient students of “child behavior,” teachers, parents, and others, in a simple and understandable way, in the methods of scientific child study. It offers concrete technical guidance for the conducting of experiments by the beginning students, in which respect it is somewhat unique as a text; it outlines the methods for the study of children at different ages, and discusses elementary statistical procedures. The first part of the book gives an excellent historical account of the origins of the present day movement in child study from the laboratory viewpoint, but the importance of the psychoanalytic contributions are either minimized or, what is more probable, not recognized by the authors. A few quotations from the text will serve to indicate their attitude: “Psychoanalytic theory is of interest to the student of child development chiefly because of the fact that it traces the great majority of the personality and emotional maladjustments of adult life to disturbances occurring during the period of infancy or early childhood and also because of its insistent claim that the sexual instinct is present and active from the time of birth rather than from the age of puberty as was generally believed. It is doubtful, however, whether the material regarding childhood experiences which has been elicited by the psychoanalytic method can be regarded as reliable.” (A typical opinion of those who have neither analyzed cases nor been analyzed themselves.) … “The claim of the psychoanalysts that, by means of their technic, memory transferences of this sort can be corrected, and repressed memories brought back to consciousness has never