by Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld to the General Section of the British Psychological Society, Manchester, April 18th 1937

Thus any given knife may be lightly bluish in colour, smooth and cold to the touch, have a faintly metallic smell, and in use may give out a faint but characteristic sound. But only in exceptional circumstances would the adult perceive these qualities. We tend to associate it with three things only: size (large or small), kind (pen-knife, kitchen-knife), and quality (sharp, blunt). That is to say, the qualities of the object which we normally perceive are those which are associated with our common practical experiences of what are to us the essential qualities of the object: experiences of the kind for which the object was made. We are, of course, capable of perceiving other qualities but we do not generally do so.

Not so the small child. Whereas the acts of cognition of the Secondary System depend upon certain accepted external qualities and tend to group themselves around functional values, the mental acts of the Proto-System are purely subjective; A process of selection and grouping takes place here also, but its principle, instead of being objective and practical is subjective and affective.

The products of mental activity which begins with birth, have always the quality of seeming conclusive and self-evident to the experiencer until they are incontrovertibly challenged by external fact. But such a challenge does not occur, even in a very modified form, until well into the third year. When the young child has a sensory experience it arouses an affect; but since he is as yet incapable of distinguishing between the stimulus-object and the affect it rouses, they are registered together as a total affect. This indistinguishable experience-affect is the fundamental unit from which the child later educes relations. The child therefore has no knowledge of the practical nature of the object which is producing the affect; nor can he as yet make even such basic classifications as ‘scents’ and ‘sounds’. He knows only a series of total experiences. Those qualities of the stimulus object, therefore, which arouse in him the most clear or powerful affect are to him ‘the’ qualities of the object.