(B) Other new mental powers and aptitudes are as yet too little studied. Very slight are the observations so far made, of children's historic, which is so clearly akin to literary, interest and capacity. With regard to this and several other subjects in the curriculum we are in the state of Watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began to dream of the steam-engine; we are just recognizing a new power and method destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency of education, but only after a long and toilsome period of limited successes.
Mrs. Barnes[19], told a story without date, place, name, or moral and compared the questions which 1,250 children would like to have answered about it. She found that the interest of girls in persons, or the number who asked the question "who," culminated at twelve, when it coincided with that of boys, but that the latter continued to rise to fifteen. The interest to know "place where" events occurred culminated at eleven with girls, and at fifteen, and at a far higher point, with boys. The questions "how" and "why," calling for the method and reason, both culminated at twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, but were more infrequent and showed less age differences than the preceding question. Interest in the results of the action was most pronounced of all, culminating at twelve in girls and fifteen in boys. Details and time excited far less interest, the former jointly culminating for both sexes at eleven. Interest in the truth of the narrative was extremely slight, although it became manifest at fifteen, and was growing at sixteen. The number of inferences drawn steadily increased with age, although the increase was very slight after thirteen. Both legitimate and critical inferences increased after eleven, while imaginative inferences at that age had nearly reached their maximum. Interest in names was very strong throughout, as in primitive people. Boys were more curious concerning "who," "where," and "how"; girls as to "why." In general, the historic curiosity of boys was greater than that of girls, and culminated later. The inferences drawn from an imagined finding of a log-house, boat, and arrows on a lonely island indicate that the power of inference, both legitimate and imaginative, develops strongly at twelve and thirteen, after which doubt and the critical faculties are apparent; which coincides with Mr. M.A. Tucker's conclusion, that doubt develops at thirteen and that personal inference diminishes about that age.