Perspectives in Interactional Psychology

An old woman walks slowly up the hill from the store to her house. The hill is quite steep and the packages she carries, heavy. The two ten-year-olds watching her feel sorry for her and, moving toward her, ask if they might help carry the packages. They easily lift them and with almost no effort bring the shopping bags to the top of the hill. After receiving all A's in his first term in college, F. finds that this term is much harder, especially his physics courses, in which he is failing. He has talked to his professor twice, but finds he cannot understand what she is teaching. "Somehow," he thinks, "if she could only present the material in a different way, I could understand it better!" A month ago, as B. lay playing quietly in his crib, a toy key slipped out of his hand onto the floor. Almost immediately he turned his attention to another toy, close by, which he took up and put into his mouth. Yesterday, very nearly the same thing happened, except this time as soon as the toy key fell, he began to cry loudly, forcing me to stop what I was doing and retrieve it for him. It seemed in the first case that he forgot it, while yester day, even though it was gone, out of his sight, he still remembered it and wished it back.