Its associations of personality come to be of such importance that for a long time its happiness or misery depends upon the presence of certain kinds of "personality suggestion." It is quite a different thing from the child's behavior toward things which are not persons.

Things come to be, with some few exceptions which are involved in the direct gratification of appetite, more and more unimportant; things may be subordinated to regular treatment or reaction.

But persons become constantly more important, as uncertain and dominating agents of pleasure and pain.

The sight of movement by persons, with its effects on the infant, seems to be the most important factor in this peculiar influence; later the voice comes to stand for a person's presence, and at last the face and its expressions equal the person in all his attributes.
I think this distinction between persons and things, between agencies and objects, is the child's very first step toward a sense of personality.

The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows stronger and stronger in his dealings with persons--an uncertainty aroused by the moods, emotions, changes of expression, and shades of treatment of the persons around it.