Dewey, one of the founders of American pragmatism.
She began exchanging letters with him as a teenager
in 1916. McGraw considered Dewey to be her ‘‘intel-
lectual godfather.’’ He influenced her decision to at-
tend graduate school and eventually advised and
collaborated with her on studies of infant growth and
development. Dewey urged McGraw to study how in-
fants respond to uncertainty, because he believed that
this would reveal how infants integrate their motor
and cognitive abilities. Her studies supported
Dewey’s contention, outlined in his most important
book, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), that inquiry
is governed by judgments grounded in experience.
McGraw worked with scientists who challenged
the behaviorist orthodoxy of the era, which reduced
mind to reflex and equated learning with condition-
ing. Frederick Tilney, a neurologist and director of
the Neurological Institute of New York and head of
McGraw’s studies, contended that the brain evolved
to enable humans to acquire the intelligence needed
to respond to the increased demand for coordinated
behavior. McGraw demonstrated experimentally that
for babies learning to walk or perform other forms of
locomotion, maintaining balance poses the biggest
challenge and accounts for the largest differences
among babies in the strategies that they employ.
Thus, learning to walk never presents the same prob-
lem for each individual. Toddlers must resolve the
challenge of balance encountered in previous stages,
the circumstances of which vary considerably among
infants. George Coghill, a neuroembryologist and a
project consultant, discovered that neural growth an-
ticipates the acquisition of function. He believed that
prelocomotor stepping, kicking, and other seemingly
transient reflex behaviors are instrumental in the
proper sequencing and integration of complex be-
haviors. McGraw’s research supported this theory by
showing that babies can learn how to stay afloat by
adapting the movements involved in their being star-
tled. Harvard University neuroanatomist Leroy
Conel also made an important contribution to
McGraw’s studies by revealing the sequence in which
the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that coordi-
nates sensory and motor information, becomes func-
tional in early development. McGraw employed
Conel’s data to suggest how cortical control emerges
gradually, affording infants increased awareness of
and control over their actions.
McGraw’s research remains controversial today
because developmental psychologists disagree about
how to interpret her work and often confuse it with
Gesell’s maturationism. Some scientists have incor-
rectly interpreted McGraw’s assertion that infant be-
havior does not become fully integrated until after the
onset of cortical control to mean that advanced brain
Myrtle McGraw watching Johnny Woods, twenty-two months,
ascending a wooden slide. McGraw was known for her experimental
work with the Woods twins, in which she proved that early
stimulation accelerates motor development. (Mitzi Wertheim)structures must be completely functional before be-
havior can occur. McGraw, however, explicitly ac-
knowledged that ‘‘the problem of developmental or
maturational relations between structure and func-
tion is more complex than the question of localization
of function’’ (McGraw 1943, p. 4). McGraw never ar-
gued that the cortex caused or determined motor de-
velopment. Nor did she ever find evidence of a one-
to-one correspondence between a neural structure
and a behavioral trait. Instead, she contended that a
combination of cortical and subcortical structures
support behavior during different periods of devel-
opment. Moreover, Gilbert Gottlieb contended that
McGraw can take credit for having first formulated a
bidirectional theory, which holds that neural struc-
tures and processes not only support behavior but are
changed as a result of novel experiences.
McGraw’s research remains pertinent to contem-
porary developmental scientists who consider the na-
ture-versus-nurture debate outmoded and who seek
new methods to understand how the mind emerges
from the integration of brain and behavior. McGraw
focused on the processes of growth and learning and
how infants respond differently to the competing andMCGRAW, MYRTLE BYRAM 251