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Cognitive

Development,

3,

113-136

(1988)

How to Build a Baby: On the Development


of an Accessible Representational
System
Jean M. Mandler
University

of California,

San

Diego

The notion
of a sensorimotor
stage in infancy
is called into question.
First, some of
the recent
experimental
literature
on cognitive
development
in infancy
is examined to determine
the kinds of representational
capacity
that these data require.
It
is concluded
that most of the recent
work
on perceptual
development
and the
object
concept
in infancy
is compatible
with the notion
of a sensorimotor
stage
but that other
work
showing
imitation,
motor
recognition,
the acquisition
of
manual
signs, and recall of absent
objects
is not, requiring,
instead,
a conceptual
form
of representation.
Such a system
is apparent
early
in development.
It is
suggested
that there
is a viable
alternative
to Piagets
theory
that conceptual
representation
consists
of a transformation
of sensorimotor
schemas
into a new,
more advanced
code.
It is proposed
that an accessible
conceptual
system
develops simultaneously
and in parallel
with the sensorimotor
system,
with
neither
system
being derivative
from the other.
It is further
proposed
that the mechanism
by which
infants
encode
information
into an accessible
system
consists
of a process of perceptual
analysis.

If one is interested in the topic of representation, infancy provides a fascinating


theoretical playground. By the time the new human ages a bit and becomes a
middle-aged child, it seems that much of the adult representational system is in
place or, at any rate, one can discern the outlines of the adult mind. But infants
appear almost to belong to another species. and it is difficult to see many
commonalities between the mind of the infant and that of the adult.
Piaget is largely responsible for our taking such a distant stance. He made
such a persuasive case for the view of the infant as a purely sensorimotor
organism, lacking any sort of accessible or reflective knowledge, that it has
become commonplace in our thinking. The assumption underlying the notion of

Preparation
of this article was supported
in part by NSF research grant BNS-85 19218 and the
MacArthur
Foundation
research grant on the Transition
from Infancy to Early Childhood.
I wish to
thank Annette Karmiloff-Smith,
Alan Leslie, and John Morton for stimulating
discussion
on these
issues and Elizabeth
Bates, Rachel Gelman,
and Katherine
Nelson for helpful comments
on the
manuscript.
Correspondence
Psychology
C-009,

Manuscript

received

and requests for reprints


University
of California,

August

19, 1987;

should be sent to Jean M. Mandler.


San Diego. La Jolla, CA 92093.

revision

accepted

October

15, 1987

Department

of

113

114

Jean M. Mandler

a sensorimotor stage is that the infant is born with a single type of representational capacity. Infants are said to represent the world by means of perceptual
and motor schemas but lack the capacity to form concepts that are accessible for
purposes of recall or thinking. Only gradually does a qualitative shift in the
representational system occur, with the new and higher order form of representation that results being necessarily dependent on the development of an earlier
exclusively sensorimotor form. This higher order form of representation is
called, variously, a symbolic or conceptual system. In this view, although the
capacity to symbolize may be considered innate, its realization is dependent on a
gradual transformation of motor and perceptual schemas into symbolically realized concepts.
In spite of a growing literature on infancy in recent years that suggests greater
competence than Piaget ascribed to the infant, relatively little has been said about
whether or not this new evidence might require us to change our views on the
foundations of the representational system. For example, we have learned that
the perceptual capabilities of infants are much greater than we once assumed, and
that infants know much more about objects than Piaget thought possible. There
are also growing indications that infants are capable of symbolic activity and
recall much earlier than Piaget thought possible. Which, if any, of these newfound capabilities require us to reformulate the notion of a sensorimotor stage of
development?
The purposes of this article are two. The first is to examine some experimental
findings from the recent literature on cognitive development in infancy with the
goal of establishing what these data require in terms of an underlying representational system capable of accounting for them. Following a few definitions of
terms, the current experimental evidence is addressed in two sections. The first
section covers some recent work in perceptual development; to state briefly the
conclusion that will be reached, most of this work can probably be accommodated to the notion of an initial sensorimotor stage. The second section covers
recent evidence for early symbolic functioning and recall; it is concluded that this
kind of evidence cannor be accommodated within such a representational
system.
The second purpose is to discuss the kind of representational system that we
will need to posit if we must abandon the notion of an initial sensorimotor stage.
In particular, I address the issue of when and how an accessible conceptual
system might be formed. I suggest that there is a viable alternative to Piagets
theory that conceptual representation consists of a transformation of sensorimotor schemas into a new, more advanced code. That alternative is that an
accessible representational system develops simultaneously and in parallel with
the sensorimotor system, with neither system being derivative from the other. I
propose that the mechanism by which information is encoded into an accessible
system is neither through recoding motor activity nor by means of perception
alone but, instead, involves a process of perceptual analysis.

How

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115

Because the distinction between the two kinds of representation-sensorimotor


and conceptual-is fundamental to the notion of a separate stage in infancy, it is
important to be clear about the meanings of these two terms. I have used the terms
procedural and declarative (J. Mandler, 1983, 1984a) to refer to them, but these
terms are not ideal because they have been used in so many ways in the literature.
Although discussions of procedural knowledge (sometimes called implicit knowledge) usually include some comment about its inaccessibility, the extent to which
procedural knowledge can be brought to awareness (i.e., become explicit) has
been the subject of considerable debate. For example, motor skills, such as typing
or riding a bike, are often used to illustrate procedural knowledge. However, these
skills require extensive conscious processing during the early stages of their
acquisition. Examples of motor know-how
in infancy, such as sucking on a
nipple or reaching for an object, are equally good forms of procedural knowledge,
but their acquisition does IIO~require conscious accompaniments (even though
consciousness may attend such activity). Hence, the kind of procedural knowledge relevant to the sensorimotor period of infancy is only a subset of procedural
knowledge in general, consisting of motor and perceptual activity that does not
require that the infomlation being processed is accessible to conscious awareness.
1 call these sensorimotor procedures.
It is important to emphasize that, in addition to motor activity, sensorimotor
procedures include perceptual recognition, and that this kind of processing also
does not require conscious access of infomlation. As adults we are often aware,
of course, that something is familiar; however, such awareness is not a part of the
recognition process itself. Consciousness of familiarity may accompany recognition (especially in recognition experiments when we are required to say whether
or not something seems familiar), but it is an optional accompaniment to a
basically unconscious process. Recognizing that something is a face, or even a
familiar face, has the same status as motor knowledge; we do it, but can state
only crudely what it is that we know. Thus, the crucial aspect of sensorimotor
procedures, whether motor or perceptual, is that much, if not most, of the
information that is being processed is not accessible to consciousness (see Fodor,
1983; Marr, 1982: Rock, 1985, on the impenetrability of perceptual processes).
Conceptual knowledge (sometimes called declarative knowledge), on the
other hand, is accessible; it has the potential of being brought to conscious
awareness. that is, to become explicit. Indeed. it is fair to make at least a partial
equation between concepts and consciousness. Concepts are not always in consciousness, to be sure, but they were formed from conscious processes and when
we are conscious we are using the conceptual system to carry out our conscious
thoughts. As one example. we use extremely detailed information about the
contours and proportions of the human face to mediate our recognition of individual faces or categories of faces, such as male and female or infant and adult.
Yet, much of this information is not conscious and cannot be considered part of
our ~~nccpr of a face (see Lewicki, 1986). In our characteristic way of describing

116

Jean M. Mandler

concepts as lists or bundles of features, we describe our concept of a face in


terms of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, along with some fairly crude spatial
relations and colors. More continuous and complex information becomes part of
our face concept only with instruction (for example, artistic training or analytic
observation).
Thus. concepts are potentially expressible (declarable) knowledge, even
though before the onset of language the emphasis must be on potenriallv. Expressible knowledge is symbolic knowledge; it has the status of a comment on
something that has been experienced. Whether or not we use a word, gesture,
drawing, or even an image to represent a concept in consciousness, we can only
comment on (label. describe, sketch) information that has been consciously
attended to. Such information is encoded in a different form than is the information used to mediate perceptual recognition. One can recognize a face by the
automatic activation of a low-level perceptual device (of the kind, for example,
that is currently being used in connectionist models; see Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). But, when one notices that a face is pretty or has big ears one is
responding to sensory infomration in a different way; a subset of the information
is being encoded symbolically into a verbal, gestural, spatial, or imaginal form.
These issues are discussed later in more detail. The important point for the
moment is to distinguish between sensorimotor representation, which controls
perceptual recognition and motor activity, and conceptual knowledge, which can
be accessed independently of motor activity or perception. The latter type of
knowledge can be brought to conscious awareness; the former cannot. Conceptual (declarative) knowledge is typically illustrated in the literature by some kind
of symbolic functioning, such as recall of the past, imagining the future, planning, or thinking. But, it is also illustrated by conscious awareness of what it is
that you are currently perceiving. If you are conscious of what you are seeing,
you are engaged in conceptual thought.
Perceptual Development in Infancy
There are two broad classes of data on perceptual development that might be
used to claim that infants have a conceptual (nonsensorimotor) form of representation available to them. One of these is the work on the development of face
schemas and other perceptual categories; the other is the work on the early
development of the object concept. I will discuss these briefly in turn.
A number of investigators have shown that infants process and categorize
objects in ways that seem quite similar to adult perceptual processing (see Cohen
& Younger, 1983). Infants form perceptual prototypes (Strauss, 1979), are responsive to correlated attributes of objects (Younger & Cohen, 1983), can abstract a property of twoness from varied sets of objects (Starkey & Cooper,
1980), and have gender-based categories of faces (Fagan & Singer, 1979). It is
important to note, however, that these findings all come from perceptual recognition experiments. Such data do not tell us that infants have formed accessible
concepts about faces, number, or gender (see Lewis & Strauss, 1986).

How

to Build

a Baby

117

We should not be misled by the complexity of these perceptual processing


mechanisms. They are sophisticated, of course, but then so are the perceptual
processing mechanisms of most organisms or. for that matter, the industrial
vision machines that neatly discriminate nuts from bolts. To categorize incoming
stimuli into different types is a basic component of a perceptual recognition
device; by itself, this ability tells us nothing about the formation of accessible
concepts that may be used for purposes of thought and reflection. The industrial
machine may throw nuts into one bin and bolts into another (making its choices
by, for example, computing the ratio of the diameter of each object to its
perimeter), but we would not want to say that it has a concept of nuts and bolts.
Similarly, the infant may distinguish male and female faces by computing various proportions among facial features or distinguish displays of two versus three
objects by an object parser that includes a counter with a limited range. Such
computations may be sufficient to enable dishabituation to a female face after
seeing a series of male faces, or dishabituation to a display of three objects after
seeing a series of two objects, but we need other types of evidence before we
should be willing to say that the infant has a concept of female or a concept of
two.
Habituation to an old stimulus and dishabituation to a new one happen from
birth, but such responses are mediated by the learning that is a fundamental
characteristic of perceptual input systems (what I have called primitive recognition; J. Mandler, 1984a). Perceptual schemas are activated automatically by the
operation of autonomous units operating at a nonsymbolic level of analysis
(Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). Experience with regularities in the environment changes the response of these input systems, but such changes do not
implicate the accessing of information from an accessible knowledge store.
Thus, recognition procedures can be handled by sensorimotor mechanisms alone
and so do not demand another form of representation.
Much of the current debate about the competencies of infants arises from a
failure to distinguish perceptual categories of the type just described and conceptual categories or concepts. Thus, Cohen and Strauss (1979) spoke of concept
acquisition in the human infant to describe early perceptual categorization of
faces. Mervis and Rosch ( 198 1) assumed that the processes involved in this kind
of categorization are identical to the processes involved in forming basic-level
categories, that is, concepts of such things as dogs, chairs, and cars. But, to
move so easily from perceptual categorization to basic-level concepts loses a
fundamental distinction of mental life-the distinction between a percept and a
concept. This distinction is one of the oldest and most resilient in psychology, in
spite of the fact that it is continually debated (see Nelson, 1985, and Keil, 1986,
for recent examples). The complexities of the interaction of perceptual and
conceptual knowledge are formidable indeed, but it does not seem reasonable to
throw out the distinction altogether. As Neisser (1987) succinctly stated,
Seeing is one thing, thinking another.
To have a basic-level corzcept of a dog is to have at least a minitheory of what

JeanM. Mandler

118

dogs are. not just the ability to distinguish a dog shape or doglike way of moving
from that of a cat shape or catlike way of moving. I Objects that adults classify as
basic level may or may not be the first kinds of things for which the infant forms
concepts (Mandler & Bauer, in press), but to say that the infant has formed a
basic-level concept is to say at the least that the infant has some small packet of
accessible knowledge above and beyond what the object looks like. Perhaps it
would be advisable to reject the term lxrsic-level
mtrgorization
to refer to the
kinds of perceptual schemas being formed in infancy. If the term per-c~~pruc11
schemas
was used instead of perceptual
cutrgorics.
then, like the notion of
motor schemas, we would not be inclined to impute conceptual knowledge to
them.
If perceptual schemas do not necessarily implicate other than a sensorimotor
form of representation, what about recent data indicating that infants know a
great deal more about objects than has been traditionally ascribed to them? We
have learned that infants perceive objects as bounded and unitary (Spelke. 1985),
use cross-modal patterns of information to identify objects (Gibson & Spelke,
1983), and perceive causal relations among moving objects as well (Leslie &
Keeble, 1987). The data are robust and impressive, but their theoretical implications have not been entirely clear. Much of this literature has used the terms
perception, apprehension. and conception of objects interchangeably (e.g., Kellman & Spelke, 1983). Although early concepts about objects are undoubtedly
derived from perceptual input, the data of Spelke and others do not in and of
themselves speak to conceptual knowledge as defined here. To say that an
inherent conception of the physical world determines infant perception (Spelke,
1985) may mean no more than that the system is preset to parse the perceptual
array into objects rather than, say, colored patches. There is nothing antithetic to
the notion of an exclusively sensorimotor form of representation in this view. To
say that the starting parameters of the perceptual system produce object perception rather than patch perception does deemphasize one type of constructive
activity that was a focus of Piagets theory of sensorimotor development, but this
approach does not require conscious access to such information on the part of the
infant. Nor does it require a symbolic, or conceptual, form of representation or
the ability to think about objects in their absence.
In sum, the current data on early object perception are not inherently incompatible with the notion of a sensorimotor stage. On the other hand, there are some
types of data, having to do with conceptual functioning, that are incompatible

1 Nelson(1974, 1985)has long arguedthat evenearlyconceprsare based on knowledge of


function.Morerecently,Leslie(1986)andKeil (1987)alsoaffirmedthetheory-based
natureof early
concepts.
2 Recently,Kellman(1988)andSpeike(1988)havediscussed
theseissuesin moredetail;Kellman
also concludes
theory.

that the phenomena

of early object

perception

can be handled

within

a strictly

perceptual

How

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a Baby

with the notion of a purely sensorimotor stage of representation. I turn to these


next.
Conceptual Development in Infancy
One of the important distinctions Piaget made between sensorimotor and conceptual representation was that the latter required a symbol system. That is, to access
a concept requires a symbol to refer to it.j Piaget claimed that until such time as
infants can fomi symbols. they are restricted in their mental life to sensorimotor
procedures; they can recognize and act on things but are said to have no capacity
to recall, to image, to anticipate the future in any explicit way, or to refer to
things.
It is less clear in this view whether infants can be said to be forming concepts
or not. That is, Piaget was not explicit as to whether symbols are required for
forming concepts or only for accessing and manipulating them. In either case,
Piaget considered the acquisition of the ability to symbolize to be a long, slow
process. He did not suggest that symbols appear out of thin air at the end of the
sensorimotor stage; rather. they were said to be the culmination of a gradual
transfomlation of sensorimotor information that extends over many months.
Protracted acquisition of the ability to symbolize, however, raises a number of
questions. particularly about the storage of information in a conceptual form. For
example, what kind of conceptual information is being stored, and /tow is it
stored before the process of symbolization is complete? This is the same question
as raised above: are symbols required for storing knowledge in an accessible
conceptual system as well as for accessing it? And, if symbols are not required
for storage but only for access, what is the information like that is being stored?
That is, while one is developing symbols and has some crude approximation to
them but not yet the real thing, does the knowledge being partially or imperfectly
symbolized get lost. does it get integrated with sensorimotor schemas, or what?
These are crucial issues to consider. If one posits a system with a qualitative shift
from one form of representation to another, not only must one trace the development of the means to access infomlation from the new system (as Piaget did
with his discussion of symbols), but one must also characterize the nature of the
information that has been stored there over time.
The position taken here is that the information stored in an accessible knowledge system must be laid down in a symbolic. code in the first place. How that
might be done in infancy, along with a few comments about the possible nature
of that code, are discussed later in the section The Conditions of Conscious
Access. The present section and the next concentrate on the issue of the sym-

3 This is not an indisputable


notion; for example.
current conncctionist
theories do not use
symbol systems (Rumelhart
& McClelland,
1986). On the other hand, connectionist
theories have not
yet tackled the problem of what is required for access of information
to consciousness.
In general,
this class

of models

seems

better

able to handle

sensorimotor

processing

than conceptual

thought.

120

Jean M. Mandler

bols that might be available to infants for purposes of accessing information


from
such a store. In particular,
WC arc looking for signs in infancy of conceptual
functioning.
as indexed by any type of symbolic activity.
It is important
to be clear that I am using the term .ry/nbo/ as a vehicle of
thought and not to refer to a means of communication
or external referencing,
such as found in language or pointing.
For purposes of understanding
early
conceptual access. we need to maintain something like Piagets usage as the most
general term to refer to signifiers of meaning. Indeed. Piagct spcculatcd that the
earliest and most primitive
form of symbol or signifier
is merely an inlagc.J
Therefore,
WC cannot equate early gestures. conventional
signs. or words with
symbolization
in this scnsc. When we obscrvc an infant making a conventional
gesture or sign, we arc seeing an already advanced form of signification,
one
influenced
by both communicative
needs and cultural transmission.
Thus, although conventional
gestures and words provide convincing
cvidencc for symbolic thought. the fact that they occur relatively late is not in itself evidence that
symbolic or conceptual activity does not exist at an earlier period.
The first conventional
gestures typically
begin around 9 months and words
around 10 months; there arc, however. two types of observation
that suggest
symbolic or signifying
activity at earlier ages. The first of these is what Piaget
called motor recognition.
Piagct observed that, from 5 to 6 months of age. his
children would spontaneously
make an abbreviated motor response to a familiar
object. For example, from across the room Lucienne caught sight of a familiar
toy that used to be in her crib; she then made an abbreviated
version of the
kicking movement she had typically performed
when interacting
with the toy.
Piaget considered
this phenomenon
to be only a precursor of genuine symbolic
activity because it was a partial recreation of an established scnsorimotor
activity. (Of course, we would have no means of observing symbolic activity if it
were not accompanied
by an external fomi of some sort.) Nevertheless,
he
described motor recognition
as a case of the child taking note of and classifying
an object, expressing understanding
of it to herself by using an associated bodily
movement
to characterize
it. Thus, this type of gesture seems to refer to a
concept of a particular object; as Piaget pointed out, it appears to be a comment,
such as, Oh, theres that toy. This is the kind of comment that we usually

J This usage of the term swbol


differs from that of Peirce (1933; see Ba~cs. 1979a. for discussion). In Peirces terminology,
it is the term .Gpt that is used for the broadest category of referential
functions,
with symbol being restricted
IO signs that have conventional
meaning. In Pcirces usage. as
in almost all discussions
of symbolic
development,
symbols are inextricably
bound up with communication.
Piagets terminology
and the one followed here is aligned instead with that of Whitehcad
(1928; see Newell,
1980, for discussion).
Whitehead
(1928) says, The human mind is functioning
symbolically
when some components
of its experience
elicit consciousness,
beliefs. emotions.
and
usages, respecting
other components
of its experience.
The former set of components
are the symbols, and the latter set constitute
the meaning
of the symbols.
The organic functioning
whereby
there is transition
from the symbol to the meaning will be called symbolic
reference
(p, 9).

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associate with an accessible knowledge system, as opposed to mere perceptual


recognition.
The other type of observation indicating symbolic or signifying activity at an
early age comes from the literature on the early acquisition of manual signs by
infants learning sign language, such as American Sign Language (ASL). It has
been noted by a number of authors that such signs begin to appear earlier (often
from 5% to 7 months) than do spoken words in infants learning an aural language
(e.g., Bonvillian, Orlansky, & Novack, 1983; Prinz & Prinz, 1979). The status
of these early signs vis-a-vis language acquisition is unclear (see Bates, OConnell, & Shore, 1987), but the issue here is not language but whether or not such
manual gestures implicate an underlying conceptual system at work.
There has not been much information in the literature on the contexts surrounding the first appearance of manual signs (or precursors of signs). This is
unfortunate, because it seems worthwhile to try to relate imitative gestures based
on observation of others, which is the origin of ASL signs, to the gestures based
on the childs own actions toward an object, which is the phenomenon of motor
recognition that Piaget described. However, Elissa Newport (personal communication, 1987) has described in some detail the history of the first sign used by
her daughter. Susanna. Susanna is growing up bilingual in English and ASL. The
first recognizable sign that she produced was the gesture meaning finished. It
had been used many times by her parents at the end of meals and. between 5 and
6 months of age, she began using it herself at the end of a meal. Although clearly
imitative in origin, it might not have had any symbolic or conceptual import at
that point and may have been no different than putting her face up to be wiped
(that is, a kind of motor anticipation). But, at 7 months, Susanna began using this
gesture when she didnt want to eat any more, turning her head away from the
looming spoon while she executed it. It is much harder in the latter case to ignore
the conceptual (nonsensorimotor) implications of the use of a gesture to express a
desired state of affairs.
This and other examples of early manual signing bear a strong resemblance to
Piagets description of motor recognition. There may be no important distinction
between referring to or making a comment about something by means of ones
own typical action or by means of imitating anothers typical action. In either
case, concepts are being explicitly represented and, apparently, both routes to
such expression are available to 6-month-old infants.
Such early symbolic or conceptual functioning is the first that has actually

5 The example also strongly


suggesls communicarivc
scope of this discussion,
it is of intcrcst
that possibly

inrcnt. Although
separate strands

the latter is beyond


of communication

the
and

reference
may be coming together at this point in dcvclopmenl.
Communicative
intent is present in
1977). but it has generally
been
infants from perhaps as early as 2 IO 3 months (c.g.. Trevarihcn.
described as contentlcss
(Newson.
1977). In the prcscnt example, the infant scans to bc communicating content,
not just making communicative
contact with the parents.

122

Jean

M. Mandler

been observed. However, we have no reason to assume that there is no conceptual functioning before the onset of the ability to express concepts through
gesture. Piagets hypothesis that imagery is the earliest form of symbolization
places signification where it rightly belongs-in
the mental, not gestural or
vocal. sphere. He believed, of course, that imagery is a late-blooming process,
not present until the second year of life. Before this time, infants were said to
have only contentless expectations of anticipated events. However, Piaget cited
no evidence for this position. and 1 think we can discern evidence against it.
The most damaging evidence against the notion of an imageless infant would
be the demonstration of the ability to recall. Piaget defined recall as the evocation
of absent objects, a definition similar to that most of us would espouse: the
ability to re-present to our conscious minds something experienced before, in the
absence of any current perceptual support. By this definition. recall requires an
image or other type of symbol or signifier to refer to the absent object. Also, by
definition, if the infant is able to recall absent objects, it must have an accessible
knowledge system. Thus, although we cannot observe conceptual thought directly, if we can observe behavior that could occur only if conceptual thought
were possible, we can deduce that underlying conceptual activity is taking place.
It was for this reason, I believe, that Piaget was at some pains to suggest that
before Stage VI infants have not yet acquired the capacity for imagery (Piaget,
1951). If infants can image something, they have a potential symbol at their
disposal for use in recall or in other types of thinking that is independent of
ongoing sensorimotor routines. In fact, the onset of recall was for Piaget the
hallmark of the borderline between the sensorimotor and the conceptual stages.
Therefore, Piaget posited that the onset of imagery is a late development. the end
point of a long period during which only imageless anticipation is possible.
Because imagery is so difficult to study directly (even in adults), the best way to
tackle the problem would seem to be to study recall. Demonstrating recall in
preverbal infants is also not easy but, if successful, it would demonstrate an
accessible conceptual system. as well as imagery or some other symbolic form of
representation.
Recall in Infancy
What evidence is there for a capacity to recall in the first year of life? The
existing evidence comes mostly from the second 6 months, some of it from
Piagets own observations. For example, he noted that from 6 months onward if
one of his children placed an object behind her. a little later she might reach
around to retrieve it. He called this a deferred circular reaction, and classified it
as a sensorimotor schema (Piaget, 1952). It seems unlikely, however. that such
behavior could be explained as the operation of a simple motor procedure,
whether delayed or not, or by the notion that an object is conceived as an
extension of a reaching movement. What set the procedure off? Why did it occur
only when an object had been deposited at a given place? Gratch (1975) has

How

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123

pointed out that infants do not search in the A-not-B paradigm when no object
has been hidden, thus making the hypothesis that they frequently reach out for
nonexistent objects unlikely.h Thus, something has to set the reaching procedure
in operation and, because of the variable, even unique, aspects of this kind of
situation, it cannot be the motor anticipation found in practiced routines. It seems
far more likely that what sets the procedure off is recall-the infant remembers
where the object is (see Sophian, 1980, for a similar argument). The infant may
or may not explicitly conceptualize the abandoned object itself-she might
merely recall that something was there or that she had put something there. In
either case, the infant would be recalling a fact (which might be glossed as My
doll is behind me or 1 put something behind me). Such a fact must have
been recovered from an accessible store of facts, that is, from a nonsensorimotor
store of information.
An explicit
conceptualization seems even more likely to be required in some
of the examples of recall of location reported by Ashmead and Perlmutter (1979,
1980) in children as young as 7 months (the earliest age they studied). Furthermore, these examples often concern unique occurrences.
In one, a 9-month-old
girl was described as being accustomed to play with ribbons kept in the bottom
drawer of a dresser. One day the girl crawled to the dresser and opened the
bottom drawer but found no ribbons. She then opened all the drawers until she
found the ribbons, which had been moved to the top drawer. The next day she
crawled to the dresser and immediately opened the top drawer and took out the
ribbons. It would be difficult to explain this performance in terms of contentless
expectation followed by recognition. It seems to require an explicit conceptualization of the new location of the ribbons. Even if one could couch this
behavior in terms of a familiar routine, one would be left with the necessity of
explaining how the infant updated her usual procedure so easily. This would not
be easy within the Piagetian theory of a still incomplete concept of the object at
this point in development and the likelihood of an A-not-B error in established
reaching routines. Note that this example and the example of deferred circular
reactions just described probably illustrate reminding rather than a deliberate
search of memory. However, reminding is a respectable form of recall (see J.
Mandler, 1984a) and, whether incidental or deliberate, recall by definition requires an accessible knowledge representation.
Another type of evidence for recall during this period comes from recent work
on deferred imitation (Meltzoff, 1988). It has been widely assumed that deferred
imitation does not occur until approximately 18 months. However. in a carefully
controlled experiment, Meltzoff found that 9-month-olds could imitate three
different actions that they had seen perfomled 24 hours earlier. The infants had
not been given the opportunity to perform the actions themselves, so they must
h The A-not-B
A and successfully

error is said to occur when


finding it, reaches again

an infant, having watched an object hidden at location


to A after watching
the object hidden at location
B.

124

JeanM. Mandler

have recalled what they had seen the day before rather than merely reproducing a
previously learned action schema. It is of particular interest that the infants
performed just as well after 24 hours as they did after a delay of a few minutes.
Although the relevant experiments have not yet been carried out, it seems likely
that if 9-month-olds can recall several new actions after 24 hours. younger
infants could recall similar actions over shorter delays.
There are a few other pieces of experimental work suggesting recall at even
earlier ages, although the delays that have been used are quite short. An experiment by Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985) was designed to show that
5-month-olds know something about the permanence of objects, but it also
contains data re!evant to the ability to recall. Infants were shown an opaque
screen that rested on a table in front of them. The screen slowly rotated away
from the child through 180 until it again rested flat on the table; then it rotated
back to its original position. After the infant habituated to this rotating display, a
box was moved behind the screen while the infant watched. Then the screen
started rotating again. It either made the exact rotation as before or else moved
backward through 120. stopping at the point where it would have hit the box.
then moved forward again. Even though the latter display was different from
amything seen during habituation, the infants dishabituated only a little, whereas
they dishabituated much more to the 180 movement that was exactly the SCIIHC
as
they had seen before. This is one of those rare cases in which it, is legitimate to
use dishabituation or surprise to infer something more than recognition. If only
recognitory processes were at work, the infant should have continued to habituate to the test display. Thus, the most likely explanation for this finding is that
the infant remembered the box was there-hidden behind the screen-and was
surprised to see the screen move through the space where the box should be.
Recently, Baillargeon (1987) has shown that 4-month-olds also pass these tests,
although only some 3-month-olds do.
Similar experiments have shown that infants not only remember that something is hidden behind the screen but also where it is located. Baillargeon (1986)
habituated 6- and 8-month-olds to a car running down a track. Then a box was
placed either on the track or behind it. Next. a screen was lowered, hiding the
portion of the track where the block had been placed, and the car was again sent
down the track. Even though they could not see the block, infants dishabituated
to the display in the situation in which the block was on the track. but not in the
situation in which the block was behind the track. These data indicate quite
accurate memory for where the block had been placed. Although involving a
shorter time span, this work provides an experimental verification of the type of
observational evidence provided by Ashmead and Perlmutter (1979. 1980).
The delays in these experiments were short. For example, in the Baillargeon
box and screen experiments, on each of the impossible trials the Uox was only
out of view for 8 s. Perhaps one could explain this kind of performance in ternIs
of some type of perceptual inference, but a delay of even 8 s seems too long for

How

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such an explanation. The infant must remember that something out of sight is
still there. Thus, even with short delays, the data suggest a re-presentational
response rather than a sensorimotor response to a presentation. In addition,
Leslie (1988) has pointed out that perceptual input systems are impervious to the
contradiction these experiments present to an observer. and so some kind of
central thought must be involved. Therefore, recall seems a more appropriate
term than perceptual inference, although some might prefer the language of
running a mental model of past events, a model that conflicts with the present
perception. Either interpretation, however, requires an accessible representational system.
Actually, the length of the period of holding something in mind for the 4- and
5-month-olds in the Baillargeon experiments is longer than one might predict on
the basis of recent data on the A-not-B search task (Diamond, 1985). This
paradigm has been treated as a kind of recall task because of the persistent
searching for an absent object that it evokes (Sophian, 1980). Diamond (1985)
charted the delays that infants can tolerate in finding a hidden object from about 6
months of age. At first, a delay of 2 or 3 s is sufficient to cause an error, with the
length of tolerable delay increasing slowly by about 2 s a month. For whatever
delay a given infant can handle, increasing it increases the likelihood of error and
lessening it eliminates the error. It looks as if the error occurs whenever the delay
is greater than the short-term memory span of the infant. However, as Diamond
pointed out, infants who know where the object is (because the covers of the
hiding places are transparent) or who can accurately remember where it is hidden
may still reach incorrectly because of a failure to inhibit the previously trained,
successful motor response. Not only did the infants typically correct their wrong
choices, sometimes when they uncovered the wrong well, they didnt even
bother to look in it but immediately reached to the correct spot. They also
sometimes looked intently at the correct hiding spot even as their hand reached to
the wrong place.
We see such discrepancies even in adults when conditioned expectations or
motor responses have been set up. A nice demonstration of this is an experiment
by Chromiak and Weisberg (1981). who adapted a technique used by Bower,
Broughton, and Moore (197 1) and Nelson (197 1) with infants. In these experiments, infants watched a train running along a track, entering a tunnel, and then
reappearing at the other end. Over a period of trials, the infants learned to
anticipate the train coming out the end of the tunnel, and their eyes would move
ahead in preparation for the sight. If the train stopped in full view before entering
the tunnel, the infants still moved their eyes to the end of the tunnel. Does this
finding mean that the infants thought the train could be in two places at once?
Not necessarily. Chromiak and Weisberg (1981) found that adults did the same
thing. Once the conditioned expectation was set up, their eyes also moved to the
end of the track when the train stopped in full view.
For purposes of the present discussion, the point is that if we want to assess

126

Jean

M. Mandler

how long infants can rcmembcr something, in the sense of keeping it in


awareness when it is out of sight. WC must not test their memory span in a
situation that sets up persevcrative motor tendencies. Adults who arc caught in
these situations can tell us that they recall something correctly even when they
make the wrong response (as, for cxamplc, adult patients with frontal lobe
lesions arc prone to do); but infants do not have language and cannot tell us what
they remember.
Infants of 6 months are not yet skilled at coordinating their motor responses.
Because they also dont point or talk, that makes it very difficult to find appropriate tasks to measure what they can recall. However, less than perfect performance on a motor task such as reaching cannot bc taken as evidence for a lack of
a conceptual system. We have seen what looks like recall from such a system,
albeit over a short time span, in children as young as 4 months and clear cases 01
recall, over much longer periods of time, a few months later. Such recall constitutes the best available evidence for an accessible conceptual system; its early
occurrence is incompatible with the notion of a scnsorimotor stage.

THE CONDITIONS

OF CONSCIOUS

ACCESS

The notion that conceptual thought is gradually created out of previously learned
sensorimotor schemas has been widely accepted. As a result, there has been little
theoretical discussion of alternative bases for early conceptual development. The
question that needs to be posed is the following: If an accessible knowledge
system is operative as young as 4 to 6 months, where does it come from? What
mechanism accounts for its formation? Clearly. the mechanism cannot consist of
a transformation of overlearned action schemas such as object manipulation,
because these schemas are still too primitive at this age. Just as clearly, perception is involved but, because it is reasonable to assume that there are organisms
that perceive but do not have conceptual systems. perception alone cannot be
enough. We are seeking a mechanism for constructing concepts or ideas about
things.
The formulation I propose is this: In addition to being able to perceive, infants
are born with the capacity to engage in perceptual analysis. By perceptual analysis, I mean a symbolic process (probably conscious) by which one perception is
actively compared with another. This process can occur either simultaneously
(by comparing two objects with each other) or sequentially (by comparing a
present object with a previously stored representation). Often such comparisons
involve categorization: This is like that. Sometimes they merely involve
noting a previously unattended aspect of a perceptual array. But, in all these
cases, an analytic process is at work, doing conceptual thought rather than
primitive recognition. 1 assume that the process is similar to that described in
adults as elaborative processing, that is, the relating of one mental content to
another (G. Mandler, 1979, in press). Of course, the adult has an existing set of

How

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127

concepts available to be elaborated. The infant must rely on perceptual analysis


to begin the creation of such concepts.
Perceptual analysis, which makes up a sizeable part of our conscious ideation
in adulthood, might be quite primitive in the newborn. And, due to the immaturity of the central nervous system in the first few months of life, the results of
such comparison processes might not make it into long-term storage and thus
would not bc accessible later. Nevertheless, 1 suggest that there are signs of such
analysis occurring from an early age and, by the second 6 months of life,
perceptual analysis constitutes an important part of the childs mental activity.
The second part of this formulation states that the results of perceptual analysis (and, in the preverbal child, only the results of such analysis) are stored in an
accessible representational system. In this view, it is not possible even for adults
to access the information that, say, apples are red, unless they have been told that
this is the case. or they have had occasion to have noticed and thought about the
color of apples. The latter means that some comparison has taken place, such as
noting that apples look like oranges except for their color, or that apples look like
tomatoes, and so forth.7 Under many circumstances, we do not make such
comparisons. That is why we cannot recall surprisingly many details of our
experiences (the color of the clothes your dinner companion wore last night,
whether or not a newly met acquaintance wears glasses, and countless other
examples). We negotiate the world without storing many of its aspects in our
accessible conceptual store, because our sensorimotor procedures carry us along
so effectively, and because our conscious attention is reserved for less mundane
matters. The newborn presumably finds little that is mundane.
In the newborn, the conceptual primitives that are available with which to
make any such comparisons seem likely to be both few in number and global in
character. How might the sight and feel of a nipple be conceptualized? We know
from the work of Meltzoff and Borton ( 1979) that the perceptual system is
capable of fairly complex intermodal recognition of the roughness or smoothness
of a nipple. But, even as adults, we tend to be reduced in our conceptunlization
of such differences to fairly global notions of bumps and glides. How much more
primitive an infants early conceptualization of nipples might be is difficult to
say. And, given the language-saturated character of adult concepts, it is apt to be
extremely difficult for the theorist to begin to characterize the conceptual primitives of the newborn.* The point to be emphasized here, however, is that the
One cannot arrive at this information
de noro merely by scanning
the image itself is constructed
from processes of perceptual
analysis.

an image of an apple, because


If you have never noticed that

Gemran Shepherds
have cars that stand up in a certain way, you can not answer Kosslyns
(1980)
famous question. except by guessing. Typically.
of course. we do not remember whether or not we
ever noticed such ears; we inspect our image and either do or do not find the answer.
s This is a difficulty
that cannot be escaped by any theory because the earliest concepts,
whenever
and however
formed.
will present fomridable
problems
of description.
Such problems
will exist
whether
the description
is couched
in low-level
symbolic
terms (e.g., Leslie, in press) or, as
suggested

here,

in terms

more

appropriate

to conscious

thought.

128

lean M. Mandler

sensory information used to make the perceptual discrimination must not only be
reduced but also must be encoded into a different representational format if a
concqt of nipple is to be formed.
The notion of perceptual analysis can be related to Werner and Kaplans
(1963)concept of a contemplative attitude toward objects. Werner and Kaplan discerned the beginnings of this differentiation between acting on objects
and regarding or contemplating them as early as 3 to 5 months of age. However,
because they defined contemplation as being opposed to action, they assumed
that a true attitude of contemplation could not emerge as long as the infant was
spending time reaching for and manipulating objects. To my knowledge, there is
no evidence that motor activity and contemplation are antithetical; on the contrary, when infants examine objects, they often combine intense looking with
manual manipulation (Ruff, 1986; Uzgiris, 1967).
Beyond observing intense concentration, it is difficult to know how to measure perceptual analysis (as opposed to mere seeing) in a preverbal person. Piaget
used a detailed observational analysis of complex imitative behavior in infants at
stage IV and beyond to document such analysis. There are also a few examples in
the experimental literature that suggest such analysis is going on. For example,
Fox, Kagan, and Weiskopf (1979) report that before 6 to 7 months, infants
merely look at a new toy when a pair of toys-one old and one new-is
presented to them. After that time, they increasingly look back and forth between
the two. In the behaviorist period of psychology, this was called vicarious trial
and error, or VTE behavior. a term that comfortably externalized a mental
comparison process.
A good example of such behavior in infants is provided by Janowsky (1985).
She presented to infants a pair of line drawings of faces for six trials; one of these
was a canonically arranged face, the other was scrambled. Following these
presentations, the infants were habituated to the normal face. Then they were
given six more trials of the paired comparison between the normal and scrambled
face. A longitudinal design was used, with the infants being tested first at 4
months and then at 8 months. On most measures, there were no significant
differences between the two ages. At both ages, the children preferred the normal
face in the initial paired comparison, took about the same amount of time to
habituate, and looked at the stimuli about the same amount of time during the
comparison trials. However, there was a large difference between the two ages in
the number of times the infants looked back and forth between the two stimuli on
the first trial of the paired-comparison tests. 9 At 4 months, the infants switched
their looking back and forth between the two stimuli on average 1.7 and I.8
times, respectively, on the first trial of the pre- and posttests. Thus, they did
some comparing of the two stimuli but did not increase the amount of com9 The datareponedherearefirsI-triallookingtimes.extractedfrom the overalllookingtimesfor
normalinfantsreponedin Janowsky(1985).Eachtrial lasted for 8 s.

How

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a Baby

parison after familiarization with one of the stimuli. At 8 months, on the other
hand, they switched back and forth between the two stimuli on average 2.8 and
4.5 times, respectively. on the pre- and posttests. Thus, when they were older,
infants compared the faces initially more than they did at the younger age;
furthermore, when they became accustomed to one stimulus and then were given
a new opportunity to compare it to another, they did so at a rate two and a half
times greater than they did when they were younger. I0
The kind of comparison process that these data indicate is different from the
simpler process of recognition. As discussed earlier, habituation to an old stimulus and dishabituation to a new one happen from birth, but a change in a
recognitory procedure does not itself imply the accessing of information from an
accessible knowledge store, nor does it imply awareness or consciousness of
familiarity or novelty. Although awareness of familiarity r?rnybe present from a
young age, infant recognition data can be explained equally well without it.
Active comparison of two objects, on the other hand, seems likely to require
conscious awareness; it represents the kind of mental activity that consciousness
is ideally suited for (G. Mandler, 1985). Whether or not the act of analysis itself
is conscious, however, the findings described by Fox et al. (1979) and by
Janowsky ( 1985) seem to be good examples of the kind of active analysis of
objects and events that Piaget thought was required for image formation. He
insisted that such analysis occurred only at a later age, but his own observations
of earlier imitation seem equally amenable to explanation in terms of perceptual
analysis.
I think it likely that Piaget and lnhelder (197 I) were correct in assuming that
images are not formed through repeated perception alone (although the hypothesis remains untested). However, they provided no evidence that the perceptual
analysis required for image formation is such a late-blooming process. Piagets
careful descriptions of his children, between the ages of 8 months and 1 year,
learning to imitate blinking their eyes and sticking out tongues, are replete with
observations suggesting that the infants were actively trying to analyze what the
model was doing. However, the analysis involved in understanding such complex activities is just as apparent in his descriptions of imitation of simpler
activities at earlier ages. In addition, the examining schema, in which objects are
lo 1 assume that a similar
kind of perceptual
comparison
is also responsible
for the onset of
stranger anxiety at around 6 to 7 months. II appears that the strangers
appearance
is being compared
(unfavorably)
with an accessible
representation
of the absent mother or other familiar caretaker
(see
Kagan, 1979).
I This is one of the reasons why infant habituation
studies cannot easily be compared
to adult
recognition
tests. Adults are required to scry that they have seen a stimulus before; that is. the adult
form of the recognition
test requires conscious
awareness
of familiarity.
When the adults are amnesic, they often cannot attest to the familiarily
of a stimulus,
and some sort of priming test must be
used to show that the stimulus
is familiar (e.g., Shimamura.
1986): such a test is similar in spirit to
the habituation-dishabituation

studies

conducted

with

infants.

130

Jean M. Mandler

intensively explored from many angles, is already well established by 7 months


(Ruff. 1986).
For perceptual analysis to be said to have taken place. Piaget required that
something ,teup be imitated, and preferably something seen that the infant could
not observe herself doing. However, even imitating something familiar requires
perceptual analysis. For example, Piagets children could imitate clapping hands
in the 4th month. Piaget (195 I) accounted for this phenomenon by noting that,
when the infant becomes capable of co-ordinating the movements of his hands
with his vision, he acquires simultaneously the power of imitating certain movements of other hands, by assimilating them to his own (p. 14). But the assimilation required is not so simple. Some analysis must be required to make the
connection between large hands seen from in front and small hands seen from
above (see Meltzoff. 1981).
Piaget used the language of deliberate attention to describe his infants attempts at imitation as early as Stage II. He spoke of them watching him carefully
or attentively and of studying their own actions, of engaging in intentional
reproduction. He was not using this language in any technical sense, of course.
But it is suggestive that the tenor of his descriptions does not vary in this regard
from the imitative phenomena he described at 3 months to that occurring at I
year or beyond.
Careful examination of Piagets account of the imitation occurring even in the
early months shows many examples indicating the process 1 have called perceptual analysis. It involves close attention to. and examination of. one or more
stimuli. It does not seem to differ in kind whether the behavior to be imitated is
old or new to the infant. although, in the latter case, the process is more drawn
out and therefore somewhat more obvious. Indeed, infant imitation of the intentional, voluntary type that Piaget described (as opposed to what may be more
reflexive imitative responding in the neonate) seems to be an example par
excellence of the early sources of an accessible knowledge system.
In the view of the mind being propounded here, sensorimotor representation is
never consciously accessible as such (G. Mandler. 1985; J. Mandler. 1984a.
1984b: Marcel, 1983). When we introspect about our sensorimotor procedures,
we do not actually observe the procedures themselves, only their products. When
we try to observe the mechanisms at work, the best we can do is to engage in
perceptual analysis to try to isolate some of the parts. But, even with practice, the
resulting observations are always filtered through consciousness and the concepts
it uses to make sense of the world. For example, as you watch yourself tie a
shoelace, you note that you make a loop and then pull the other lace around it.
(Even watching carefully. however. you may not be able to conceptualize what
happens in the middle of this procedure). But, think of those concepts: tie, lace,
and loop. These are not the terms of a sensorimotor system-they
are the
concepts of a conscious observing mind, using a system of previously developed
and accessible categories of thought. These concepts are also heavily verbally

How

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131

saturated, but, as we have seen, that is not a requirement for an accessible


representational system. At the same time, it should be noted that verbal information is already prepackaged (by virtue of its symbolic fomrat) to be stored in
such a system. and much of our accessible knowledge arrives in the declarative
store by that route.
What 1 am proposing, then, is that verbal information and the results of
perceptual analysis or comparison are stored in a conceptual knowledge system,
and that this is the only kind of information that is accessible for purposes of
recall or conscious thought. I further assume that the availability of such a system
is a prerequisite for conscious awareness. I7 Sensorimotor procedures, as well as
the procedures involved in retrieval, semantic activation, lexical access, and the
like, are not accessible, although we can and do observe various way stations in
processing and make theories from them about how our minds work (G. Mandler, 1985). We typically assume that the taking of such a theoretical stance is an
adult activity; however, even the simple conceptual attributions of the infant are
formed out of the same sort of activity: conscious constructions that are fundamentally different from sensory registration.
It is obvious that I have been arguing for a dual representational system. I do
this even though the extent to which we must distinguish between procedural and
declarative knowledge is still under debate. and the new connectionist movement
hopes to model all cognition with a single type of nonsymbolic process (e.g.,
Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). In spite of the controversies, however, my
sense is that most psychologists believe there must be more than one representational format to the human mind. Reaching for an object is fundamentally different from having an image of that object, just as the perception of a face is
fundamentally different from the concept of justice. One does not need the
evidence of dissociations between procedural/implicit and declarative/explicit
knowledge in amnesia that has been adduced to support the distinction I have
been discussing (e.g., Cohen & Squire, 1980). The distinction is present in most
of the psychological phenomena we study (and in any theory that emphasizes the
impenetrability of various processes, e.g., Fodor, 1983).
Perceptual learning does not require awareness (e.g., Lewicki, Czyzewska, &
Hoffman, 1987) and conscious a:tempts to influence such learning often distort
or impede it (e.g., Berry & Broadbent, in press; Reber, Kassin, Lewis, &
Cantor, 1980). Recall requires different processes from recognition, and
awareness that something has been presented requires different processes from

I2 The availability
of such a system may also accnunt for the superiority
of observational
learning
in humans compared
with nonhuman-especially
nonprimate-species
(see Bates, 1979b3. In this
regard.
it may be noted thar Premacks
work on chimpanzees
strongly
suggests
that the basic
capacities
ascribed IO infants in this article also characterize
that species (e.g., Premack.
1983). That
there arc differences.
as well. is not in doubt. bur they do not stem to be due lo a lack of a capacity IO
image. conceptualize,
or be conscious.

132

Jean M. Mandler

priming (Graf & Mandler, 1984; Mandler, Nakamura, & Van Zandt, 1987).
Schema formation depends on accurate processing of frequency information, but
our conscious judgments about frequency are biased by the rare or unusual events
that have caught our attention, often leading to gross errors of judgment (e.g.,
Hamilton & Gifford, 1976: J. Mandler, 1984b. p. 35). Our motor procedures
faithfully reflect the laws of physics, but our theories of physical movement are
often fundamentally opposed to them (disessa, 1982; McCloskey & Kohl,
1983). The examples are everywhere and do not need to be as dramatic as the
double dissociations of amnesia or the misrepresentation of the number of fingers
on the hand in cultures that do not emphasize counting (Pontius. 1983).
We pay lip service to the principle, espoused by Nisbett and Wilson (1977),
that people tell (both themselves and others) more about their mental processes
than they really know, but I think we do not take the principle seriously enough.
There is much in our mental life that we cannot in principle observe; it is simply
inaccessible. All procedural knowledge is of this sort, and that includes sensorimotor procedures as well as activation of semantic networks, priming, retrieval. and the like. Only some kinds of perceptions and memories are accessible. and these must be organized differently from sensorimotor knowledge. If we
are to take the concepts of accessibility and inaccessibility seriously. there must
be more than one form of representation. None of this means that sensorimotor
and conceptual knowledge are not interconnected or that they do not influence
each other; they obviously do. The perceptual system provides the information
that gets interpreted conceptually. and the conceptual system often detemlines
what gets perceptually processed. So, it is just as reasonable to speak of a single,
multifaceted representational system. The temlinology doesnt matter, but how
one acquires and stores the two kinds of knowledge does.
Is it possible that conceptual knowledge grows out of sensorimotor knowledge. that by practicing and integrating perceptual and motor schemas long
enough they are finally rendered directly accessible? This is the essence of the
proposal for a sensorimotor stage as the foundation of later conceptual knowledge, as well as for many proposals as to why metacognitive knowledge grows
with development. I am dubious that things work in this way. It seems much
more likely that we gradually foml theories about the way our sensorimotor
procedures work and, with increasingly detailed perceptual analysis. these tend
to become more elaborate and systematic, not that we have the possibility of
access that was not there before.i3
I3 Karmiloff-Smith
(1986) proposed that during the syskmarization
of complex
cognitive
systems, procedural
knowledge
undergoes several levels of symbolic
redescription.
She also claims that
there is no direct access lo procedural
knowledge
itself: relationships
within these systems become
accessible
procedural

to consciousness
parts and these

theory to the question


notion of perceptual
infomlabon
delivered

only after
conneclions

connections
have been formed among
have been described.
Karmiloff-Smith

of access to the much simpler concepts


analysis,
as described
in the present
by the perceptual
input systems.

previously
has not

isolated

appliedher

of infancy. It is possible to translate


article.
as a type of redescription

the
of

How

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133

Thus, the main issue is whether or not we must start infants off with the
capacity to form concepts and to store them in a potentially accessible format. It
is for this reason that I have stressed the issue of recall in infancy. If it is the case
that infants can store information accessibly, then we should see some signs of it,
at least by the time that the central nervous system has reached a certain level of
maturity. 1 have presented evidence that there are such signs by 6 months or even
earlier. Such knowledge may be quite context bound, but that does not mean that
it is solely sensorimotor in nature. In fact, when I think about how to build a
baby, I find no way to proceed without the possibility of accessto some kinds of
information from the beginning. It is difficult to imagine a purely sensorimotor
organism, which stores information only by modifying procedures, suddenly
begin to make those procedures accessible to consciousness. There must be a
system that does the accessing, and so we have posited the system whose creation we are trying to explain.
We need a mechanism to accomplish the storage of information in accessible
form. 1 have suggested that the earliest mechanism is perceptual analysis or
comparison. When we just see we are unconscious-it is only when we analyze
or compare that we become fully aware human beings. It seems more reasonable
(and consonant with the available data) to say that we are born with the capacity
to engage in perceptual analysis and to store its results in an accessible form than
to say that this capacity depends on a prior history of sensorimotor functioning.

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Ashmead,

D. H., & Perlmutter.


meeting of the American
Ashmead.
D. H.. 6r Perlmutter.
New direcrionsjfor
clrild

M. (1979). Irtfa,rt nwnrorv in wqvdq


life. Paper presented at the
Psychological
Association,
New York.
M. (1980). Infant memory in everyday
life. In M. Perlmutter
(Ed.),
development:
Childrens
memory (Vol. IO). San Francisco:
Jossey-

Bass.
Baillargeon,
R. (1986). Representing
the existence
and the location of hidden objects: Object permanence in six- and eight-month-old
infants. Cogniriorr.
23. 21-41.
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