THE ORIGINS OF
INTELLIGENCE
IN CHILDREN
JEAN PIAGET
$6.00
THE ORIGINS OF
INTELLIGENCE IN CHILDREN
JEAN PIAGET
Translated by MARGARET COOK
This book deals with the origins
of intelligence in children and
contains original observations on
young children, novel experiments,
brilliant in their simplicity, which
the author describes in detail.
Piaget divides the growth of intel-
ligence into six sequential stages:
the use o reflexes; the first ac-
quired adaptations and primary
circular reaction; secondary circular
reactions and the child's procedures
for prolonging spectacles interest-
ing to him; the co-ordination of
secondary schemata and their ap-
plication to new situations; tertiary
circular reaction and the discovery
of new meauB through active ex-
and finally, the in-
of new means by mental
combination. Particular attention is
given to the formation of the sen-
sotimotor schemata and the mech-
anism! of mental assimilation. Pia-
get emphasizes the importance of
' which Jit '
on back
IAP 21 Wl
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3 1148 003274107
JUN 7
1980
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Piaget
The origins of intelligence in
children
r . A - T r
Tfce-
lni;elligence
in Children
THE ORIGINS
OF INTELLIGENCE
IN CHILDREN
JEAN PIAGET
Translated by
MARGARET COOK
INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES PRESS, INC.
New York New York
Copyright 1952, by International Universities Press, Inc.
Second Printing, October, 1956
Third Printing, March, 1965
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Foreword ......... ix
Introduction
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF
INTELLIGENCE 1
1. The Functional Invariants of Intelligence and Bio-
logical Organization ...... 3
2. Functional Invariants and the Categories of Reason 8
3. Hereditary Structures and Theories of Adaptation 13
Part 1
ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR
ADAPTATIONS 21
I. THE FIRST STAGE: THE USE OF REFLEXES . . 23
1. Sucking Reflexes ...... 25
2. The Use of Reflexes 29
3. Assimilation: Basic Fact of Psychic Life . 42
II. THE SECOND STAGE: THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTA-
TIONS AND THE PRIMARY CIRCULAR REACTION . 47
1. Acquired Sucking Habits .... 49
2. Vision 62
. o o a00&34
vi CONTENTS
3. Phonation and Hearing ... 76
4. Prehension 88
5. The First Acquired Adaptations: Conclu-
sions
Part II
THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR
ADAPTATIONS 145
III. THE THIRD STAGE: THE "SECONDARY CIRCULAR
REACTIONS" AND THE PROCEDURES DESTINED TO
MAKE INTERESTING SIGHTS LAST . . . .153
1. The "Secondary Circular Reactions" LThe
Facts and Reproductive Assimilations . .157
2. The Secondary Circular Reactions II. Ac-
commodation and Organization of the Sche-
mata 174
3. Recognitory Assimilation and the System of
Meanings . . . . . - .185
4. Generalizing Assimilation and the Constitu-
tion of "Procedures to Make Interesting Spec-
tacles Last" .196
IV. THE FOURTH STAGE: THE COORDINATION OF THE
SECONDARY SCHEMATA AND THEIR APPLICATION
TO NEW SITUATIONS 210
1. The "Application of Familiar Schemata to
New Situations" I. The Facts . . .212
2. The "Application of Familiar Schemata to
New Situations" II. Commentary . . 225
3. Assimilation, Accommodation and Organiza-
tion Peculiar to the Mobile Schemata . . 236
CONTENTS vii
4. The Recognition of Signs and Their Utili-
zation in Prevision ..... 247
5. The Exploration of New Objects and Phe-
nomena and the "Derived" Secondary Reac-
tions 253
V. THE FIFTH STAGE: THE "TERTIARY CIRCULAR RE-
ACTION" AND THE "DISCOVERY OF NEW MEANS
THROUGH ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION" . . 263
1. The Tertiary Circular Reaction . . .265
2. The Discovery of New Means by Experimen-
tation I. The "Sting" and the "Stick" . . 279
3. The Discovery of New Means Through Ac-
tive Experimentation II. Other Examples . 305
4. The Discovery of New Means Through Ac-
tive Experimentation III. Conclusions . 320
VI. THE SIXTH STAGE: THE INVENTION OF NEW MEANS
THROUGH MENTAL COMBINATIONS . . .331
1. The Facts 333
2. Invention and Representation . . .341
Conclusions
"SENSORIMOTOR" OR "PRACTICAL" IN-
TELLIGENCE AND THE THEORIES
OF INTELLIGENCE 357
1. Associationist Empiricism ..... 359
2. Vitalistic Intellectualism . . . . . 369
3. Apriority and the Psychology of Form . . . 376
4. The Theory of Groping 395
5. The Theory of Assimilation ..... 407
FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION
This work, a second edition of which has very kindly been
requested, was followed by La Construction du reel chez Fenfant
and was to have been completed by a study of the genesis of
imitation in the child. The latter piece of research, whose publi-
cation we have postponed because it is so closely connected with
the analysis of play and representational symbolism, appeared in
1945, inserted in a third work, La formation du symbole chez
I'enfant. Together these three works form one entity dedicated
to the beginnings of intelligence, that is to say, to the various
manifestations of sensorimotor intelligence and to the most ele-
mentary forms of expression.
The theses developed in this volume, which concern in par-
ticular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the
mechanism of mental assimilation, have given rise to much dis-
cussion which pleases us and prompts us to thank both our op-
ponents and our sympathizers for their kind interest in our work.
It is impossible to name here all the authors on whose observa-
tions we would like to comment, but we should single out for
mention the remarkable studies made by H. Wallon and P.
Guillaume.
In his fine work De I'acte a la pensee, HL Wallon did us the
honor of discussing our work at length; we have already com-
mented on this in La formation du symbole chez I' enfant. Wal-
lon's main idea is the distinction which he makes between the
realm of the sensorimotor (characterized by the "understanding
of situations") and that of expression (verbal intelligence). His
remarkable study on Les origines de la pensde chez I'enfant^ pub-
lished since, places the origins of thought at the age of four, as if
nothing essential transpired between the attainments of the
sensorimotor intelligence and the beginnings of conceptual ex-
pression. It is apparent how antithetical to everything we main-
ix
x FOREWORD
tain in this book this radical thesis is, and we can answer it today
by invoking two kinds of arguments.
In the first place, meticulous study of a definite area, that of
development of spatial perceptions, has led us with B. Inhelder
to discover an even greater correlation than there seemed to be
between the sensorimotor and the perceptual. Doubtless nothing
is directly transmitted from one of these planes to the other, and
all that the sensorimotor intelligence has constructed must first
be reconstructed by the growing perceptual intelligence before
this overruns the boundaries of that which constitutes its sub-
structure. But the function of this substructure is no less ap-
parent. It is because the baby begins by constructing, in coordi-
nating his actions, schemata such as those of the unchanging
object, the fitting in of two or three dimensions, rotations, trans-
positions, and superpositions that he finally succeeds in organiz-
ing his "mental space" and, between preverbal intelligence and
the beginnings of Euclidean spatial intuition, a series of "topo-
logical" intuitions are intercalated as manifested in drawing,
stereognosis, the construction and assembling of objects, etc.;
that is to say, in the areas of transition between the sensorimotor
and the perceptual.
In the second place, it is primarily preverbal sensorimotor
activity that is responsible for the construction of a series of
perceptual schemata the importance of which in the subsequent
structuring of thought cannot, without oversimplification, be
denied. Thus the perceptual constants of form and size are con-
nected with the sensorimotor construction of the permanent ob-
ject: For how could the four-year-old child think without having
reference to objects having form and invariable dimensions, and
how would he adapt his belief without a long preliminary de-
velopment by the sensorimotor?
Probably the sensorimotor schemata are not concepts, and
the functional relationship which we stress in this book does not
exclude the structural opposition of these extremes, despite the
continuity of the transitions. But, without preliminary schemata,
nascent thought would be reduced to mere verbalism, which
would make one suspicious of many of the acts mentioned by
Wallon in his latest work. But it is precisely on the concrete
FOREWORD xi
plane of action that infancy makes its intelligence most manifest
until the age of seven or eight, when coordinated actions are
converted into operations, admitting of the logical construction
of verbal thought and its application to a coherent structure.
In short, Wallon's thesis disregards the progressive con-
struction of performance and that is why it goes to extremes in
stressing the verbal at the expense of the sensorimotor whereas
the sensorimotor substructure is necessary to the conceptual for
the formation of the operational schemata which are destined to
function finally in a formal manner and thus to make language
consistent with thought.
As far as P. Guillaume's 1 very interesting study is concerned,
it, on the other hand, agrees in the main with our conclusions,
except in one essential point. In accordance with his interpreta-
tions influenced by "the theory of form," P. Guillaume presents a
fundamental distinction between the perceptual mechanisms
and the intellectual processes which explains the second in terms
of the first (the reverse of Wallon). This controversy is too
lengthy to consider in detail in a preface. Let us limit ourselves
to answering that the systematic study of the child's perceptions,
in which we have since collaborated with Lambertier 2 has, on the
contrary, led us to doubt the permanence of perceptual constants
in which P. Guillaume believes (the invariability of size, etc.) and
to introduce a distinction between instantaneous perceptions
which are always passive and a "perceptual activity" connecting
them with each other in space and time, according to certain
remarkable laws (in particular a mobility and reversibility in-
creasing with age). This perceptual activity, which the theory of
form partially disregards, is but one manifestation of the sensori-
motor activities of which preverbal intelligence is the expres-
sion. In the development of the sensorimotor schema in the first
year of life, there is undoubtedly a close interaction between
perception and intelligence in their most elementary states.
IP. Guillaume, L'intelli^ence sensori-motrice d'apres J. Piaget, Journal
de psychologic, April-June 1940-41 (years XXXVII-XXXVIII, pp. 264-280).
2 See Recherches sur le deVeloppement des perceptions (I-VIII), Archives
de psychologic, 1942-1947.
INTRODUCTION*
The Biological Problem of Intelligence
The question of the relationships between mind and bio-
logical organization is one which inevitably arises at the begin-
ning of a study of the origins of intelligence. True, a discussion
of that sort cannot lead to any really definite conclusion at this
time, but, rather than to submit to the implications of one of the
various possible solutions to this problem, it is better to make a
clear choice in order to separate the hypotheses which form the
point of departure for our inquiry.
Verbal or cogitative intelligence is based on practical or
sensorimotor intelligence which in turn depends on acquired and
recombined habits and associations. These presuppose, further-
more, the system of reflexes whose connection with the organism's
anatomical and morphological structure is apparent. A certain
continuity exists, therefore, between intelligence and the purely
biological processes of morphogenesis and adaptation to the
environment. What does this mean?
It is obvious, in the first place, that certain hereditary factors
condition intellectual development. But that can be interpreted
in two ways so different in their biological meaning that con-
fusing the one with the other is probably what has obfuscated the
classic controversy over innate ideas and epistemological a
priorism.
The hereditary factors of the first group are structural and
are connected with the constitution of our nervous system and
of our sensory organs. Thus we perceive certain physical radia-
* Another translation of this chapter was published in Organization and
Pathology of Thought, by David Rapaport (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1951). The footnote commentary to that translation provides an intro-
duction to Piaget's thinking, and may serve as an introduction to the investi-
gations and thinking contained in this volume.
2 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
tions, but not all of them, and matter only of a certain size, etc*
Now these known structural factors influence the building up of
our most fundamental concepts. For instance, our intuition of
space is certainly conditioned by them, even if, by means of
thought, we succeed in working out transintuitive and purely
deductive types of space.
These characteristics of the first type, while supplying the
intelligence with useful structures, are thus essentially limiting,
in contradistinction to the factors of the second group. Our per-
ceptions are but what they are, amidst all those which could
possibly be conceived. Euclidean space which is linked to our
organs is only one of the kinds of space which are adapted to
physical experience. In contrast, the deductive and organizing
activity of the mind is unlimited and leads, in the realm of space,
precisely to generalizations which surpass intuition. To the ex-
tent that this activity of the mind is hereditary, it is so in quite a
different sense from the former group. In this second type it is
probably a question of a hereditary transmission of the function
itself and not of the transmission of a certain structure. It is in
this second sense that H. Poincar was able to consider the
spatial concept of "group" as being a priori because of its connec-
tion with the very activity of intelligence.
We find the same distinction with regard to the inheritance
of intelligence. On the one hand, we find a question of struc-
ture: The "specific heredity" of mankind and of its particular
"offspring" admits of certain levels of intelligence superior to
that of monkeys, etc. But, on the other hand, the functional ac-
tivity of reason (the ipse intellectus which does not come from
experience) is obviously connected with the "general heredity" of
the living organism itself. Just as the organism would not know
how to adapt itself to environmental variations if it were not al-
ready organized, so also intelligence would not be able to appre-
hend any external data without certain functions of coherence
(of which the ultimate expression is the principle of noncontra-
diction), and functions making relationships, etc., which are
common to all intellectual organization.
Now this second type of hereditary psychological reality is
of primary importance for the development of intelligence. If
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 8
there truly in fact exists a functional nucleus of the intellectual
organization which comes from the biological organization in its
most general aspect, it is apparent that this invariant will orient
the whole of the successive structures which the mind will then
work out in its contact with reality. It will thus play the role that
philosophers assigned to the a priori; that is to say, it will impose
on the structures certain necessary and irreducible conditions.
Only the mistake has sometimes been made of regarding the a
priori as consisting in structures existing ready-made from the
beginning of development, whereas if the functional invariant of
thought is at work in the most primitive stages, it is only little by
little that it impresses itself on consciousness due to the elabora-
tion of structures which are increasingly adapted to the function
itself. This a priori only appears in the form of essential struc-
tures at the end of the evolution of concepts and not at their
beginning: Although it is hereditary, this a priori is thus the
very opposite of what were formerly called "innate ideas."
The structures of the first type are more reminiscent of classic
innate ideas and it has been possible to revive the theory of in-
nateness with regard to space and the "well-structured" percep-
tions of Gestalt psychology. But, in contrast to the functional
invariants, these structures have nothing essential from the point
of view of the mind: They are only internal data, limited and
delimiting, and external experience and, above all, intellectual
activity will unremittingly transcend them. If they are in a sense
innate, they are not a priori in the epistemological sense of the
term.
Let us analyze first the functional invariants, and then (in
3) we shall discuss the question raised by the existence of special
hereditary structures (those of the first type).
1. THE FUNCTIONAL INVARIANTS OF INTELLI-
GENCE AND BIOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION. Intelligence
is an adaptation. In order to grasp its relation to life in general
it is therefore necessary to state precisely the relations that exist
between the organism and the environment. Life is a con-
tinuous creation of increasingly complex forms and a progressive
balancing of these forms with the environment. To say that in-
4 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
telligence is a particular instance of biological adaptation is thus
to suppose that it is essentially an organization and that its func-
tion is to structure the universe just as the organism structures
its immediate environment. In order to describe the functional
mechanism of thought in true biological terms it will suffice to
determine the invariants common to all structuring of which life
is capable. What we must translate into terms of adaptation are
not the particular goals pursued by the practical intelligence in
its beginnings (these goals will subsequently enlarge to include
all knowledge), but it is the fundamental relationship peculiar
to consciousness itself: the relationship of thought to things* The
organism adapts itself by materially constructing new forms to
fit them into those of the universe, whereas intelligence extends
this creation by 'constructing mentally structures which can be
applied to those of the environment. In one sense and at the be-
ginning of mental evolution, intellectual adaptation is thus more
restricted than biological adaptation, but in extending the latter,
the former goes infinitely beyond it. If, from the biological point
of view, intelligence is a particular instance of organic activity
and if things perceived or known are a limited part of the en-
vironment to which the organism tends to adapt, a reversal of
these relationships subsequently takes place. But this is in no
way incompatible with the search for functional invariants.
In fact there exists, in mental development, elements which
are variable and others which are invariant. Thence stem the
misunderstandings resulting from psychological terminology some
of which lead to attributing higher qualities to the lower stages
and others which lead to the annihilation of stages and opera-
tions. It is therefore fitting simultaneously to avoid both the
preformism of intellectualistic psychology and the hypothesis of
mental heterogeneities. The solution to this difficulty is precisely
to be found in the distinction between variable structures and
invariant functions. Just as the main functions of the living being
are identical in all organisms but correspond to organs which are
very different in different groups, so also between the child and
the adult a continuous creation of varied structures may be ob-
served although the main functions of thought remain constant,
These invariant operations exist within the framework of
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 5
the two most general biological functions: organization and
adaptation. Let us begin with the latter, for if everyone recog-
nizes that everything in intellectual development consists of
adaptation, the vagueness of this concept can only be deplored.
Certain biologists define adaptation simply as preservation
and survival, that is to say, the equilibrium between the organism
and the environment. But then the concept loses all interest
because it becomes confused with that of life itself. There are
degrees of survival, and adaptation involves the greatest and the
least. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the state of
adaptation and the process of adaptation. In the state, nothing
is clear. In following the process, things are cleared up. There is
adaptation when the organism is transformed by the environ-
ment and when this variation results in an increase in the inter-
changes between the environment and itself which are favorable
to its preservation.
Let us try to be precise and state this in a formal way. The
organism is a cycle of physicochemical and kinetic processes
which, in constant relation to the environment, are engendered by
each other. Let a, b, c, etc., be the elements of this organized
totality and x, y, z, etc., the corresponding elements of the sur-
rounding environment. The schema of organization is therefore
the following:
The processes (1), (2), etc., may consist either of chemical
reactions (when the organism ingests substances x which it will
transform into substance b comprising part of its structure), or
of any physical transformations whatsoever, or finally, in par-
ticular, of sensorimotor behavior (when a cycle of bodily move-
ments a combined with external movements x result in b which
itself enters the cycle of organization). The relationship which
unites the organized elements a, b t c, etc., with the environmental
elements x, y f z, etc., is therefore a relationship of assimilation,
that is to say, the functioning of the organism does not destroy it
but conserves the cycle of organization and coordinates the given
6 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
data of the environment in such a way as to incorporate them In
that cycle. Let us therefore suppose that, in the environment, a
variation is produced which transforms x into x'. Either the
organism does not adapt and the cycle ruptures, or else adaptation
takes place, which means that the organized cycle has been
modified by closing up on itself:
If we call this result of the pressures exerted by the environ-
ment accommodation (transformation of b into b f ), we can ac-
cordingly say that adaptation is an equilibrium between assimila-
tion and accommodation.
This definition applies to intelligence as well. Intelligence is
assimilation to the extent that it incorporates all the given data of
experience within its framework. Whether it is a question of
thought which, due to judgment, brings the new into the known
and thus reduces the universe to its own terms or whether it is a
question of sensorimotor intelligence which also structures things
perceived by bringing them into its schemata, in every case in-
tellectual adaptation involves an element of assimilation, that is
to say, of structuring through incorporation of external reality
into forms due to the subject's activity. Whatever the differences
in nature may be which separate organic life (which materially
elaborates forms and assimilates to them the substances and
energies of the environment) from practical or sensorimotor in-
telligence (which organizes acts and assimilates to the schemata
of motor behavior the various situations offered by the environ-
ment) and separate them also from reflective or gnostic intelli-
gence (which is satisfied with thinking of forms or constructing
them internally in order to assimilate to them the contents of
experience) all of these adapt by assimilating objects to the
subject.
There can be no doubt either, that mental life is also ac-
commodation to the environment. Assimilation can never be
pure because by incorporating new elements into Its earlier
schemata the intelligence constantly modifies the latter in order
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 7
to adjust them to new elements. Conversely, things are never
known by themselves, since this work of accommodation is only
possible as a function of the inverse process of assimilation. We
shall thus see how the very concept of the object is far from being
innate and necessitates a construction which is simultaneously
assimilatory and accommodating.
In short, intellectual adaptation, like every other kind, con-
sists of putting an assimilatory mechanism and a complementary
accommodation into progressive equilibrium. The mind can only
be adapted to a reality if perfect accommodation exists, that is
to say, if nothing, in that reality, intervenes to modify the sub-
ject's schemata. But, inversely, adaptation does not exist if the
new reality has imposed motor or mental attitudes contrary to
those which were adopted on contact with other earlier given
data: adaptation only exists if there is coherence, hence assimila-
tion. Of course, on the motor level, coherence presents quite a
different structure than on the reflective or organic level, and
every systematization is possible. But always and everywhere
adaptation is only accomplished when it results in a stable sys-
tem, that is to say, when there is equilibrium between accom-
modation and assimilation.
This leads us to the function of organization. From the
biological point of view, organization is inseparable from adapta-
tion: They are two complementary processes of a single mecha-
nism, the first being the internal aspect of the cycle of which
adaptation constitutes the external aspect. With regard to in-
telligence, in its reflective as well as in its practical form, this
dual phenomenon of functional totality and interdependence
between organization and adaptation is again found. Concerning
the relationships between the parts and the whole which de-
termine the organization, it is sufficiently well known that every
intellectual operation is always related to all the others and that
its own elements are controlled by the same law. Every schema is
thus coordinated with all the other schemata and itself consti-
tutes a totality with differentiated parts. Every act of intelligence
presupposes a system of mutual implications and interconnected
meanings. The relationships between this organization and
adaptation are consequently the same as on the organic level.
8 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
The principal "categories" which intelligence uses to adapt to
the external world space and time, causality and substance,
classification and number, etc. each of these corresponds to an
aspect of reality, just as each organ of the body is related to a
special quality of the environment but, besides their adaptation
to things, they are involved in each other to such a degree that
it is impossible to isolate them logically. The "accord of thought
with things" and the "accord of thought with itself" express this
dual functional invariant of adaptation and organization. These
two aspects of thought are indissociable: It is by adapting to
things that thought organizes itself and it is by organizing itself
that it structures things.
2. FUNCTIONAL INVARIANTS AND THE CATE-
GORIES OF REASON. The problem now is to ascertain how
these functional invariants will determine the categories of reason,
in other words, the main forms of intellectual activity which are
found at all stages of mental development and whose first struc-
tural crystallizations in the sensorimotor intelligence we shall
now try to describe.
It is not a matter of reducing the higher to the lower. The
history of science shows that every attempt at deduction to
establish continuity between one discipline and another results
not in a reduction of the higher to the lower but in creating a
reciprocal relationship between the two terms which does not at
all destroy the originality of the higher term. So it is that the
functional relations which can exist between intellect and bio-
logical organization can in no way diminish the value of reason
but on the contrary lead to extending the concept of vital adap-
tation. It is self-evident that if the categories of reason are in a
sense preformed in biological functioning, they are not contained
in it either in the form of conscious or even unconscious struc-
tures. If biological adaptation is a sort of material understanding
of the environments, a series of later structures would be neces-
sary in order that conscious and gnostic image may emerge from
this purely active mechanism. As we have already said, it is there-
fore at the end and not at the point of departure of intellectual
evolution that one must expect to encounter rational concepts
Organization
Regulating function . . .
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 9
really expressing functioning as such, in contrast to the initial
structures which remain on the surface of the organism and of the
environment and only express the superficial relationships of
these two terms to each other. But in order to facilitate analysis
of the lower stages which we shall attempt in this work it can be
shown how the biological invariants just mentioned, once they
have been reflected upon and elaborated by consciousness during
the great stages of mental development, give rise to a sort of
functional a priori of reason.
Here, it seems to us, is the picture thus obtained:
Biological Functions Intellectual Functions Categories
A. Totality x
Relationship
(reciprocity)
B. Ideal (goal)
x Value
(means)
A. Quality x
Class
B. Quantitative
rapport 1 x
number
A. Object x
Space
B. Causality x
Time
The categories related to the function of organization con-
stitute what Hoeffding calls the "fundamental" or regulative
Hn this diagram we distinguish between "relationships'* in the most
general sense of the word and "quantitative rapport" which corresponds to
what is called, on the level of thought, the "logic of relationships." The rela-
tions which the latter envisages in contradistinction to the logic of classes are
always quantitative, regardless of whether they interpret "more" or "less" as
comparisons (for example, "more or less dark," etc.), or whether they simply
imply ideas of category or of series (for example, family relationships such
as "brother of etc*), which presuppose quantity. On the contrary, the rela-
tionships on a par with the idea of totality surpass the quantitative and only
imply a general relativity in the widest sense of the term (reciprocity between
the elements of a totality).
Adaptation .
Assimilation. . .Implicative
function
Accommodation . . . Explicative
function
10 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
"categories/* that is to say, they combine with all the others and
are found again in every psychic operation. It seems to us that
these categories can be defined, from the static point of view, by
the concepts of totality and relationship and, from the dynamic
point of view, by those of ideal and value.
The concept of totality expresses the interdependence in-
herent in every organization, intelligent as well as biological.
Even though behavior patterns and consciousness seem to arise
in the most uncoordinated manner in the first weeks of existence,
they extend a physiological organization which antedates them
and they crystallize from the outset into systems whose coherence
becomes clarified little by little. For example, what is the con-
cept of "displacement groups," which is essential to the formation
of space, if not the idea of organized totality making itself mani-
fest in movements? So also are the schemata belonging to
sensorimotor intelligence controlled from the very beginning
by the law of totality, within themselves and in their interrela-
tionships. So too, every causal relation transforms an incoherent
datum into an organized environment, etc.
The correlative of the idea of totality is, as Hoeffding has
shown, the idea of relationship. Relationship is also a funda-
mental category, inasmuch as it is immanent in all psychic
activity and combines with all the other concepts. This is because
every totality is a system of relationships just as every relation-
ship is a segment of totality. In this capacity the relationship
manifests itself from the advent of the purely physiological ac-
tivities and is again found at all levels. The most elementary
perceptions (a? shown by Kdhler with regard to the color percep-
tion of chickens) are simultaneously related to each other and
structured into organized totalities. It is useless to emphasize
analogous facts that one finds on the level of reflective thought.
The categories of ideal and of value express the same func-
tion, but in its dynamic aspect. We shall call "ideal" every system
of values which constitutes a whole, hence every final goal of
actions; and we shall call "values'* the particular values related
to this whole or the means making it possible to attain this goal.
The relations of ideal and value are therefore the same as those
of totality and relation. These ideals or value of every category
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 11
are only totalities in process of formation, value only being the
expression of desirability at all levels. Desirability is the indica-
tion of a rupture in equilibrium or of an uncompleted totality
to whose formation some element is lacking and which tends
toward this element in order to realize its equilibrium. The
relations between ideal and value are therefore of the same
category as those of totality and of relations which is self-evident,
since the ideal is only the as yet incomplete form of equilibrium
between real totalities and values are none other than the rela-
tions of means to ends subordinated to this system. Finality is
thus to be conceived not as a special category, but as the subjec-
tive translation of a process of putting into equilibrium which
itself does not imply finality but simply the general distinction
between real equilibria and the idea equilibrium. A good example
is that of the ndrms of coherence and unity of logical thought
which translate this perpetual effort of intellectual totalities
toward equilibrium, and which therefore define the ideal
equilibrium never attained by intelligence and regulate the par-
ticular values of judgment. This is why we call the operations
relating to totality and to values "regulative function," in contra-
distinction to the explicative and implicative functions. 2
How are we to consider the categories connected with adap-
tation, that is to say, with assimilation and accommodation?
Among the categories of thought there are some, as Hoeffding
says, which are more "real" (those which, besides the activity of
reason, imply a hie and a nunc inherent in experience such as
causality, substance or object, space and time, each of which
operates an indissoluble synthesis of "datum" and deduction) and
some which are more "formal" (those which, without being less
adapted, can nevertheless give rise to an unlimited deductive
elaboration, such as logical and mathematical relations). Hence it
is the former which express more the centrifugal process of
explication and accommodation and the latter which make pos-
2 In The Language and Thought of the Child, London, Routledge, 1932,
p. 236, we called "mixed function" this synthesis of implication and explica-
tion which at the present time we connect with the idea of organization, But
this amounts to the same thing since the latter presupposes a synthesis of
assimilation and accommodation.
12 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
sible the assimilation of tilings to intellectual organization and
the construction of implications.
The implicative function comprises two functional in-
variants which are found again at ail stages, the one correspond-
ing to the synthesis of qualities, that is to say, classes (concepts or
schemata), the other to that of quantitative relations or numbers,
Ever since the formation of the sensorimotor schemata the ele-
mentary instruments of intelligence reveal their mutual de-
pendence. With regard to the explicative function, it concerns
die ensemble of operations which makes it possible to deduce
reality, in other words to confer a certain permanence upon it
while supplying the reason for its transformations. From this
point of view two complementary aspects can be distinguished in
every explication, one relating to the elaboration of objects, the
other relating to causality; the former is simultaneously the
product of the latter and conditions its development. Whence the
circle object x space and causality x time in which the inter-
dependence of functions is complicated by a reciprocal relation
of matter to form.
We see the extent^to which the functional categories of
knowledge constitute a real whole which is modeled on the system
of the functions of intelligence. This correlation becomes still
more clear on analysis of the interrelations of organization and
adaptation, on the one hand, and assimilation and accommoda-
tion, on the other.
As we have seen, organization is the internal aspect of adapta-
tion, when the interdependence of already adapted elements and
not the adaptational process in action is under consideration.
Moreover, adaptation is only organization grappling with the
actions of the environment. Now this mutual dependence is
found again, on the level of intelligence, not only in the inter-
action of rational activity (organization) and of experience
(adaptation) which the whole history of scientific thought reveals
are inseparable but also in the correlation of the functional
categories: Any objective or causal spatial-temporal structure is
only possible with logical-mathematical deduction, these two
kinds of reality thus forming mutually interconnected systems of
totalities and relations. With regard to the circle of accommoda-
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 13
tion and assimilation that is to say, of explication and implica-
tion the question raised by Hume concerning causality illus-
trates it clearly. How can the concept of cause be simultaneously
rational and experimental? If one puts causality in a purely
formal category reality escapes it (as E. Meyerson has admirably
shown) and if one reduces it to the level of a simple empirical
sequence, necessity vanishes. Whence the Kantian solution taken
up by Brunschvicg according to which it is an "analogy of ex-
perience," an irreducible interaction between the relation of
implication and the spatial-temporal known data. The same can
be said of the other "real" categories: They all presuppose impli-
cation although constituting accommodations to external known
data. Inversely, classes and numbers could not be constructed
without connection with the spatial-temporal series inherent in
objects and their causal relations.
Finally, it remains for us to note that, if every organ of a
living body is organized, so also every element of an intellectual
organization also constitutes an organization. Consequently the
functional categories of intelligence, while developing along the
major lines of the essential mechanisms of organization, assimila-
tion and accommodation, themselves comprise aspects correspond-
ing to those three functions, the more so since the latter are
certainly vicarious and so constantly change in point of applica-
tion. The manner in which the functions which thus characterize
the chief categories of the mind create their own organs and
crystallize into structures is another question which we shall not
take up in this introduction since this whole work is devoted to
study of the beginnings of this construction. To prepare for this
analvsis it is simply fitting to say a few more words about the
hereditary structures which make this mental structuring possible.
3. HEREDITARY STRUCTURES AND THEORIES OF
ADAPTATION. Two kinds of hereditary realities exist, as
we have seen, which affect the development of human reason: the
functional invariants connected with the general heredity of the
living substance, and certain structural organs or qualities, con-
nected with man's particular heredity and serving as elementary
instruments for intellectual adaptation. It is therefore fitting to
14 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
examine how the hereditary structures prepare the latter and
how biological theories of adaptation are able to cast light on the
theory of intelligence.
The reflexes and the very morphology of the organs with
which they are connected constitute a sort of anticipatory knowl-
edge of the external environment, an unconscious and entirely
material knowledge but essential to the later development of real
knowledge. How is such an adaptation of hereditary structures
possible?
This biological problem is insoluble at present, but a brief
summary of the discussions to which it has given and still gives
rise seems useful to us, for the different solutions supplied are
parallel to the various theories of intelligence and can thus il-
luminate the latter by setting off the generality of their mecha-
nism. Five principal points of view exist concerning adaptation
and each one corresponds, mutatis mutandis, to one of the in-
terpretations of intelligence as such. Of course this does not mean
that if a certain author chooses one of the five characteristic
doctrines that can be discerned in biology he is forced by this to
adopt the corresponding attitude in psychology; but whatever
the possible combinations with regard to the opinions of the
writers themselves may be, "common mechanisms" undeniablv
exist between biological and psychological explanations of gen-
eral and intellectual adaptation.
The first solution is that of Lamarckism according to which
the organism is fashioned from the outside by the environment
which, by its constraints, trains the formation of individual habits
or accommodations which, becoming hereditarily fixed, fashion
the organs. There corresponds to this biological hypothesis of
the primacy of habit associationism in psychology according to
which knowledge also results from acquired habits without there
being any internal activity which would constitute intelligence as
such to condition those acquisitions.
Vitalism, on the other hand, interprets adaptation by at-
tributing to the living being a special power to construct useful
organs. So also intellectualism explains intelligence by itself by
endowing it with an innate faculty for knowing and by consider-
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 15
ing its activity as a primary fact whence everything on the
psychic plane derives.
With regard to preformism, the structures have a purely
endogenous origin, virtual variations being made up-to-date
simply by contact with the environment which thus only plays
a role of "detector." It is through the same sort of reasoning that
various epistemological and psychological doctrines that can be
labeled apriorism consider mental structures as being anterior to
experience which simply gives them the opportunity to manifest
themselves without explaining them in any respect. Whether
structures are considered to be psychologically innate, as they
are thought to be by the classic proponents of innate ideas, or
merely as logically eternal, "subsisting" in an intelligible world
in which reason participates, is of little importance. They are
preformed in the subject and not elaborated by him as a function
of his experience. The most parallel excesses in this respect were
committed in biology and in logic. Just as a hypothesis was made
of a preformation of all the "genes" which were made manifest
in the course of evolution including genes injurious to the
species so also Russell came to allege that all the ideas germinat-
ing in our brains have existed for all eternity, including false
ideas 1
A separate place could be set aside for the biological doctrine
of "emergent evolution," according to which structures appear as
irreducible syntheses succeeding each other in a sort of con-
tinuous creation, parallel to the theory of "shapes" or "Gestalt"
in psychology. But actually only a more dynamic apriorism of
intention is involved which, in its particular explanations, only
amounts to apriorism properly so called to the extent that it is
not frankly directed toward the fifth solution.
The fourth point of view which we shall call mutationalism
is held by biologists who, without believing in preformation, also
believe that structures appear in a purely endogenous way but
then consider them as arising by chance from internal transforma-
tions and adapting to the environment due to a selection after
the event. Now, if one transposes this method of interpretation
to the level of nonhereditary adaptations one finds it is parallel
to the schema of "trials and errors" belonging to pragmatism or
16 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
to conventionalism: according to this schema, the adjustment of
behavior patterns is also explained by selection after the event
of behavior arising by chance in relation to the external environ-
ment. For example, according to conventionalism Euclidean
space with three dimensions seems to us more "true" than the
other kinds of space because of the structure of our organs of
perception, and is simply more "convenient" because it permits
a better adjustment of those organs to the known data of the
external world.
Finally, according to a fifth solution, the organism and the
environment form an indissoluble entity, that is to say, beside
chance mutations there are adaptional variations simultaneously
involving a structuring of the organism and an action of the en-
vironment, the two being inseparable from each other. From the
point of view of awareness, that means that the subject's activity
is related to the constitution of the object, just as the latter in-
volves the former. This is the affirmation of an irreducible inter-
dependence between experience and reasoning. Biological rela-
tivity is thus extended into the doctrine of the interdependence
of subject and object, of assimilation of the object by the subject
and of the accommodation of the latter to the former.
The parallel between the theories of adaptation and those
of intelligence having been outlined, study of the development of
the latter will of course determine the choice it is fitting to make
between those different possible hypotheses. However, in order
to prepare for this choice and primarily in order to expand our
concept of adaptation given the continuity of the biological
processes and the analogy of the solutions that an attempt has
been made to supply on the different planes on which this prob-
lem is encountered we have analyzed on the plane of the
hereditary morphology of the organism a case of "kinetogenesis"
suitable for illustrating the different solutions we have just
catalogued. 3
&For details, see our two articles: Les races lacustres de la 'Limnaea
stagnalis' and Recherches sur les rapports de Fadaptation h<rdditaire avec le
milieu, Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Betgiqu t LXH, 1929, pp.
424-455; and 2. Adaptation de la Limnaea stagnalis aux milieux lacustres de
la Suisse romande, Revue Suisse de Zoologie, XXXVI, pp. 263-531,
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 17
There is found in almost all European and Asian marshes an
aquatic mollusc, the Limnaea stagnalis (L.) which is typically
elongated in shape. Now in the great lakes of Switzerland,
Sweden, etc., this species is of a lacustrine variety, shortened and
globular, whose form can easily be explained by the animal's
motor accommodation, during growth, to the waves and move-
ment of the water. After having verified this explanation experi-
mentally, we succeeded in proving, by means of many breedings
in the aquarium, that this shortened variety whose geological
history can be followed from the paleolithic age to our own,
became hereditary and perfectly stable (those genotypes obey in
particular the laws of Mendelian segregation) in the places most
exposed to the winds in the lakes of Neuchitel and Geneva.
Thus it appears at first glance as though the Lamarckian
solution fits such a case: The habits of contraction acquired
under the influence of waves would have ended by transmitting
themselves hereditarily in a morphologico-reflex ensemble con-
stituting a new race. In other words, the phenotype would be
imperceptibly transformed into a genotype by the lasting action
of the environment. Unfortunately, in the case of the Limnaea as
in all others, the laboratory experiment (breeding in an agitator
producing an experimental contraction) does not show a trace
of the hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics. More-
over the lakes of medium size do not have all the shortened
varieties. If there is an influence of the environment in the con-
stitution of hereditary contraction this influence is subjected to
thresholds (of intensity, duration, etc) and the organism, far
from suffering it passively, reacts actively by an adaptation which
transcends simple imposed habits.
Regarding the second solution, vitalism would not be able
to explain the particulars of any adaptation. Why does the un-
conscious intelligence of the species, if it exists, not intervene
everywhere it could be useful? Why did contraction take cen-
turies to appear after the post glacial stocking of the lakes and
why does it not yet exist in all the lakes?
The same objections apply to the solution of the problem
in accordance with the theory of preformation.
On the other hand, the fourth solution appears to be im-
18 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
pregnable to attack. According to the theory of mutation the
hereditary shortened structures would be due to chance endoge-
nous variations (that is to say, with no relation to the environ-
ment nor with the phenotypic individual adaptations) and it
would only be after the event that these forms, better preadapted
than the others to the rough zones of the lakes, would multiply
in the very places from which the elongated shapes would be ex-
cluded by natural selection. Chance and selection after the event
would thus account for adaptation without any mysterious action
of the environment on hereditary transmission, whereas the
adaptation of non-hereditary individual variations would remain
connected with the environmental action. But, in the case of our
Limnaea, two strong objections to such an interpretation can be
made. In the first place, if the elongated forms of the species
could not endure as such in the parts of the lakes where the
water is roughest, on the other hand the shortened genotypes can
live in all the environments in which the species is represented,
and we have introduced some to a new climate years ago, in a
stagnant pond in the Swiss Plateau. If it were, therefore, a ques-
tion of chance mutations, those genotypes should be scattered
everywhere; but, in fact, they only appeared in lacustrine en-
vironments and moreover in those most exposed to the wind,
precisely where the individual or phenotypic adaptation to the
waves is most evident! In the second place, selection after the
event is, in the case of the Limnaea, useless and impossible, for
the elongated forms can themselves give rise to shortened varia-
tions which are not or not yet hereditary. One cannot therefore
speak of chance mutations or of selection after the event to ex-
plain such adaptation.
Therefore only a fifth and last solution remains: This is to
admit the possibility of hereditary adaptations simultaneously
presupposing an action of the environment and a reaction of the
organism other than the simple fixation of habits. As early as the
morphologico-reflex level there exist interactions between the
environment and the organism which are such that the latter,
without passively enduring the constraint of the former, nor limit-
ing itself on contact with it to manifesting already preformed
structures, reacts by an active differentiation of reflexes (in the
THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE 19
particular case by a development of the reflexes of pedal ad-
iierence and of contraction) and by a correlative morphogenesis.
in other words, the hereditary fixation of phenotypes or indi-
vidual adaptations is not due to the simple repetition of habits
which gave rise to them but to a mechanism sui generis which,
through recurrence or anticipation, leads to the same result on
the morphologico-reflex level.
Concerning the problem of intelligence, the lessons fur-
nished by such an example seem to us to be the following. From
its beginnings, due to the hereditary adaptations of the organism,
intelligence finds itself entangled in a network of relations be-
tween the organism and the environment. Intelligence does not
therefore appear as a power of reflection independent of the par-
ticular position which the organism occupies in the universe but
is linked, from the very outset, by biological apriorities. It is not
at all an independent absolute, but is a relationship among
others, between the organism and things. If intelligence thus
extends an organic adaptation which is anterior to it, the progress
of reason doubtless consists in an increasingly advanced acquisi-
tion of awareness of the organizing activity inherent in life
itself, and the primitive stages of psychological development only
constitute the most superficial acquisitions of awareness of this
work of organization. A fortiori the morphologico-reflex struc-
tures manifested by the living body, and the biological assimila-
tion which is at the point of departure of the elementary forms
of psychic assimilation would be nothing other than the most
external and material outline of the adaptation whose profound
nature the higher forms of intellectual activity would express
increasingly well. One can therefore believe that intellectual
activity, departing from a relation of interdependence between
organism and environment, or lack of differentiation between
subject and object, progresses simultaneously in the conquest of
things and reflection on itself, these two processes of inverse
direction being correlative. From this point of view, physiologi-
cal and anatomical organization gradually appears to conscious-
ness as being external to it and intelligent activity is revealed for
that reason as being the very essence of the existence of our sub-
jects. Whence the reversal which is at work in* perspectives as
20 THE BIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE
mental development progresses and which explains why the
power of reason, while extending the most central biological
mechanisms, ends by surpassing them at the same time in comple-
mentary externalization and internalization.
PARTI
Elementary Sensorimotor Adaptations
Intelligence does not by any means appear at once derived
from mental development, like a higher mechanism, and radi-
cally distinct from those which have preceded it. Intelligence
presents, on the contrary, a remarkable continuity with the
acquired or even inborn processes on which it depends and at the
same times makes use of. Thus, it is appropriate, before analyzing
intelligence as such, to find out how the formation of habits and
even the exercise of the reflex prepare its appearance. This is
what we are going to do in the first part, dedicating one chapter
to the reflex and to the psychological questions that it raises, and
a second chapter to the various acquired associations or elemen-
tary habits.
21
CHAPTER ONE
THE FIRST STAGE:
The Use of Reflexes
If, In order to analyze the first mental acts, we refer to
hereditary organic reactions, we must study them not for their
own sake but merely so that we may describe in toto the way in
which they affect the individual's behavior. We should begin,
therefore, by trying to differentiate between the psychological
problem of the reflexes and the strictly biological problem.
Behavior observable during the first weeks of life is very
complicated, biologically speaking. At first there are very differ-
ent types of reflexes involving the medulla, the bulb, the optic
commissures, the ectoderm itself; moreover, from reflex to in-
stinct is only a difference of degree. Next to the reflexes of the
central nervous system are those of the autonomic nervous system
and all the reactions due to "protopathic" sensibility. There is,
above all, the whole group of postural reflexes whose importance
for the beginnings of the evolution of the mind has been demon-
strated by H. Wallon. It is hard to envisage the organization of
the foregoing mechanisms without giving the endocrine processes
their just due as indicated by so many learned or spontaneous
reactions. Physiological psychology is confronted at the present
time by a host of problems which consist of determining the
effects on the individual's behavior of each of these separate
mechanisms. H. Wallon analyzes one of the most important of
these questions in his excellent book on the disturbed child
(I'Enfant turbulent): "Is there an emotional stage, or a stage of
postural and extrapyramidal reactions prior to the sensorimotor
or cortical stage?" Nothing better reveals the complexity of ele-
23
24 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
mentary behavior and the need to differentiate between the
successive stages of concurrent physiological systems than Wal-
lon's scholarly study of their genesis in which a wealth of patho-
logic material always substantiates his analysis.
Notwithstanding the fascinating conclusions thus reached,
it seems to us difficult at the present time to go beyond a general
description when it comes to grasping the continuity between the
earliest behavior of the nursling and the future intellectual be-
havior. That is why, although in complete sympathy with Wal-
lon's attempt to identify psychic mechanisms with those of life
itself, we believe we should limit ourselves to emphasizing func-
tional identity, from the point of view of simple external be-
havior.
In this respect the problem which arises in connection with
reactions in the first weeks is only this: How do the sensorimotor,
postural, and other reactions, inherent in the hereditary equip-
ment of the newborn child, prepare him to adapt himself to his
external environment and to acquire subsequent behavior dis-
tinguished by the progressive use of experience?
The psychological problem begins to pose itself as soon as
the reflexes, postures, etc., are considered no longer in connection
with the internal mechanism of the living organism, but rather
in their relationships to the external environment as it is sub-
jected to the individual's activity. Let us examine, from this point
of view, the various fundamental reactions in the first weeks:
sucking and grasping reflexes, crying and vocalization, 1 move-
ments and positions of the arms, the head or the trunk, etc.
What is striking about this is that such activities from the
start of their most primitive functioning, each in itself and some
in relation to others, give rise to a systematization which exceeds
their automatization. Almost since birth, therefore, there is **be-
havior'' in the sense of the individual's total reaction and not only
a setting in motion of particular or local automatizations only
interrelated from within. In other words, the sequential mani-
festations of a reflex such as sucking are not comparable to the
periodic starting up of a motor used intermittently, but constitute
1 We shall return to the subject of prehension, vision and vocalization in
the course of Chapter II.
THE USE OF REFLEXES 25
an historical development so that each episode depends on pre-
ceding episodes and conditions those that follow in a truly
organic evolution. In fact, whatever the intensive mechanism of
this historical process may be, one can follow the changes from
the outside and describe things as though each particular reaction
determined the others without intermediates. This comprises
total reaction, that is to say, the beginning of psychology.
1. SUCKING REFLEXES. Let us take as an example the
sucking reflexes or the instinctive act of sucking; these reflexes
are complicated, involving a large number of afferent fibers of
the trigeminal and the glossopharyngeal nerves as well as the
efferent fibers of the facial, the hypoglossal and the masseteric
nerves, all of which have as a center the bulb of the spinal cord.
First here are some facts:
Observation Jf, From birth sucking-like movements may be observed:
impulsive movement and protrusion of the lips accompanied by dis-
placements of the tongue, while the arms engage in unruly and more or
less rhythmical gestures and the head moves laterally, etc.
As soon as the hands rub the lips the sucking reflex is released.
The child sucks his fingers for a moment but of course does not know
either how to keep them in his mouth or pursue them with his lips.
Lucienne and Laurent, a quarter of an hour and a half hour after
birth, respectively, had already sucked their hand like this: Lucienne,
whose hand had been immobilized due to its position, sucked her
fingers for more than ten minutes.
A few hours after birth, first nippleful of collostrum. It is known
how greatly children differ from each other with respect to adaptation
to this first meal. For some children like Lucienne and Laurent, con-
tact of the lips and probably the tongue with the nipple suffices to
produce sucking and swallowing. Other children, such as Jacqueline,
have slower coordination: the child lets go of the breast every moment
without taking it back again by himself or applying himself to it as
vigorously when the nipple is replaced in his mouth. There are some
children, finally, who need real forcing: holding their head, forcibly
putting the nipple between the lips and in contact with the tongue, etc.
Observation 2. The day after birth Laurent seized the nipple with his
lips without having to have it held in his mouth. He immediately
seeks the breast when it escapes him as the result of some movement.
During the second day also Laurent again begins to make sucking-
like movements between meals while thus repeating the impulsive
26 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
movements of the first day: His lips open and dose as if to receive a
real nippleful, but without having an object. This behavior subse-
quently became more frequent and we shall not take it up again.
The same day the beginning of a sort of reflex searching may be
observed in Laurent, which will develop on the following days and
which probably constitutes the functional equivalent of the gropings
characteristic of the later stages (acquisition of habits and empirical in-
telligence). Laurent is lying on his back with his mouth open, his lips
and tongue moving slightly in imitation of the mechanism of sucking,
and his head moving from left to right and back again, as though
seeking an object. These gestures are either silent or interrupted by
grunts with an expression of Impatience and of hunger.
Observation 3. The third day Laurent makes new progress in hi& ad-
justment to the breast. All he needs in order to grope with open mouth
toward final success is to have touched the breast or the surrounding
teguments with his lips. But he hunts on the wrong side as well as on
the right side, that is to say, the side where contact has been made.
Observation 4. Laurent at 0;0 (9) is lying in bed and seeks to suck,
moving his head to the left and to the right. Several times he rubs his
lips with his hand which he immediately sucks. He knocks against a
quilt and a wool coverlet; each time he sucks the object only to re-
linquish it after a moment and begins to cry again. When he sucks his
hand he does not turn away from it as he seems to do with the wool-
ens, but the hand itself escapes him through lack of coordination; foe
then immediately begins to hunt again.
Observation 5. As soon as his cheek comes in contact with the breast,
Laurent at 0;0 (12) applies himself to seeking until he finds drink. His
search takes its bearings: immediately from the correct side, that is
to say, the side where he experienced contact.
At 0;0 (20) he bites the breast which is given him, 5 on. from the
nipple. For a moment he sucks the skin which he then lets go in order
to move his mouth about 2 cm. As soon as he begins sucking again he
stops. In one of his attempts he touches the nipple with the outside of
his lips arid he does not recognize it. But, when his search subsequently
leads him accidentally to touch the nipple with the niucosa of the
upper lip (his mouth being wide open), he at once adjusts his lips and
begins to suck.
The same day, same experiment: after having sucked the skin for
several seconds, he withdraws and begins to cry. Then he begins again,
withdraws again, but without crying, and takes it again 1 on. away; he
keeps this up until he discovers the nipple.
Observation tf.The same day I hold out my crooked index finger to
Laurent, who is crying from hunger (but intermittently and without
THE USE OF REFLEXES 27
violence). He immediately sucks it but rejects it after a few seconds
and begins to cry. Second attempt: same reaction. Third attempt: he
sucks it, this time for a long time and thoroughly, and it is I who re-
tract it after a few minutes.
Observation 7. Laurent at 0;0 (21) is lying on his right side, his arms
tight against his body, his hands clasped, and he sucks his right thumb
at length while remaining completely immobile. The nurse made the
same observation on the previous day. I take his right hand away and
he at once begins to search for it, turning his head from left to right.
As his hands remained immobile due to his position, Laurent found
his thumb after three attempts: prolonged sucking begins each time.
But, once he has been placed on his back, he does not know how to co-
ordinate the movement of the arms with that of the mouth and his
hands draw back even when his lips are seeking them.
At Q;0 (24) when Laurent sucks his thumb, he remains completely
immobile (as though having a nippleful: complete sucking, pantings,
etc.). When his hand alone grazes his mouth, no coordination.
Observation #.-At 0;0 (21): Several times I place the back of rny index
finger against his cheeks. Each time he turns to the correct side while
opening his mouth. Same reactions with the nipple.
Then I repeat the same experiments as those in observation 5. At
0;0 (21) Laurent begins by sucking the teguments with which he comes
in contact. He relinquishes them after a moment but searches with
open mouth, while almost rubbing the skin with his lips. He seizes the
nipple as soon as he brushes against it with the mucosa of his lower lip.
That evening, the same experiment, but made during a nursing
which has been interrupted for this purpose. Laurent is already half
asleep; his arms hang down and his hands are open (at the beginning
of the meal his arms are folded against his chest and his hands are
clasped). His mouth is placed against the skin of the breast about 5 cm.
from the nipple. He immediately sucks without reopening his eyes
but, after a few moments, failure awakens him. His eyes are wide open,
his arms flexed again and he sucks with rapidity. Then he gives up, in
order to search a little further away, on the left side which happens by
chance to be the correct side. Again finding nothing, he continues to
change places on the left side, but the rotatory movement which he
thus gives his head results in making him let go the breast and go off on
a tangent. In the course of this tangential movement he knocks against
the nipple with the left commissure of his lips and everything that hap-
pens would seem to indicate that he recognizes it at once. Instead of
groping at random, he only searches in the immediate neighborhood
of the nipple. But as the lateral movements of his head made him
describe a tangential curve opposite and not parallel to the curve of
28 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the breast, he oscillates in space guided only by light, haphazard con-
tacts with the breast. It takes a short time for these increasingly lo-
calized attempts to be successful. This last phase of groping has been
noteworthy for the speed with which each approach to it has been fol-
lowed by an attempt at insertion of the nipple, while the lips open
and close with maximum vigor; and noteworthy also for the progres-
sive adjusting of the tangential movements around the points of
contact.
At 0;0 (23) a new experiment. Laurent is 10 cm. from the breast,
searching for it on the left and on the right. While he searches on the
left the nipple touches his right cheek. He immediately turns and
searches on the right. He is then moved 5 cm. away. He continues to
search on the correct side. He is brought nearer as soon as he grasps
the skin; he gropes and finds the nipple.
Same experiment and same result that evening. But, after several
swallows, he is removed. He remains oriented to the correct side,
At 0;0 (24) Laurent, during the same experiments, seems much
faster. To localize his search it suffices for the nipple to be brushed by
the outside of his lips and no longer only by the mucosa. Besides, as
soon as he has noticed the nipple, his head's lateral movements be-
come more rapid and precise (less extensive). Finally, it seems that he
is henceforth capable not only of lateral movements but also of rais-
ing his head when his upper lip touches the nipple,
Observation 9 .At 0;0 (22) Laurent is awakened an hour after his
meal, and only cries faintly and intermittently. I place his right hand
against his mouth but remove it before he begins to suck. Then, seven
times in succession he does a complete imitation of sucking, opening
and closing his mouth, moving his tongue, etc.
Observation 10. Here are two facts revealing the differences in adapta-
tion according to whether the need for nourishment is strong or weak.
At 0;0 (25) Laurent is lying on his back, not very hungry (he has not
cried since his last meal) and his right cheek is touched by the nipple.
He turns to the correct side but the breast is removed to a distance of
5 to 10 cm. For a few seconds he reaches in the right direction and
then gives up. He is still lying on his back, facing the ceiling; after a
moment his mouth begins to move slightly, then his head moves from
side to side, finally settling on the wrong side. A brief search in this
direction, then crying (with commissures of the lip lowered, etc.), and
another pause. After a moment, another search in the wrong direction.
No reaction when the middle of his right cheek is touched. Only
when the nipple touches his skin about I cm. from his lips does lie
turn and grasp it.
On reading this description it would seem as though all the prac-
tice of the last weeks were in vain. It would seem, above all, that the ex-
THE USE OF REFLEXES 29
citation zone of the reflex stops about 1 cm. from the lips, and that the
cheek itself is insensitive. But on the next day the same experiment
yields opposite results, as we shall see.
At 0;0 (26) Laurent is lying on his back, very hungry. I touch the
middle of his cheek with my index finger bent first to the right, then to
the left; each time he immediately turns to the correct side. Then he
feels the nipple in the middle of his right cheek. But, as he tries to
grasp it, it is withdrawn 10 cm. He then turns his head in the right
direction and searches. He rests a moment, facing the ceiling, then his
mouth begins to search again and his head immediately turns to the
right side. This time he goes on to touch the nipple, first with his nose
and then with the region between his nostrils and lips. Then he twice
very distinctly repeats the movement observed at 0;0 (24) (see Obs. 8):
He raises his head in order to grasp the nipple. The first time he just
catches the nipple with the corner of his lips and lets it go. A second
or two later, he vigorously lifts his head and achieves his purpose.
The way in which he discerns the nipple should be noted; at
0;Q (29) he explores its circumference with open and motionless lips
before grasping it.
The theoretical importance of such observations seems to us
to be as great as their triteness. 2 They make it possible for us to
understand how a system of pure reflexes can comprise psycho-
logical behavior, as early as the systematization of their function-
ing. Let us try to analyze this process in its progressive adapta-
tional and organization aspects.
2. THE USE OF REFLEXES. Concerning its adaptation,
it is interesting to note that the reflex, no matter how well en-
dowed with hereditary physiological mechanism, and no matter
how stable its automatization, nevertheless needs to be used in
order truly to adapt itself, and that it is capable of gradual ac-
commodation to external reality.
Let us first stress this element of accommodation. The suck-
ing reflex is hereditary and functions from birth, influenced
either by diffuse impulsive movements or by an external excitant
(Obs. 1); this is the point of departure. In order that a useful
2 We are particularly happy to mention their agreement with those of
R. Ripin and H. Hetzer: Fruhestes Lernen des Sauglings in der Ernahrungs-
situation, Zeitschr. f. PsychoL, 118, 1930, pp. 82-127. Observations of our chil-
dren, made several years ago, were independent of the latter which makes
their convergence a real one.
30 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
function may result, that is to say, swallowing, it often suffices to
put the nipple in the mouth of the newborn child, but, as we
know (Obs. 1), it sometimes happens that the child does not adapt
at the first attempt. Only practice will lead to normal function-
ing. That is the first aspect of accommodation: contact with the
object modifies, in a way, the activity of the reflex, and, even if
this activity were oriented hereditarily to such contact, the
latter is no less necessary to the consolidation of the former. This
is how certain instincts are lost or certain reflexes cease to func-
tion normally, due to the lack of a suitable environment, 3 More-
over, contact with the environment not only results in developing
the reflexes, but also in coordinating them in some way. Observa-
tions 2, 3, 5 and 8 show how the child, who first does not know
how to suck the nipple when it is put in his mouth, grows in-
creasingly able to grasp and even to find it, first after direct
touch, then after contact with any neighboring region. 4
How can such accommodations be explained? It seems to us
difficult to invoke from birth the mechanism of acquired as-
sociations, in the limited sense of the term, or of "conditioned
reflexes," both of which imply systematic training. On the con-
trary, the examining of these behavior patterns reveals at once
the respects in which they differ from acquired association*:
Whereas with regard to the latter, including conditioned re-
flexes, association is established between a certain perception,
3 Thus Larguier des Brancels (Introduction & la Psychology, 1921, p. 178),
after recalling Spalding's famous experiments concerning the decline o
instincts in newly hatched chickens, adds: "The sucking instinct is transitory.
A calf which has been separated from its mother and fed by hand for a day
or two and then is taken to another cow, more often than not refuses to nurse,
The child behaves somewhat similarly. If he is first spoon-fed, he subse-
quently has great difficulty in taking the breast again."
4 See Preyer (L'Ame de FEnfant, translated by Variguy, 1887, pp. 213-217),
in particular the following lines: "To be sure, sucking is not as fruitful the
first as the second day and I have often observed in normal newborn children
(1869) that attempts at sucking were completely vain in the first hours of
life: when I made the experiment of putting an ivory pencil in their mouth,
they were still uncoordinated" (p. 215). Also: "It is well known that newborn
children, when put to the breast do not find the nipple without help; they
only find it by themselves a few days later (in one case only on the eighth
day), that is to say, later than animals" (pp. 215-216). And: "When the child
is put to the breast the nipple often does not enter his mouth and he sucks
the neighboring skin; this is still evident in the third week . . /' (p. 216).
THE USE OF REFLEXES 31
foreign to the realm of the reflex, and the reflex itself (for
example, between a sound, a visual perception, etc., and the
salivary reflex), according to our observations, it is simply the
reflex's own sensibility (contact of the lips with a foreign body)
which is generalized, that is to say, brings with it the action of
the reflex in increasingly numerous situations. In the case of
Observations 2, 3, 5 and 8, for example, accommodation consists
essentially of progress in the continuity of the searching. In the
beginning (Obs. 2 and 3) contact with any part of the breast
whatever sets in motion momentary sucking of this region, im-
mediately followed by crying or a desultory search, whereas after
several days (Obs. 5), the same contact sets in motion a groping
during which the child is headed toward success. It is very in-
teresting, in the second case, to see how the reflex, excited by each
contact with the breast, stops functioning as soon as the child
perceives that sucking is not followed by any satisfaction, as is
the taking of nourishment (see Obs. 5 and 8), and to see how the
search goes on until swallowing begins. In this regard, Observa-
tions 2 to 8 confirm that there is a great variety of kinds of ac-
commodation. Sucking of the eider-down quilt, of the coverlet,
etc., leads to rejection, that of the breast to acceptance; sucking
of the skin (the child's hand, etc.) leads to acceptance if it is only
a matter of sucking for the sake of sucking, but it leads to re-
jection (for example when it involves an area of the breast other
than the nipple) if there is great hunger; the paternal index
finger (Obs. 6) is rejected when the child is held against the breast,
but is accepted as a pacifier, etc. In all behavior patterns it seems
evident to us that learning is a function of the environment.
Surely all these facts admit of a physiological explanation
which does not at all take us out of the realm of the reflex. The
"irradiations," the "prolonged shocks," the "summations" of ex-
citations and the intercoordination of reflexes probably explains
why the child's searching becomes increasingly systematic, why
contact which does not suffice to set the next operation in motion,
does suffice in doing so a few days later, etc. Those are not neces-
sarily mechanisms which are superposed on the reflex such as
habit or intelligent understanding will be, later. But it remains
no less true that the environment is indispensable to this operzi-
32 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
tion, in other words, that reflex adaptation is partly accommoda-
tion. Without previous contact with the nipple and the experi-
ence of imbibing milk, it is very likely that the eider-down quilt,
the wool coverlet, or the paternal index finger, after setting in
motion the sucking reflex, would not have been so briskly re-
jected by Laurent. 5
But if, in reflex adaptation, allowances must be made for
accommodation, accommodation cannot be dissociated from
progressive assimilation, inherent in the very use of the reflex.
In a general way, one can say that the reflex is consolidated and
strengthened by virtue of its own functioning. Such a fact is the
most direct expression of the mechanism of assimilation. As-
similation is revealed, in the first place, by a growing need for
repetition which characterizes the use of the reflex (functional
assimilation) and, in the second place, by this sort of entirely
practical or sensorimotor recognition which enables the child
to adapt himself to the different objects with which his lips come
in contact (recognitory and generalizing assimilations).
The need for repetition is in itself alone very significant;
in effect, it is a question of a behavior pattern which shows a
history and which proceeds to complicate the simple stimuli
connected with the state of the organism considered at a given
moment in time. A first stimulus capable of bringing the reflex
into play is contact with an external object. Preyer thus set in
motion the sucking movements of a newborn child by touching
his lips, and Observation 1 shows us that children suck their
hand a quarter of an hour or half an hour after birth. In the
second place, there are internal stimuli, connected with the
somato-affective states: diffuse impulsive movements (Obs. 1) or
excitations due to hunger. But to these definite excitations, con-
nected with particular moments in the life of the organism, there
is added, it seems to us, the essential circumstance that the very
repetition of the reflex movements constitutes a cynamogeny for
them. Why, for instance, does Lucienne suck her fingers soon
after birth for ten minutes in succession? This could not be
cin animals every slightly complicated reflex mechanism occasions re-
actions of the same kind. The beginnings of copulation in the mollusks,
for example, give way to very strange gropings before the act is adapted.
THE USE OF REFLEXES S3
because of hunger, since the umbilical cord had just been cut.
There certainly is an external excitant from the moment the
lips touch the hand. But why does the excitation last, in such a
case, since it does not lead to any result except, precisely, to the
use of the reflex? It therefore seems that, from the start of this
primitive mechanism, a sort of circular process accompanies the
function, the activity of the reflex having augmented due to its
own use. If this interpretation remains doubtful, in so far as the
point of departure is concerned, it obtains increasingly, on the
other hand, with regard to subsequent behavior patterns. After
the first feedings one observes, in Laurent (Obs. 2), sucking-like
movements, in which it is difficult not to see a sort of autoexcita-
tion. Besides, the progress in the search for the breast in Ob-
servations 2-5 and 8 seems also to show how much the function
itself strengthened the tendency to suck. The counterproof of
this is, as we have seen, the progressive decay of reflex mecha-
nisms which are not used. How to interpret these facts? It is
self-evident that "circular reaction/ 1 in Baldwin's sense of the
term, could not yet be involved, that is to say, the repetition of
a behavior pattern acquired or in the process of being acquired,
and of behavior directed by the object to which it tends. Here it
is only a matter of reflex and not acquired movements, and of
sensibility connected with the reflex itself and not with the
external objective. Nevertheless the mechanism is comparable
to it from the purely functional point of view. It is thus very
clear, in Observation 9, that the slightest excitation can set in
motion not only a reflex reaction but a succession of seven re-
actions. Without forming any hypothesis on the way of conserv-
ing this excitation, or a fortiori, without wanting to transform
this repetition into intentional or mnemonic behavior, one is
compelled to state that, in such a case, there is a tendency toward
repetition, or, in objective terms, cumulative repetition.
This need for repetition is only one aspect of a more general
process which we can qualify as assimilation. The tendency of
the reflex being to reproduce itself, it incorporates into itself
every object capable of fulfilling the function of excitant. Two
distinct phenomena must be mentioned here, both equally
significant from this particular point of view.
34 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
The first is what we may call "generalizing assimilation/'
that is to say, the incorporation of increasingly varied objects
into the reflex schema. When, for example, the child is hungry
but not sufficiently so to give way to rage and to crying, and his
lips have been excited by some accidental contact, we witness
the formation of this kind of behavior pattern, so important due
to its own future developments and the innumerable analogous
cases which we shall observe in connection with other schemata.
Thus, according to chance contacts, the child, from the first
two weeks of life, sucks his fingers, the fingers extended to him,
his pillow, quilt, bedclothes, etc.; consequently he assimilates
these objects to the activity of the reflex.
To be sure, we do not claim, when speaking of "generaliz-
ing" assimilation, that the newborn child begins by distinguish-
ing a particular object (the mother's breast) and subsequently
applies to other objects the discoveries he has made about this
first one. In other words, we do not ascribe to the nursling con-
scious and intentional generalization with regard to transition
from the particular to the general, especially as generalization, in
itself intelligent, never begins by such a transition but always
proceeds from the undifferentiated schema to the individual and
to the general, combined and complementary. We simply main-
tain that, without any awareness of individual objects or of
general laws, the newborn child at once incorporates into the
global schema of sucking a number of increasingly varied objects,
whence the generalizing aspect of this process of assimilation.
But is it not playing on words to translate a fact so simple into
the language of assimilation? Would it not suffice to say "the
setting in motion of a reflex by a class of analogous excitants?"
And, if one sticks to the term assimilation, must the conclusion
then be reached that the nonhabitual excitants of any reflex (for
example the aggregate of objects capable of setting in motion
the palpebral reflex when they approach the eye) give rise to an
identical phenomenon of generalizing assimilation? There is
nothing to it. What does present a particular and truly psycho-
logical problem, in the case of the sucking reflex, is that the as-
similation of objects to its activity will gradually be generalized
until, at the stage of acquired circular reactions and even at the
THE USE OF REFLEXES 35
stage of intentional movements, it gives birth to a very complex
and strong schema. From the end of the second month the child
will suck his thumb systematically (with acquired coordination
and not by chance), then at nearly five months his hands will
carry all objects to his mouth and he will end by using these be-
havior patterns to recognize bodies and even to compose the first
form of space (Stern's "buccal space"). It is thus certain that the
first assimilations relating to sucking, even if they reveal a lack
of differentiation between contact with the breast and contact
with other objects, are not simple confusion destined to disappear
with progress in nutrition, but constitute the point of departure
for increasingly complex assimilations.
How to interpret this generalizing assimilation? The sucking
reflex can be conceived as a global schema of coordinated move-
ments which, if it is accompanied by awareness, certainly does
not give rise to perception of objects or even of definite sensorial
pictures but simply to an awareness of attitudes with at most some
sensorimotor integration connected with the sensibility of the
lips and mouth. Now this schema, due to the fact that it lends
itself to repetitions and to cumulative use, is not limited to
functioning under compulsion by a fixed excitant, external or
internal, but functions in a way for itself. In other words, the
child does not only suck in order to eat but also to elude
hunger, to prolong the excitation of the meal, etc., and lastly, he
sucks for the sake of sucking. It is in this sense that the object
incorporated into the sucking schema is actually assimilated to
the activity of this schema. The object sucked is to be conceived,
not as nourishment for the organism in general, but, so to speak,
as aliment for the very activity of sucking, according to its vari-
ous forms. From the point of view of awareness, if there is aware-
ness, such assimilation is at first lack of differentiation and not at
first true generalization, but from the point of view of action, it
is a generalizing extension of the schema which foretells (as has
just been seen) later and much more important generalizations.
But, apart from this generalizing assimilation, another as-
similation must be noted from the two first weeks of life, which
we can call "recognitory assimilation." This second form seems
inconsistent with the preceding one; actually it only reveals
36 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
progress over the other, however slight. What we have just said
regarding the lack of differentiation which characterizes gen*
eralizing assimilation is, in effect, true only with respect to states
of slight hunger or of satiety. But it is enough that the child be
very hungry for him to try to eat and thus to distinguish the
nipple from the rest. This search and this selectivity seem to us
to imply the beginning of differentiation in the global schema of
sucking, and consequently a beginning of recognition, a com-
pletely practical and motor recognition, needless to say, but
sufficient to be called recognitory assimilation. Let us examine,
from this point of view, the way in which the child rediscovers
the nipple. Ever since the third day (Obs. 3), Laurent seems to
distinguish the nipple from the surrounding teguments; he
tries to nurse and not merely to suck. From the tenth day (Obs.
4), we observe the alacrity with which he rejects the eider-down
quilt or the coverlet which he began to suck, in order to search
for something more substantial. Furthermore, his reaction to his
father's index finger (Obs. 6) could not be more definite: disap-
pointment and crying. Lastly, the gropings on the breast itself
(Obs. 5 and 8) also reveal selectivity. How is this kind of recog-
nition to be explained?
Of course there could be no question, either here or in con-
nection with generalizing assimilation, of the recognition of an
"object" for the obvious reason that there is nothing in the states
of consciousness of a newborn child which could enable him to
contrast an external universe with an internal universe. Suppos-
ing that there are given simultaneously visual sensations (simple
vision of lights without forms or depth), acoustic sensations and a
tactile-gustatory and kinesthetic sensibility connected with the
sucking reflex, it is evident that such a complexus would in no
way be sufficient to constitute awareness of objects: the latter
implies, as we shall see, 6 characteristically intellectual operations,
necessary to secure the permanence of form and substance.
Neither could there be a question of purely perceptive recog-
nition or recognition of sensorial images presented by the ex-
ternal world, although such recognition considerably precedes
the elaboration of objects (recognizing a person, a toy or a linen
& Volume II, La Construction du MM chez VEnfant,
THE USE OF REFLEXES 37
cloth simply on "presentation" and before having a permanent
concept of it). If, to the observer, the breast which the nursling
is about to take is external to the child and constitutes an image
separate from him, to the newborn child, on the contrary, there
can only exist awareness of attitudes, of emotions, or sensations
of hunger and of satisfaction. Neither sight nor hearing yet gives
rise to perceptions independent of these general reactions. As
H. Wallon has effectively demonstrated, external influences only
have meaning in connection with the attitudes they arouse. When
the nursling differentiates between the nipple and the rest of the
breast, fingers, or other objects, he does not recognize either an
object or a sensorial picture but simply rediscovers a sensorimotor
and particular postural complex (sucking and swallowing com-
bined) among several analogous complexes which constitute his
universe and reveal a total lack of differentiation between subject
and object. In other words, this elementary recognition consists,
in the strictest sense of the word, of "assimilation" of the whole
of the data present in a definite organization which has already
functioned and only gives rise to real discrimination due to its
past functioning. But this suffices to explain in which respect
repetition of the reflex leads by itself to recognitory assimilation
which, albeit entirely practical, constitutes the beginning of
knowledge. 7 More precisely, repetition of the reflex leads to a
general and generalizing assimilation of objects to its activity,
but, due to the varieties which gradually enter this activity
(sucking for its own sake, to stave off hunger, to eat, etc.), the
schema of assimilation becomes differentiated and, in the most
important differentiated cases, assimilation becomes recognitory.
In conclusion, assimilation belonging to the adaptation re-
flex appears in three forms: cumulative repetition, generaliza-
tion of the activity with incorporation of new objects to it, and
7 Let us repeat that we do not claim to specify the states of consciousness
which accompany this assimilation. Whether these states are purely emo-
tional or affective, connected with the postures accompanying sucking, or
whether there exists at first conscious sensorial and kinesthetic discrimination,
we could not decide by studying behavior of the first two or three weeks.
What this behavior simply reveals is the groping and the discernment which
characterizes the use of the reflex, and these are the two fundamental facts
which authorize us to speak of psychological assimilation at this primitive
stage.
38 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
finally, motor recognition. But, in the last analysis, these three
forms are but one: The reflex must be conceived as an organ-
ized totality whose nature it is to preserve itself by functioning
and consequently to function sooner or later for its own sake
(repetition) while incorporating into itself objects propitious to
this functioning (generalized assimilation) and discerning situa-
tions necessary to certain special modes of its activity (motor rec-
ognition). We shall see and this is the sole purpose of this analy-
sis that these processes are again found, with the unwedging ac-
counted for by the progressive complexity of the structures, in
the stages of acquired circular reactions, of the first voluntary
schemata and of truly intelligent behavior patterns.
The progressive adaptation of the reflex schemata, there-
fore, presupposes their organization. In physiology this truth is
trite. Not only does the reflex arc as such presuppose an organi-
zation but, in the animal not undergoing laboratory experimen-
tation, every reflex system constitutes in itself an organized to-
tality. According to Graham Brown's theories, the simple re-
flex is, in effect, to be considered as a product of differentiation.
From the psychological point of view, on the other hand, there
is too great a tendency to consider a reflex, or even a complex
instinctive act such as sucking, to be a summation of movements
with, eventually, a succession of conscious states juxtaposed, and
not as a real totality. But two essential circumstances induce us
to consider the sucking act as already constituting psychic organi-
zation: The fact that sooner or later this act reveals a meaning,
and the fact that it is accompanied by directed searching.
Concerning the meanings, we have seen how much sucking
acts vary according to whether the newborn child is hungry and
tries to nurse, or sucks in order to calm himself, or whether in
a way he plays at sucking. It seems as though they have a mean-
ing for the nursling himself. The increasing calm which suc-
ceeds a storm of crying and weeping as soon as the child is in
position to take nourishment and to seek the nipple is sufficient
evidence that, if awareness exists at all, such awareness is from
the beginning awareness of meaning. But one meaning is neces-
sarily relative to other meanings, even on the elementary plane
of simple motor recognitions.
THE USE OF REFLEXES 39
Furthermore, that organization exists is substantiated by the
fact that there is directed search. The precocious searching of the
child in contact with the breast, in spite of being commonplace,
is a remarkable thing. Such searching, which is the beginning of
accommodation and assimilation, must be conceived, from the
point of view of organization, as the first manifestation of a dual-
ity of desire and satisfaction, consequently of value and reality,
of complete totality and incomplete totality, a duality which is
to reappear on all planes of future activity and which the en-
tire evolution of the mind will try to abate, even though it is
destined to be emphasized unceasingly.
Such are, from the dual point of view of adaptation and
organization, the first expressions of psychological life connected
with hereditary physiological mechanisms. This survey, though
schematic, we believe suffices to show how the psyche prolongs
purely reflex organization while depending on it. The physiology
of the organism furnishes a hereditary mechanism which is al-
ready completely organized and virtually adapted but has never
functioned. Psychology begins with the use of this mechanism.
This use does not in any way change the mechanism itself, con-
trary to what may be observed in the later stages (acquisition of
habits, of understanding, etc.). It is limited to strengthening it
and to making it function without integrating it to new organi-
zations which go beyond it. But within the limits of this func-
tioning there is room for a historical development which marks
precisely the beginning of psychological life. This development
undoubtedly admits of a physiological explanation: if the reflex
mechanism is strengthened by use or decays through lack of use,
this is surely because coordinations are made or unmade by virtue
of the laws of reflex activity. But a physiological explanation of
this kind does not exclude the psychological point of view which
we have taken. In effect, if, as is probable, states of awareness
accompany a reflex mechanism as complicated as that of the
sucking instinct, these states of awareness have an internal his-
tory. The same state of awareness could not twice reproduce it-
self identically. If it reproduces itself it is by acquiring in addi-
tion some new quality of what has already been seen, etc., con-
sequently some meaning. But if, by chance, no state of aware-
40 ELEMENTARY SENSORJMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
ness yet occurred, one could nevertheless speak o behavior or of
behavior patterns, given, on the one hand, the sui generis char-
acter of their development and, on the other, their continuity
with those of subsequent stages. We shall state this in precise
terms in our conclusion.
The true character of these behavior patterns involves the in-
dividual utilization of experience. In so far as the reflex is a
hereditary mechanism it perhaps constitutes a racial utilization
of experience. That is a biological problem of which we have
already spoken (Introduction, 3) and which, while of highest
interest to the psychologist, cannot be solved by his particular
methods. But, inasmuch as it is a mechanism giving rise to use,
and consequently a sort of experimental trial, the sucking reflex
presupposes, in addition to heredity, an individual utilization
of experience. This is the crucial fact which permits the incor-
poration of such a behavior pattern into the realm of psychology,
whereas a simple reflex, unsubordinated to the need for use or
experimental trial as a function of the environment (sneezing
for example) is of no interest to us. Of what does this experi-
mental trial consist? An attempt can be made to define it with-
out subordinating this analysis to any hypothesis concerning the
kinds of states of consciousness which eventually accompany such
a process. Learning connected with the reflex or instinctive mech-
anism is distinguished from the attainments due to habits or in-
telligence by the fact that it retains nothing external to the
mechanism itself. A habit, such as that of a 2- or 3-month-old
baby who opens his mouth on seeing an object, presupposes a
mnemonic fixation related to this object. A tactile-motor schema
is formed according to the variations of the object and this
schema alone explains the uniformity of the reaction. In the
same way the acquisition of an intellectual operation (counting,
for instance) implies memory of the objects themselves or of ex-
periments made with the objects. In both cases, therefore, some-
thing external to the initial mechanism of the act in question is
retained. On the other hand, the baby who learns to suck re-
tains nothing external to the act of sucking; he undoubtedly
bears no trace either of the objects or the sensorial pictures on
which later attempts have supervened. He merely records the se-
THE USE OF REFLEXES 41
ries of attempts as simple acts which condition each other. When
he recognizes the nipple, this does not involve recognition of
a thing or of an image but rather the assimilation of one sensori-
motor and postural complex to another. If the experimental trial
involved in sucking presupposes environment and experience,
since no functional use is possible without contact with the en-
vironment, this is a matter of a very special kind of experimental
trial, of an autoapprenticeship to some extent and not of an ac-
tual acquisition. This is why, if these first psychological behavior
patterns transcend pure physiology just as the individual use
of a hereditary mechanism transcends heredity they still de-
pend on them to the highest degree.
But the great psychological lesson of these beginnings of be-
havior is that, within the limits we have just defined, the experi-
mental trial of a reflex mechanism already entails the most com-
plicated accommodations, assimilations and individual organi-
zations. Accommodation exists because, even without retaining
anything from the environment as such, the reflex mechanism
needs the environment. Assimilation exists because, through
its very use, it incorporates to itself every object capable of sup-
plying it with what it needs and discriminates even these objects
thanks to the identity of the differential attitudes they elicit.
Finally, organization exists, inasmuch as organization is the in-
ternal aspect of this progressive adaptation. The sequential uses
of the reflex mechanism constitute organized totalities and the
gropings and searchings apparent from the beginnings of this
period of experimental trial are oriented by the very structure
of these totalities.
But if these behavior patterns transcend pure physiology
only to the very slight extent in which individual use has a his-
tory independent of the machine predetermined by heredity (to
the point where it could seem almost metaphorical to character-
ize them as "behavior patterns" as we have done here), they
nevertheless seem to us to be of essential importance to the rest
of mental development. In effect, the functions of accommo-
dation, of assimilation and of organization which we have just
described in connection with the use of a reflex mechanism will
be found once more In the course of subsequent stages and will
42 ELEMENTARY SENS0RIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
acquire increasing importance. In a certain sense, we shall even
see that the more complicated and refined intellectual structures
become, the more this functional nucleus will constitute the es-
sence of these very structures.
3. ASSIMILATION; BASIC FACT OF PSYCHIC LIFE.
In studying the use of reflexes we have ascertained the exist-
ence of a fundamental tendency whose manifestations we shall
rediscover at each new stage of intellectual development: the ten-
dency toward repetition of behavior patterns and toward the
utilization of external objects in the framework of such repeti-
tion. This assimilation simultaneously reproductive, generaliz-
ing, and recognitory constitutes the basis o the functional use
which we have described with respect to sucking. Assimilation
is therefore indispensable to reflex accommodation. Moreover, it
is the dynamic expression of the static fact of organization. From
this double point of view it emerges as a basic fact, the psycho-
logical analysis of which must yield genetic conclusions*
Three circumstances induce us to consider assimilation the
fundamental fact of psychic development. The first is that assimi-
lation constitutes a process common to organized life and mental
activity and is therefore an idea common to physiology and psy-
chology. In effect, whatever the secret mechanism of biological
assimilation may be, it is an empirical fact that an organ devel-
ops while functioning (by means of a certain useful exercise and
fatigue). But when the organ in question affects the external be-
havior of the subject, this phenomenon of functional assimilation
presents a physiological aspect inseparable from the psycho-
logical aspect; its parts are physiological whereas the reaction of
the whole may be called psychic. Let us take for example the eye
which develops under the influence of the use of vision (percep-
tion of lights, forms, etc.). From the physiological point of view
it can be stated that light is nourishment for the eye (in particu-
lar in primitive cases of cutaneous sensibility in the lower in-
vertebrates, in whom the eye amounts to an accumulation of pig-
ment dependent on environing sources of light). Light is ab-
sorbed and assimilated by sensitive tissues and this action brings
with it a correlative development of the organs affected. Such a
THE USE OF REFLEXES 43
process undoubtedly presupposes an aggregate of mechanisms
whose start may be very complex. But, if we adhere to a global
description that of behavior and consequently of psychology
the things seen constitute nourishment essential to the eye since
it is they which impose the continuous use to which the organs
owe their development. The eye needs light images just as the
whole body needs chemical nourishment, energy, etc. Among the
aggregate of external realities assimilated by the organism there
are some which are incorporated into the parts of the physico-
chemical mechanisms, while others simply serve as functional
and general nourishment. In the first case, there is physiological
assimilation, whereas the second may be called psychological as-
similation. But the phenomenon is the same in both cases: the
universe is embodied in the activity of the subject.
In the second place, assimilation reveals the primitive fact
generally conceded to be the most elementary one of psychic
life: repetition. How can we explain why the individual, on
however high a level of behavior, tries to reproduce every experi-
ence he has lived? The thing is only comprehensible if the be-
havior which is repeated presents a functional meaning, that is
to say, assumes a value for the subject himself. But whence comes
this value? From functioning as such. Here again, functional as-
similation is manifest as the basic fact.
In the third place, the concept of assimilation from the very
first embodies in the mechanism of repetition the essential ele-
ment >vhich distinguishes activity from passive habit: the co-
ordination of the new with the old which foretells the process
of judgment. In effect, the reproduction characteristic of the act
of assimilation always implies the incorporation of an actual fact
into a given schema, this schema being constituted by the repeti-
tion itself. In this way assimilation is the greatest of all intellec-
tual mechanisms and once more constitutes, in relation to them,
the truly basic fact.
But could not this description be simplified by eliminating
a concept which is so fraught with meaning that it might seem
equivocal? In his remarkable essays on functional psychology
ClaparMe 8 chooses without adding anything as a point of de-
8 See rEducation fonctiontielle, Delachaux and Niestte, 1931.
44 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
parture of all mental activity the very fact of need. How can it
be explained that certain behavior patterns give rise to spontane-
ous repetition? How does it happen that useful acts reproduce
themselves? Because, says Claparede, they answer a need. Needs
thus mark the transition between organic life, from which they
emanate, and psychic life, of which they constitute the motive
power.
The great advantage of this phraseology is that it is much
simpler than that of assimilation. Besides, on the basis of what
Clapar&de maintains, it is very difficult not to agree with him.
Since need is the concrete expression of what we have called the
process of assimilation, we could not raise doubts concerning the
ground for this conception to which we personally owe much.
But the question is to know whether, precisely because of its sim-
plicity, it does not bring up initial problems which the concept
of assimilation permits us to refer to biological study. There
seems to us to be two difficulties.
In the first place, if need as such is the motive power for all
activity, how does it direct the movements necessary to its satis-
faction? With admirable analytical acuteness, Clapar&de himself
has raised the question. Not only, he says, does one not under-
stand why the pursuit of a goal coordinates useful actions, but
furthermore, one does not see how, when one means fails, others
are attempted. It transpires, in effect, especially when acquired
associations are superimposed on the reflex, that an identical
need releases a succession of different behavior patterns, but al-
ways directed toward the same end. What is the instrument of
this selection and of this coordination of advantageous reactions?
It is self-evident that it would be useless to try to resolve
these fundamental problems now. But does not the question arise
because one begins by dissociating the need from the act in its
totality? The basic needs do not exist, in effect, prior to the mo-
tivating cycles which permit them to be gratified. They appear
during functioning. One could not say, therefore, that they pre-
cede repetition: they result from it as well, in an endless circle.
For example empty sucking or any similar practice constitutes
training which augments need as well as the reverse. From the
psychological point of view, need must not be conceived as be-
THE USE OF REFLEXES 45
ing independent of global functioning of which it is only an
indication. From the physiological point of view, moreover, need
presupposes an organization in "mobile balance" of which it
simply indicates a transitory imbalance. In both kinds of termi-
nology, need is thus the expression of a totality momentarily in-
complete and tending toward reconstituting itself, that is to say,
precisely what we call a cycle or a schema of assimilation: Need
manifests the necessity of the organism or an organ to use an ex-
ternal datum in connection with its functioning. The basic fact
is therefore not need, but the schemata of assimilation of which
it is the subjective aspect. Henceforth it is perhaps a pseudo ques-
tion to ask how need directs useful movements. It is because these
movements are already directed that need sets them in motion.
In other words, organized movements, ready for repetition, and
need itself constitute only one whole. True, this conception, very
clear with regard to the reflex or any innate organization, ceases
to seem so with respect to acquired associations. But perhaps the
difficulty comes from taking literally the term "associations/*
whereas the fact of assimilation makes it possible to explain how
every new schema results from a differentiation and a complica-
tion of earlier schemata and not of an association between ele-
ments given in an isolated state. This hypothesis even leads to an
understanding of how a sole need can set in motion a series
of successive efforts. On the one hand, all assimilation is general-
izing and, on the other hand, the schemata are capable of inter-
coordination through reciprocal assimilation as well as being
able to function alone. (See stages IV-VI concerning this.)
A second difficulty seems to us to appear when one consid-
ers need as the basic fact of psychic life. Needs are supposed, in
such a case, to insure the transition between organism and psy-
che; they constitute in some way the physiological motive power
for mental activity. But if certain corporeal needs play this role
in a large number of lower behavior patterns (such as the search
for food in animal psychology), in the young child the principal
needs are of a functional category. The functioning of the organs
engenders, through its very existence, a psychic need sui generis,
or rather a series of vicarious needs whose complexity transcends,
from the very beginning, simple organic satisfaction. Further-
46 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
more, the more the intelligence develops and strengthens, the
more the assimilation of reality to functioning itself is trans-
formed into real comprehension, the principal motive power of
intellectual activity thus becoming the need to incorporate things
into the subject's schemata. This vicariousness of needs, which
unceasingly transcend themselves to go beyond the purely or-
ganic plane, seems to show us anew that the basic fact is not need
as such but rather the act of assimilation, which embodies in one
whole functional need, repetition and that coordination between
subject and object which foretells discrepancy and judgment.
To be sure, invoking the concept of assimilation does not
constitute an explanation of assimilation itself. Psychology can
only begin with the description of a basic fact without being able
to explain it. The ideal of absolute deduction could only lead
to verbal explanation. To renounce this temptation is to choose
as a principle an elementary fact amenable to biological treat-
ment simultaneously with psychological analysis. Assimilation
answers this. Explanation of this fact is in the realm of biology.
The existence of an organized totality which is preserved while
assimilating the external world raises, in effect, the whole prob-
lem of life itself. But, as the higher cannot be reduced to the
lower without adding something, biology will not succeed in
clarifying the question of assimilation without taking into ac-
count its psychological aspect* At a certain level life organization
and mental organization only constitute, in effect, one and the
same thing.
CHAPTER II
THE SECOND STAGE:
The First Acquired Adaptations and the
Primary Circular Reaction
The hereditary adaptations are doubled, at a given moment,
by adaptations which are not innate to which they are subordi-
nated little by little. In other words, the reflex processes are pro-
gressively integrated into cortical activity. These new adapta-
tions constitute what are ordinarily called "acquired associa-
tions/' habits or even conditioned reflexes, to say nothing of in-
tentional movements characteristic of a third stage. Intent, which
is doubtless imminent to the more primitive levels of psycho-
logical assimilation, could not, in effect, be aware of itself, and
thus differentiate behavior, before assimilation through "sec-
ondary" schemata, that is to say, before the behavior patterns
born of the exercise of prehension and contemporaneous with
the first actions brought to bear on things. We can therefore
ascribe to the present stage intentional movements as the higher
limit and the first nonhereditary adaptations as the lower limit.
In truth it is extremely precarious to specify when acquired
adaptation actually begins in contradistinction to hereditary
adaptation. From a theoretical point of view, the following cri-
terion can be adopted: in every behavior pattern of which the
adaptation is determined by heredity, assimilation and accom-
modation form one entity and remain undifferentiated, whereas
with acquired adaptation they begin to dissociate themselves. In
other words, hereditary adaptation does not admit of any ap-
prenticeship outside its own use, whereas acquired adaptation
implies an apprenticeship related to the new conditions of the
external environment simultaneously with an incorporation of
47
48 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the objects to the schemata thus differentiated. But if one pro-
ceeds from theory to the interpretation of particular facts, great
difficulties arise in distinguishing real acquisition from simple
preformed coordination.
In effect, how is it possible to have a clear idea of the mo-
ment whence there is retention of some other condition external
to the reflex mechanism itself? In the use of the reflex, as we have
seen, there is only fixation of the mechanism as such, and It is
in this respect that accommodation of a hereditary schema, while
presupposing experience and contact with the environment,
forms only one entity with assimilation, that is to say, with the
functional use of this schema. At a given moment, on the other
hand, the child's activity retains something external to itself,
that is to say, it is transformed into a function of experience;
in this respect there is acquired accommodation. For instance,
when the child systematically sucks his thumb, no longer due to
chance contacts but through coordination between hand and
mouth, this may be called acquired accommodation. Neither the
reflexes of the mouth nor of the hand can be provided such co-
ordination by heredity (there is no instinct to suck the thumb I)
and experience alone explains its formation. But if this is clear
with regard to that kind of behavior pattern, in how many oth-
ers is it impossible to draw a clear boundary between the pure
reflex and the utilization of experience? The multiple aspects of
visual accommodation, for example, comprise an inseparable
mixture of reflex use and true acquisition.
There is the same difficulty from the point of view of as-
similation. Psychological assimilation characteristic of the reflex
consists, as we have seen, in a cumulative repetition with pro-
gressive incorporation of the objects into the cycle which has
thus been reproduced. But nothing, in such a behavior pattern,
yet implies that it is directed by the new results to which it leads.
To be sure, in the sucking act, there is from the beginning di-
rected searching and, in case of hunger, success alone gives mean-
ing to the series of gropings. But the result sought yields nothing
new in relation to the primitive sensorimotor field of the reflex
itself. On the contrary, in the realm of acquired adaptation
toward a new result (new either through the character of the sen-
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 49
serial pictures which define it, or through the procedures set in
motion to obtain it), this directs repetition. Whereas, in the re-
flex, assimilation only formed one entity with accommodation,
henceforth the reproduction of the new act, or the assimilation
of objects to the schema of this act, constitutes a process distinct
from accommodation itself. Such a process can be very slightly
differentiated when the acquired adaptation merely prolongs the
reflex adaptation, but it is the more distinct from accommoda-
tion as the new act is more complex. Thus it is that, in the ac-
quisition of prehension, it is one thing to repeat indefinitely a
maneuver which has been successful and quite another thing to
attempt to grasp an object in a new situation. The repetition of
the cycle which has been actually acquired or is in the process
of being acquired is what J. M. Baldwin has called the "circular
reaction": this behavior pattern will constitute for us the princi-
ple of assimilation sui generis characteristic of this second stage.
But if such a distinction between the simple repetition of the re-
flex and the "circular reaction" is theoretically clear, it goes
without saying that here again the greatest difficulties confront
concrete analysis.
Now let us proceed to examining the facts, first grouping
them according to separate and distinct realms of activity.
1. ACQUIRED SUCKING HABITS. Superimposed on
the reflex behavior patterns, which we have described in the
first chapter, are, from the second or third month, certain forms
of .sucking which are unquestionably new. We shall begin by
describing the two principal circular reactions the systematic
protrusion of the tongue (later with the action of saliva, of the
lips, etc.), and the sucking of the thumb. These two activities will
provide us with the type of that which is spontaneous acquired
habit, with active assimilation and accommodation. Thereupon
we shall discuss some facts concerning accommodation, commonly
called "association transfers" or "sensorimotor associations" (set-
ting in motion of sucking by various signals: position, noises,
optical signals, etc.) and we shall see that these partial accom-
modations, however mechanical and passive they may appear to
be, in reality constitute simple, isolated and abstract links of the
50 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
cycles inherent in circular reaction. Finally we shall speak of
certain coordinations between sucking and vision.
Here are examples of the first group of facts (circular reac-
tions):
Observation 71. -Laurent at 0;0 (30) stays awake without crying, gaz-
ing ahead with wide open eyes. He makes sucking-like movements al-
most continually, opening and closing his mouth in slow rhythm, his
tongue constantly moving. At certain moments his tongue, instead of
remaining inside his lips, licks the lower lip; the sucking recommences
with renewed ardor.
Two interpretations are possible. Either at such times there is
searching for food and then the protrusion of the tongue is merely a
reflex inherent in the mechanism of sucking and swallowing, or else
this marks the beginning of circular reaction. It seems, for the time
being, that both are present. Sometimes protrusion of the tongue ^is ac-
companied by disordered movements of the arms and leads to impa-
tience and anger. In such a case there is obviously a seeking to suck,
and disappointment. Sometimes, on the other hand, protrusion of the
tongue is accompanied by slow, rhythmical movements of the arms and
an expression of contentment. In this case the tongue comes into play
through circular reaction.
Observation 12. -At Ojl (3) Laurent puts out his tongue several times
in succession. He is wide awake, motionless, hardly moves his arms and
makes no sucking-like movements; his mouth is partly open and he
keeps passing his tongue over the lower lip.-At 0;1 (5) Laurent be-
gins sucking-like movements and then the sucking is gradually re-
placed by the preceding behavior.-At 0;1 (6) he plays with his tongue,
sometimes by licking his lower lip, sometimes by sliding his tongue
between his lips and gums. The following days this behavior is fre-
quently repeated and always with the same expression of satisfaction.
Observation 13 .-At 0;1 (24) Lucienne plays with her tongue, passing
it over her lower lip and licking her lips unceasingly. Observation is
made of the existence of a habit acquired a certain number of days
previous. The behavior is extended to sucking the thumb and beyond.
Observation /^.During the second half of the second month, that is
to say, after having learned to suck his thumb, Laurent continues to
play with his tongue and to suck, but intermittently. On the other
hand, his skill increases. Thus, at 0;1 (20) I notice he grimaces while
placing his tongue between gums and lips and in bulging his lips, as
well as making a clapping sound when quickly closing his mouth after
these exercises.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 51
Observation 15. During the third month he adds to the protrusion of
his tongue and finger sucking new circular reactions Involving the
mouth. Thus from 0;2 (18) Laurent plays with his saliva, letting it ac-
cumulate within his half-open lips and then abruptly swallowing it.
About the same period he makes sucking-like movements, with or
without putting out his tongue, changing in various ways the position
of his lips; he bends and contracts his lower lip, etc. These exercises
subsequently become increasingly varied and do not deserve more de-
tailed examination from the point of view we have taken in this study.
Finger sucking also gives rise to evident acquisition.
Observation 16. At 0;1 (1) Laurent is held by his nurse in an almost
vertical position, shortly before the meal. He is very hungry and tries
to nurse with his mouth open and continuous rotations of the head.
His arms describe big rapid movements and constantly knock against
his face. Twice, when his hand was laid on his right cheek, Laurent
turned his head and tried to grasp his fingers with his mouth. The
first time he failed and succeeded the second. But the movements of his
arms are not coordinated with those of his head; the hand escapes
while the mouth tries to maintain contact. Subsequently, however, he
catches his thumb; his whole body is then immobilized, his right hand
happens to grasp his left arm and his left hand presses against his
mouth. Then a long pause ensues during which Laurent sucks his left
thumb in the same way in which he nurses, with greed and passion
(pantings, etc.).
There is therefore a complete analogy with Observation 7 of Chap-
ter I. But it is more firmly established that nothing external forces the
child to keep his hand in his mouth; the arms are not immobilized by
the reclining position of the subject but by a spontaneous attitude.
Nevertheless the fact observed lends itself to two interpretations: either,
as may be the case from the first consecutive days after birth, sucking
immobilizes the whole body and consequently the hands the arms re-
main tight against the torso while the newborn child nurses, and it is
conceivable that it may be the same when he sucks his thumb which
he has found by chance or else there is direct coordination between
sucking and the arm movements. Subsequent observations seem to
show that actual behavior foretells this coordination.
Observation 77. At 0;1 (2) Laurent in his crib cries with hunger. He is
lifted to an almost vertical position. His behavior then goes through
four sequential phases quite distinct from one another. He begins by
calming himself and tries to suck while turning his head from left to
right and back again while his arms flourish without direction. Then
(second phase) the arms, instead of describing movements of maximum
breadth, seem to approach his mouth. Several times each hand brushes
52 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
his lips; the right hand presses against the child's cheek and clasps it
for a few seconds. Meanwhile the mouth is wide open and unceasingly
attempts to grasp something. The left thumb is then caught and the
two arms become rigid, the right arm against the chest under the left
arm which is held by the mouth. During a third phase, the arms again
wave about in space without direction, the left thumb leaving the
mouth after a few minutes. During this time the child becomes angry,
his head thrown back and his cries alternating with attempts to suck.
Finally a fourth phase begins during which the hands again approach
the mouth which tries to seize the fingers which touch it. These last
attempts meet with no success and crying ensues.
Can coordination be mentioned this time? Each of these phases finds
its parallel in the behavior of the preceding weeks; from the first days of
life babies are seen slashing their faces with their fingers while the
mouth seems to try to grasp something. Nevertheless the sequence of
the four phases seems to indicate a beginning of a connection be-
tween the movements of the arms and the sucking attempts.
Observation 18. At 0;1 (3) Laurent (same position) does not seem to
reveal any coordination between hands and mouth before nursing. On
the other hand, after a meal, when he was still wide awake and trying
to suck, his arms, instead of gesticulating aimlessly, constantly move
toward his mouth. To be more precise, it has occurred to me several
times that the chance contact of hand and mouth set in motion the
directing of the latter toward the former and that then (but only
then), the hand tries to return to the mouth. Laurent succeeded in suck-
ing his fingers four times, his hand and arms immediately becoming
immobilized. But that has never lasted more than a few seconds. The
evening of the same day Laurent, after nursing, remained wide awake
and continued to try to suck, interspersing his attempts with vigorous
cries. I then grasped his right arm and held it until his mouth began to
suck his hand. As soon as the lips were in contact with the hand, the
arms stopped resisting and remained still for several moments. This
phenomenon has been confirmed since I made the experiment since
0;0 (15) but as a rule the position is not maintained. Only when the
thumb is sucked does immobility result (see Obs. 7 and 16). This time,
on the contrary, the arm remained immobile for a moment, although
the back of the hand only was in contact with the lips; the latter ob-
viously tried to explore the whole hand. After a moment, the hand
lost the contact but rediscovered it. It is no longer the mouth that
seeks the hand, but the hand which reaches for the mouth. Thirteen
times in succession I have been able to observe the hand go back into
the mouth. There is no longer any doubt that coordination exists* The
mouth may be seen opening and the hand directing itself toward it
simultaneously. Even the failures are significant. It thus happens that
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 53
the fingers are planted on the cheek while the open mouth Is ready to
receive them.
Observation 19.- At 0;1 (4) after the 6 P.M. meal Laurent is wide
awake (as was not the case at the preceding meals) and not completely
satisfied. First he makes vigorous sucking-like movements, then his
right hand may be seen approaching his mouth, touching his lower
lip and finally being grasped. But as only the index finger was grasped,
the hand fell out again. Shortly afterward it returned. This time the
thumb was in the mouth while the index finger was placed between
the gums and the upper lip. The hand then moves 5 cm. away from
the mouth only to reenter it; now the thumb is grasped and the other
fingers remain outside. Laurent then is motionless and sucks vigorously,
drooling so much that after a few moments he is removed. A fourth
time the hand approaches and three fingers enter the mouth. The hand
leaves again and reenters a fifth time. As the thumb has again been
grasped, sucking is resumed. I then remove the hand and place it
near his waist. Laurent seems to give up sucking and gazes ahead, con-
tented and satisfied. But after a few minutes the lips move and the
hand approaches them again. This time there is a series of setbacks;
the fingers are placed on the chin and lower lip. The index finger
enters the mouth twice (consequently the sixth and seventh time this
has succeeded). The eighth time the hand enters the mouth, the thumb
alone is retained and sucking continues. I again remove the hand.
Again lip movements cease, new attempts ensue, success results for the
ninth and tenth time, after which the experiment is interrupted.
Observation 20. At 0;1 (5) and 0;1 (6) Laurent tries to catch his thumb
as soon as he awakes but is unsuccessful while he is lying on his back.
His hand taps his face without finding his mouth. When he is vertical,
however (held by the waist, his arms and torso free), he quickly finds
his lips. At 0;1 (7) on the other hand, I find him sucking his thumb
while he is lying down. But it keeps escaping him because it does not go
far into his mouth but between the upper lip and the gum. Progress
ensues, however, because the thumb, after leaving the mouth, returns
to it several times in succession. Unfortunately, between these success-
ful attempts, Laurent taps his nose, cheeks and eyes. Finally he becomes
angry as the result of an unsuccessful attempt. The following days, co-
ordination is accomplished. At 0;1 (9), for example, Laurent sucks his
thumb while lying on his back, I take it out of his mouth and, several
times in succession, he puts it back into his mouth again almost im-
mediately (having at most groped between nose and mouth) and only
grasping the thumb, his other fingers remaining outside the mouth.
Observation 21 .At the end of the second month Laurent sucked his
left thumb as well as his right. At 0;1 (21), for example, while lying on
54 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
his left side, he tries to suck his left thumb. After failure due to Ms
position, he raises his right arm. Unable to grasp the thumb he then
turns to the right, manages to lie on his back and continues searching.
He almost reaches his right thumb but, happening to fail, he returns
to his left hand and directs it toward his mouth. Failing once more, he
again turns to the right and this time succeeds in seizing the right
thumb.-This example reveals that Laurent is equally adept at suck-
ing both thumbs. Subsequently, however, he became more accustomed
to sucking the left thumb so that he injured it slightly and it had to
be bandaged with his hand attached. After some anger and groping he
then resumed sucking his right thumb (0; (7) and the days following).
Observation 22. During the third month thumb sucking grew less im-
portant to Laurent due to the pressure of new interests, visual, audi-
tory, etc. From 0;2 (15) I note that Laurent now sucks his thumb only
to assuage his hunger and chiefly to put himself to sleep. This is an
interesting example of specialization of the habit, also observable in
Jacqueline. When Laurent cries his thumb goes to the rescue. At Q;2
(19) I note that he even closes his eyes and turns on his right side to
go to sleep at the moment his thumb touched his lips. During the
third month the thumb is opposite the fingers at the moment sucking
takes place. At the end of the second month Laurent began by sucking
the back of his hand and of his fingers, or several fingers together, or the
thumb and index finger, before finding the thumb alone. During the
third month, on the contrary, the thumb gradually placed itself op-
posite the other fingers and Laurent managed to grasp it at the first
attempt and suck it alone.
Observation 23 .In the case of Lucienne who did not undergo the
sort of training to which I subjected Laurent, the coordination be-
tween arm movements and sucking was only definitely established at
0;2 (2). At 0;1 (25) and 0;1 (26) the hands touch the mouth constantly
but I still observe Lucienne's incapacity to hold her thumb between her
lips for a long time and above all to find it again once it has left. On
the other hand, at Q;2 (2) I was able to make the two following ob-
servations. At 6 P.M., after the meal, her hands wandered around her
mouth and she alternately sucked her fingers (chiefly the index finger),
the back of her hand and her wrist* When her hand escapes her mouth
it approaches it again and coordination is reestablished. At 8 PM.
Lucienne is awakened and again sucks her fingers: her hand remains
still for long moments and then the mouth opens to grasp it at the
same time as the hand approaches the mouth. The following day, the
same observations: coordination was reestablished during the whole
morning and for several moments in the evening. I particularly noted
the following: the hand groping in the right direction, then an abrupt
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 55
movement of the fingers into the mouth which was already open and
motionless. The rest of the observations confirmed the fact that co-
ordination had become permanent.
Observation 24 .In the case of Jacqueline the first sure signs date from
0;1 (28) and the days following. She puts her left hand in her mouth
when she is very hungry, a few moments before nursing. After the
meal she often puts her fingers in her mouth again, to prolong sucking.
From approximately 0;4 (5) the habit becomes systematic and she must
suck her thumb in order to go to sleep.
In addition it is to be noted that the objects grasped are carried
to the mouth from approximately 0;3 (15).
Putting out the tongue and finger sucking thus constitute
the first two examples of a behavior pattern which prolongs the
functional use of the reflex (sucking-like movements), but with
the acquisition of some element external to the hereditary
mechanisms. The new use of the tongue seems to go beyond the
simple reflex play involved in sucking. With regard to the thumb,
let us repeat that no instinct to suck the fingers exists and, even
if the act of bringing food to the mouth were a hereditary be-
havior pattern, it is evident that the late appearance of this act
indicates the interdiction of acquired associations, superimposed
on ultimate reflex coordination. In characterizing these acquisi-
tions it must also be noted that they imply an active element. It
is not a question of associations imposed by the environment,
but rather of relationships discovered and even created in the
course of the child's own searchings. It is this twofold aspect of
acquisition and activity which characterizes what we shall hence-
forth call "circular reactions" not in the rather loose sense of
the term as used by Baldwin, but in Mr. Wallon's limited sense; 1
the functional use leading to the preservation or the rediscovery
of a new result.
Along with actual circular reactions sucking also gives rise
to behavior patterns in which accommodation is predominant.
Here are involved those acquired associations which are often
called "associative transfers" when one does not wish to go so
far as to speak of "conditioned reflexes." Let us first note that
circular reaction brings such transfers with it. In the course of
progressive coordination between sucking and hand and arm
1 L f enfant turbulant, p. 85.
56 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
movements it is evident that associations are established which
direct the thumb to the mouth. The contact of the fingers with
the covers, with the face, lips, etc., thus serves sooner or later as
a signal which directs the hand. But, outside these mnemonic
acquisitions or transfers inherent in circular reaction, there are
some which seem to result from single automatic training without
the appearance of the element of activity characteristic of the
preceding reactions. What must we think of this?
It is appropriate to recall here the fine observations of two
of Charlotte Biihler's collaborators, M. Hetzer and R. Ripin, 2
on the nursling's training as a function of feeding conditions
(Ernahrungssituation). According to these authors, three stages
in the child's behavior may be distinguished. The first stage
comprises the first week: the nursling attempts to suck only
when his lips are in contact with the breast or the bottle. This
we have seen in Chapter I ( 1 and 2). The second stage extends
from the second to the eighth or ninth week: the nursling seeks
the breast as soon as he finds himself in situations which regu-
larly precede the meal (dressing, diaper changing, a stretched-
out position, etc.). Finally the third stage begins between 0;3
and 0;4 and can be recognized by the appearance of visual signals.
It is enough that the child sees the bottle or the objects which
remind him of the meal for him to open his mouth and cry. Let
us examine separately the second and third of these behavior
patterns; both of them are in the category of acquired associa-
tions, but under different headings.
The behavior patterns characteristic of these stages seem to
constitute the prototype of passive association (Signalwirkung).
Contrary to the transfers characteristic of active circular reac-
tion, the former seem due to the pressure of external circum-
stances subject to repetition. But, as we shall see, this is only a
probability and such accommodations presuppose an element of
activity. Concerning the reality of the facts observed we obvi-
ously agree with Charlotte Btihler and hfer collaborators. It is
certain that, at a given moment in development, relationships
are established between the position of the child, tactile and
2 H. Hetzer, and R. Ripin, op. cit.; and Ch. Btihler, Kindheit und Jugend,
3rd edition, Jema; Fischer, 1931, p. 14 f.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 57
acoustic signals, etc., and the release of sucking movements. On
the other hand, the date of the appearance of these behavior
patterns as well as their interpretation both seem to us to be
subjects for discussion. First, here are two observations which
will clarify the meaning of our remarks:
Observation 25. I tried to determine with respect to Laurent when
there began to be association between the position of the baby and
the seeking of the breast. But it seemed to me impossible to affirm
the existence of the association before the second month. At 0;0 (6)
and the days following, Laurent, it is true, sought to nurse as soon as
he was put on the scale, the dressing table, or his mother's bed, whereas
previously he sought nothing and cried in his crib. At 0;0 (9) Laurent
is half asleep in his crib; he sought nothing as long as he was being
carried, but as soon as he was placed on the bed he opened his mouth
and turned his head from side to side with more rapid arm movements
and tension of the whole body. At 0;0 (10) he no longer seeks while
in his crib but as soon as he is in the nurse's arms, etc. This was his be-
havior until the end of the first month. But is it a matter of pure co-
incidence or of an actual association betweeen position and sucking?
It is impossible for us to decide this question, because the facts can be
interpreted quite independently from the existence of an associative
transfer. It is sufficient to state, as we have done in Chapter I, how
precocious sucking-like movements and the groping characteristic of
the reflex are, to understand that the child will try to nurse as soon
as he is neither crying, nor asleep, nor distracted by movement. In his
crib he does not seek because nothing distracts him from his cries of
hunger, and these cries engender others through this sort of reflex
repetition of which we have already spoken; so long as he is carried
he seeks nothing because the rocking motion absorbs him; but as soon
as he Is placed on the scale, on the dressing table where his diapers are
changed, or in his nurse's or his mother's arms, he tries to suck before
recommencing to cry because neither his weeping nor the excitemerits
of motion prevent him any longer from sucking. Does this mean there
is a connection between Trinklage and sucking? Nothing authorizes us
to deny it, or to affirm it either as yet. Besides, when one knows the
difficulty of establishing a conditioned reflex in animals and especially
the necessity to "strengthen" it all the time in order to preserve it, one
can only be prudent in invoking such a mechanism in so far as the be-
havior patterns of the first weeks are concerned. 3
a We do not mean to deny that certain conditioned reflexes may be con-
stituted at birth, as D. P. Marquis succeeded in proving this with babies
from 3 to 10 days old by associating certain sounds with sucking reflexes
58 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
On the other hand, from the moment Laurent knows how to find
his thumb (beginning of the second month), the seeking of the breast
may be differentiated from the other tendencies and one thus suc-
ceeds in establishing a connection between the Trinklage and this
seeking. Before the meal the child is only inclined to suck his fingers
in the crib when he is not crying or is not too sleepy; but, as soon as
he is in position to eat (in his mother's arms or on the bed, etc.) his
hands lose interest, leave his mouth, and it becomes obvious that the
child no longer seeks anything but the breast, that is to say, contact
with food. At 0;1 (4) for instance, no experiment involving finger
sucking was possible before the meal as Laurent turned his head from
side to side as soon as he was in position to eat.
During the second month coordination between position and
seeking the breast has made considerable progress. Thus at the end of
the month Laurent only tries to nurse when he is in his mother's
arms and no longer when on the dressing table.
Observation 26. In correlation with this progressive accommodation
to the situation as a whole, it seemed to us that accommodation to the
breast itself made some progress during the second month and went
beyond the reflex accommodation of the first weeks. We noted in
Jacqueline from 0;1 (14) and in Lucienne from 0;1 (27) the natural
disposition to turn the head to the correct side when the breast was
changed; whereas their body's rotation should have directed the head
to the outside, they themselves turned it in the direction of the breast.
Such behavior does not of course imply in any way correct orientation
in space; it only indicates that henceforth the child knows how to
utilize the contacts with Ms mother's arms as signals enabling him to
mark the location of the food. Now if this is the case, there is ob-
viously acquired association, that is to say, accommodation which
transcends simple reflex accommodation.
From the second month we again find the correlations ob-
served by Charlotte Buhler and her collaborators. But do these
correlations between the situation as a whole and sucking
necessarily presuppose the hypothesis of the "associative transfer"
("Signalwirkung'y
That is a general problem to which we shall return in 5.
(Journ. of Genet. Psychol, XXXIX, 1931, p. 479) and W. S. Ray was even
able to provoke conditioned reflexes in the fetus (Child Development, III,
1932, p, 175). We only claim that, granted the difficulties of the question of
conditioning which increase daily, caution compels us whenever possible to
have recourse to more satisfactory explanations than those which one some-
times hopes to draw from the existence of the conditioned reflex.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 59
Let us limit ourselves to emphasizing from now on the fact that
the association acquired between the signals characteristic of
the Trinklage and the sucking reflex was not imposed on the
child in a wholly mechanical way. There is not only passive
recording. Through the constant seeking which characterizes the
sucking instinct it is always in connection with the efforts and
gropings of the subject himself that the association is acquired.
Here again let us beware of too simple a comparison with the
conditioned reflex. As we understand it, if association is estab-
lished between Trinklage and sucking, it is not through mere
training, otherwise one would not see why optic signals would
not also give rise to training of the same kind from the second
month. It is simply that the sucking schema that is to say, the
organized totality of the movements and attitudes peculiar to
sucking comprises certain postures which extend beyond the
buccal sphere. Now these attitudes are not entirely passive and
sooner or later involve the compliance of the whole body: the
limbs become rigid, the hands clenched, etc., as soon as the
nursling adopts the position characteristic of nursing. Thence-
forth the simple recall of these attitudes sets in motion the
whole cycle of the sucking act because the kinesthetic sensations
and postural sensibility thus released are immediately assimilated
to the schema of this act. Therefore association between an inde-
pendent signal and a given sensorimotor schema does not exist,
nor coordination between two groups of independent schemata
(as will be the case between vision and sucking, etc.), but rather
the constitution and progressive enlargement of a single schema
of accommodation and assimilation combined. At most can it
be said, in such a case, that accommodation prevails over as-
similation.
Let us now come to the most complex acquisitions pertain-
ing to sucking (the third of the stages of Hetzer and Ripin)
the associations between sucking and vision. From the third and
fourth month, according to Hetzer and Ripin, the child may be
observed getting ready to eat as soon as he sees the bottle or any
object connected with food. In such a behavior pattern there is
no longer simple, more or less passive, association between a
60 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
signal and the act but recognition of an external image and of
meanings attributed to this image.
We have been able to make similar observations:
Observation 27. -Jacqueline, at 0;4 (27) and the days following, opens
her mouth as soon as she is shown the bottle. She only began mixed
feeding at 0;4 (12)* At 0;7 (13) I note that she opens her mouth differ-
ently according to whether she is offered a bottle or a spoon.
Lucienne at 0;3 (12) stops crying when she sees her mother un-
fastening her dress for the meal.
Laurent too, between 0;3 (15) and 0;4 reacts to visual signals. When,
after being dressed as usual just before the meal, he is put in my arms
in position for nursing, he looks at me and then searches all around,
looks at me again, etc. but he does not attempt to nurse. When I
place him in his mother's arms without his touching the breast, he looks
at her and immediately opens his mouth wide, cries, moves about, in
short reacts in a completely significant way. It is therefore sight and
no longer only the position which henceforth is the signal.
Such behavior patterns are surely superior to those which
are governed only by coordination between position and suck-
ing. They imply, in effect, actual recognition of visual images
and the attribution of a meaning to these images through ref-
erence to the sucking schema. Is this tantamount to saying that
the bottle, etc., already constitute "objects" for the child, as Ch.
Biihler maintains? 4 We would not dare to go so far. 5 Sensorial
images can be recognized and endowed with meaning without
by the same token acquiring the characteristics of the substantial
and spatial permanence inherent in the object. But we recognize
that such images are evidently perceived by the child as "ex-
ternal"; that is to say, they are projected in a coherent whole of
images and relationships. In effect, through the very fact that
for the nursling the bottle belongs to two series of schemata
capable of giving rise to adaptations and functions independent
of each other (vision and sucking) and through the fact that it
realizes the coordination of these two schemata, it is necessarily
endowed with a certain externality. On the other hand, thumb
sucking does not realize this condition. Even though this sucking
presupposes for the observer coordination between the move-
* Op, dt. t p. is.
5 We shall see why in the course of Volume H.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 61
ments of the hand and those of the mouth, the thumb is at first
only known by the child to the extent that it is sucked and there
is no coordination between two independent schemata for the
subject himself. We shall speak, therefore, in the case of the
release o sucking through visual signals, of recognition as func-
tion of the coordination of two schemata of assimilation (sucking
and vision).
In conclusion, the acquisitions which characterize the suck-
ing mechanism past the stage of purely hereditary adaptations,
are three in number. In the first place there is actual "circular
reaction" playing with the tongue, systematic thumb sucking,
etc. This reaction constitutes an essentially active behavior
pattern which prolongs the reflex use described in the first chap-
ter but with, in addition, an acquired element of accommoda-
tion to the facts of experience. Passivity increases, on the other
hand, in the accommodations which are constituted more or
less automatically as a function of the external environment, but
these accommodations, too, presuppose, at their point of de-
parture, activity of the subject. Finally, the behavior is compli-
cated by the coordination of heterogeneous schemata at the time
of the recognition of the visual signals for sucking.
Without wanting to anticipate the theoretical conclusions
which we shall try to draw from the facts in 5, it is possible at
the beginning to ask ourselves what these three types of conduct
represent from the point of view of the mechanisms of adapta-
tion. Circular reaction is surely to be conceived as an active
synthesis of assimilation and accommodation. It is assimilation
to the extent that it constitutes a functional use prolonging the
assimilation reflex described in the first chapter: to suck thumb
or tongue is to assimilate these objects to the very activity of
sucking. But circular reaction is accommodation to the extent
that it realizes a new coordination, not given in the hereditary
reflex mechanism. With regard to the so-called associative trans-
fer, it is chiefly accommodation in so far as it presupposes as-
sociations suggested by the external environment. But it implies
an element of assimilation of earlier circular reactions, to the
extent that it proceeds by differentiation. Between its own ac-
commodation and that of the circular reaction there is only a
62 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
difference of degree: the latter Is more active and the former
more passive. Finally, the coordination of the schemata in which
the recognition of the visual signals for sucking consists, is only
a complication of these same mechanisms: it is assimilation to
the second degree inasmuch as it is coordination of two schemata
of assimilation (vision and sucking) and it is accommodation to
the second degree inasmuch as it prolongs the chain of acquired
associations.
2. VISION. We are here not at all going to study percep-
tions and visual accommodations in themselves but only attempt,
in accordance with the aim of this work, to distinguish in the
behavior patterns pertaining to vision the different aspects
applying to the development of intelligence. We shall resume
consideration of the particulars of certain visual accommodations
connected with the formation of the idea of space.
As with sucking, we shall distinguish in the behavior pat-
terns controlled by vision a certain number of types proceeding
from the pure reflex to the circular reaction and from there to
the acquired coordinations between the visual schemata and
those of other activities.
The reflexes should have been dealt with in the first chapter.
But, as they are far from interesting inasmuch as the sucking
reflexes, we can limit ourselves to mentioning them here as a
memorandum. Perception of light exists from birth and conse-
quently the reflexes which insure the adaptation of this percep-
tion (the pupillary and palpebral reflexes, both to light). All the
rest (perception of forms, sizes, positions, distances, prominence,
etc.) is acquired through the combination of reflex activity with
higher activities. But the behavior patterns connected with the
perception of light imply as they do with sucking, but to a
much lesser degree a sort of reflex apprenticeship and actual
searching. I noted, for example, from the end of the first week
how much Laurent's expression changed when he was near
luminous objects and how he sought them, as soon as they were
moved, without of course being able to follow them with his
glance. His head alone followed their movement for an instant,
but without continuous coordination. Preyer (op. tit., p. 3) notes
during the first days the child's expression of satisfaction at soft
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 63
light; from the sixth day, his son turned his head toward the
window when he was moved away from it. It seems as though
such behavior patterns are explainable in the same way as the
reflex behavior pertaining to sucking. Light is an excitant (con-
sequently a functional aliment) for visual activity, whence a
tendency to preserve perception of light (assimilation) and a
groping to rediscover it when it Vanishes (accommodation). But
nothing acquired is doubtless yet superimposed on this reflex
adaptation and, if it is already possible to speak of activity at
this level, since there is searching, this activity does not neces-
sarily imply apprenticeship as a function of the external environ-
ment.
On the other hand, toward the end of the first month the
situation changes, as the result of progress in directing the
glance. It is known that there is surface participation as early
as the motor accommodation of the eye to the moving of objects.
From the point of view of psychological accommodation, the
stage thus surmounted during the fourth week is extremely signifi-
cant. As Preyer says, the child begins "really to look, instead of
contemplating vaguely" and the face assumes "a definitely in-
telligent expression" (op. cit., p. 35) this is the time when the
baby stops crying in order to look before him for long minutes
in succession without even making sucking-like movements.
Here are a few examples:
Observation 28. Jacqueline at 0;0 (16) does not follow with her eyes
the flame of a match 20 cm. away. Only her expression changes at the
sight of it and then she moves her head as though to find the light
again. She does not succeed despite the dim light in the room. At 0;0
(24), on the other hand, she follows the match perfectly under the same
conditions. The subsequent days her eyes follow the movements of my
hand, a moving handkerchief, etc. From this date she can remain awake
without crying, gazing ahead.
Observation 2P. Lucienne also has directed her glance since the fourth
week and is able to rediscover the object when it has escaped her
sight and it follows its previous movement. She also finds the object by
fits and starts, moving her eyes slightly, then losing sight of the object,
then readjusting her head, then following the object with her eyes
only, etc.
Observation 30. Laurent, until 0;0 (21) has only been capable of
badly coSrdinated movements of the head previously reported in con-
64 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
nection with the perception of light and simply revelatory of an attempt
to make the excitement last. At 0;0 (21) on the other hand, for the
first time his eyes follow a match in a dimly lit room, 20 cm. from his
eyes.-At 0;0 (23) he is lying down, his head resting on his right cheek;
I show him my fingers 20 cm. away and he follows them so that he
turns all the way to the left.-At 0;0 (25) same experiment with a hand-
kerchief: I make his head describe an angle of 180 moving backward
and forward, so attentively does he follow the object.
Observation 57.-Laurent at 0;0 (24) watches the back of my^hand
which is motionless, with such attention and so marked protrusion of
the lips that I expect him to suck it. But it is only visual Interest. At
0;0 (25) he spends nearly an hour in his cradle without crying, his
eyes wide open. At 0;0 (30) same observation. He stares at a piece o
fringe on his cradle with continuous little readaptive movements as
though his head had difficulty in not changing position and his gaze
brought it to the right place. So long as he gazes thus his arms are
still, whereas when sucking-like movements are paramount, his arms
swing to and fro again. At 0;1 (6) Laurent stops crying when I put my
handkerchief 10 cm. away from his eyes. He looks at it attentively,
then follows it; but when he loses sight of it, he does not succeed in
catching sight of it again.
Observation 32.- Laurent at 0;1 (7) begins to look at immobile ob-
jects with direction, naturally without much coordination. But for this
it is essential that a previous movement excite his curiosity. He is, for
example, lying in his bassinet, looking at a certain place in the hood.
I pull down the hood to the other end of the bassinet so that instead
of having over his head the usual material, he finds an empty space,
limited by the edge of the hood. Laurent immediately looks at this,
seeking from side to side. Thus he follows, roughly, the line of a white
fringe which edges the hood and he finally fixes his gaze on a particu-
larly visible point of this fringe. At 0;1 (8) same experiment and same
result. But when he looks at the fringe he sees my motionless face (I
stood there in order to observe his eyes). He then gazes alternately at
the fringe and my head, directing his gaze himself, without having any
external movement distracting his attention.
How can such behavior patterns be classified? There is not
involved, it goes without saying, any interest of the child in the
objects themselves that he tries to watch. These sensorial images
have no meaning, being coordinated neither with sucking, grasp-
ing or anything which could constitute a need for the subject.
Moreover, such images have neither depth nor prominence (the
first accommodations to distance are exactly contemporaneous to
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 65
the beginnings of the directing of the glance). They therefore
only constitute spots which appear, move, and disappear without
solidity or volume. They are, in short, neither objects, inde-
pendent images, nor even images charged with extrinsic meaning.
What then is the motivating force of the child's behavior? There
only remains the very need to look which can play this role. Just
as, from the earliest days, the newborn child reacts to light and
seeks it to the extent that the reflex use concomitant with this
perception makes of the latter a need, so also, as soon as the
glance is able to follow a moving spot, the use of the glance
suffices to confer a functional value on objects which can be
followed with the eyes. In other words, if the child looks at mov-
ing objects it is simply because, at the beginning, they constitute
an aliment for the activity of the glance. Later, when the various
accommodations to distance, prominence, etc., enrich visual
perception, the objects looked at serve as more differentiated
nourishment for these multiple operations. Still later, or con-
currently, the visual images acquire meanings connected with
hearing, grasping, touching, with all the sensorimotor and intel-
lectual combinations. Thus they support increasingly subtle
functions. The rough initial assimilation of the object to the
very activity of the glance gradually becomes recognition and
organization of images, projecting in space and, to sum it up,
"objective" vision. But, before reaching this state of solidifica-
tion the visual perception of the nursling is only a functional
exercise. The object is, in the true sense, assimilated to the sub-
ject's activity. The perseverance and searching characteristic of
the beginnings of looking are therefore of the same kind as the
functional exercise of sucking activity, to take an example which
has already been analyzed. At first purely reflex, this exercise is
doubled by an acquired exercise or "circular reaction." At the
second or third month level circular reaction seems to us defi-
nitely to exist. The direction of the look itself depends on the
play of reflexes but these, being cortical, can from the beginning
be extended into acquired reactions that is to say, from the
very beginning there is apprenticeship as a function of the objects
themselves.
Having stated this, let us now try to analyze these circular
66 ELEMENTARY S&NSO&IMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
reactions. Circular reaction is, therefore, an acquired functional
exercise which prolongs the reflex exercise and has the effect of
fortifying and maintaining, no more only a completely assembled
mechanism, but a sensorimotor whole with new results pursued
for their own sake. Inasmuch as it is adaptation, circular reac-
tion involves, according to the rule, a pole of accommodation and
a pole of assimilation.
Accommodation is the whole of the associations acquired at
the contact of objects due to the increasingly complex play of
the "reflexes of accommodation": accommodation of the crystal-
line lens, pupillary reflex to distance, and binocular convergence.
The instruments of this accommodation are certainly reflex and
are contained in the hereditary structure of the eye itself. But
the instruments only achieve effective utilization in the course
of exercise in which experience is a factor. In other words, it is
only in exerting himself to perceive forms, prominence, depth,
in measuring distances, in seeing things in perspective, in short
in making his accommodation reflexes function with respect to
things that the child arrives at the correct handling of these in-
struments. It is useless to emphasize here the particulars of these
mechanisms since we shall come across some of them again when
dealing with space (Vol. II). Let us limit ourselves to one remark.
It is an observed fact that the child at the stage under present
consideration does not yet know how to measure distances. Not
only are pupillary accommodation and binocular convergence
not stabilized with regard to all distances at the age of 4-5
months, but the child makes all sorts of mistakes when he wishes
to grasp objects (see Vol. II, Chapter II). Does this mean that the
sense of depth is entirely due to acquired experience? Obviously
no, because the existence of "accommodation reflexes"' shows
that, even if the subject's first evaluations are erroneous, he is
necessarily led, by means of his hereditary constitution, sooner
or later to attribute depth to space. Is this to say henceforth that
accommodation to depth is a pure reflex exercise comparable to
the exercise by means of which the newborn child learns to suck
an apprenticeship presupposing the external environment be-
cause every function is relative to the environment but owing
nothing to it because retaining nothing of the things themselves?
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 67
This could be maintained if space were independent of the
objects it contains. But it is apparent that depth is nothing inde-
pendent of concrete evaluations of the distances of objects. To
say that a certain subject possesses the sense of depth necessarily
means that he perceives a particular object as being farther away
or nearer than another. But it is precisely in the acquisition of
these particular perceptions that experience plays a role. For
the baby to discover that the handle of his bassinet is farther
removed in depth than the edge of the same bassinet, it is not
enough that he possess the sense of depth by heredity, but he
must put things in perspective, compare his perceptions, in
short, make experiments. Therefore no accommodation reflex
to depth in itself exists; there are only accommodations peculiar
to the different objects perceived which presuppose, in addition
to hereditary adaptation, acquired "circular reactions." It is in
this respect that the functional exercise of looking, of which we
are now speaking in general, involves an element of acquired
accommodation and not only reflex use.
But the circular reaction proper to looking also presupposes
an element of assimilation. First, as we have already said, there
is essentially reproductive assimilation. If the child looks con-
stantly, and more each day, at the objects surrounding him, this
is not, at the beginning, because he is interested in them as ob-
jects nor as signals devoid of external meaning, nor even (at
the very beginning) as sensorial images capable of being recog-
nized, but simply because these moving, luminous spots are an
aliment for his glance and permit it to develop while function-
ing. Objects are therefore first assimilated to the very activity
of looking; their only interest lies in being objects of vision.
How shall we proceed from this purely functional assimila-
tion (through pure repetition) to objective vision that is to say,
to an assimilation which presupposes the precise adaptation of
the structure of the subject to the structure of things and vice
versa? Three steps must be considered here: generalizing as-
similation, recognitory assimilation, and the coordination of the
schemata of visual assimilation with the other schemata of
mental assimilation.
We can use the term "generalizing assimilation" (in the
68 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
same sense as in the first chapter dealing with the sucking
system) to designate the fact which is as important as it is trite
that from the fourth and fifth week the child looks at an in-
creasing number of things but by proceeding through concentric
waves. In the beginning, as revealed by the above observations,
the nursling limits himself to watching objects which are slowly
moved at a distance of 20-30 cm. from his face (Obs. 30) or to
staring in front of him (Obs. 31), Then (Obs. 32) he applies
himself to directing his glance to certain objects. From now on it
becomes possible to make a general appraisal of the child's
spontaneous visual interests. Then one observes that the subject
looks neither at what is too familiar, because he is in a way
surfeited with it, nor at what is too new because this does not
correspond to anything in his schemata (for instance, objects
too remote for there yet to be accommodation, too small or too
large to be analyzed, etc). In short, looking in general and the
different types of visual accommodation in particular are put to
use progressively in increasingly varied situations. It is in this
sense that the assimilation of objects to visual activity is "gen-
eralizing."
Here are a few examples:
Observation 35. Having learned to direct his glance (Obs. 32), Laurent
explores his universe little by little. At 0;1 (9), for example, as soon as
he is held vertically in the arms of his nurse, he examines successively
the various images before him. First he sees me, then raises his eyes and
looks at the walls of the room, then turns toward a dormer window,
etc. At 0;1 (15) he systematically explores the hood of his bassinet which
I shook slightly. He begins by the edge, then little by little looks back-
ward at the lowest part of the roof, although this had been immobile
for a while. Four days later lie resumes this exploration in the opposite
direction. He begins with the hood itself and then examines a piece of
veiling which extends beyond the edge of the roof, a part of the cover-
let (in the same position), my face which he finds before him and finally
empty space. Subsequently he constantly resumes examining the cradle
but, during the third month, he only looks at the toys hanging from
the hood or at the hood itself when an unwonted movement excites
his curiosity or when he discovers a particular new point (a pleat in
the material, etc.).
Observation 34. His examination of people is. just as marked, espe-
cially after 0;1 (15); that is to say, after his first smiles. When one
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 69
leans over him, as when dressing him, he explores the face section by
section: hair, eyes, nose, mouth, everything is food for his visual curi-
osity. At 0;1 (10) he alternately looks at his nurse and at me and, in
examining me, his eyes oscillate between my hair and face. At 0;1 (21)
he watches his nurse enter and leave the room. At 0;1 (25) he looks in
turn at his nurse, his mother, and myself with a change of attitude
when confronted by each new face and a abrupt and spontaneous
moving of his glance from one face to the other.
But, quickly enough, his interest in faces is no longer a purely visual
one. Through coordination with the schemata of hearing in particular
and with the global situations of eating, dressing, etc., the familiar
faces become fraught with meaning. Thus we leave the realm of purely
generalizing assimilation. This reappears, on the other hand, as soon
as an unfamiliar feature appears, to alter his visual image of people.
Thus at 0;2 (4) Laurent notices his mother wearing a pearl necklace
in which he is more interested than in her face. At 0;2 (13) my be*ret
catches his attention. At 0;2 (18) the shaving soap on my chin, then my
pipe; the following days it is my tongue which I stick out at him hav-
ing in mind experiments concerning imitation, etc. At 0;2 (29) he
watches me eat most attentively. He successively examines the bread I
hold and my face, then my glass and my face. He watches my hand
when I raise it to my mouth, my mouth, etc.
Observation 35. There is generalizing assimilation, not only with re-
spect to the successive objects which the child sees, but also in con-
nection with the successive positions which the subject assumes in or-
der to look. The acquisition of the "alternate" glance may be cited in
this connection. During the second month we have seen Laurent look
in turn at various objects or different parts of the same object, as ex-
ample (Obs. 34) three motionless people next to his bassinet or the hair
and face of the same person. But in this case he looks at each image
irregularly. On the other hand, during the third month, the emer-
gence of the following behavior pattern may be observed: the glance
compares, so to speak, two distinct objects while alternately examin-
ing them. For example, at 0;2 (11) Laurent is looking at a rattle sus-
pended from the hood of his bassinet when I hang a handkerchief
parallel to the rattle. He then looks alternately at the handkerchief and
at the rattle and smiles. At 0;2 (17) he explores a part of the hood of his
bassinet when I shake it slightly. Laurent then looks at a certain place
in the hood, then observes the moving rattle, then returns to the hood
and so on, six times in succession. I repeat the experiment a moment
later and count nine more alternate glances. 6 Such behavior surely con-
stitutes the beginning of comparison, but as yet, it seems to us, purely
6 See also Observations 92, at 0;3 (13), the example of the case and the
chain.
70 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
visual comparison. It is inconceivable that Laurent should already
give a causal interpretation to the relationship he observes between the
movement of the hood and that of the rattle; he simply compares two
things seen.
Observation 5.-Here is another example of generalization due to the
subject's position. At 0;2 (21), in the morning, Laurent spontaneously
bends his head backward and surveys the end of his Bassinet from this
position. Then he smiles, returns to his normal position and then be-
gins again. I observed this several times. As soon as Laurent awakens
after the short naps to which he is accustomed, he resumes this ac-
tivity. At four o'clock in the afternoon after a long sleep he has barely
awakened before he bends his head backward and bursts out laugh-
ing. Such behavior reveals all the characteristics of a typical circular
reaction. The days following he continues to explore and the next week
his interest is almost as keen.
Thus it may be seen how the child's spontaneous looking
develops through being exercised. The bassinet hood, having
at first only been the object of "looking for the sake of looking,"
arouses growing interest through its particularities as well as
through its successive modifications (the objects hanging from
it). Interest in certain faces adduces interest in all others and in
everything which complicates the original appearance of the
former. New perspectives due to positions fortuitously dis-
covered, arouse immediate interest through comparison with
habitual perspectives, etc. In short, practice of looking brings
with it the generalization of its activity.
But this growing generalization of the schema of sight is
accompanied by a complementary differentiation of the global
schema in particular schemata, this differentiation leading to
"recognition." The purely functional assimilation which pre-
vailed in the beginning (looking for the sake of looking) is thus
transformed into an assimilation of objects to limited schemata
which is tantamount to saying that sight is on the way to ob-
jectification (looking in order to see). For example, among the
things which the child contemplates all the time are some which
are immobile (the hood of the bassinet), some which sometimes
move slightly (the fringe of the hood), some which constantly
change position, appear and disappear, remain stationary for a
while and suddenly disappear (human faces). Each of these cate-
THE FI&ST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 71
gories of visual images gives rise to progressive exercises (gen-
eralization) but, at the same time, to differentiations in function-
ing. Each one presupposes, in effect, an exercise sui genesis of
vision, just as the breast, the thumb, the pillow, etc., actuate
sucking in different ways: so generalizing assimilation brings
with it the formation of particular schemata. The child, in as-
similating to these schemata the objects which appear in his field
of vision, "recognizes" them through this very act. This recogni-
tion is therefore probably global in the beginning. The child
does not recognize a certain face as such, but at first recognizes
this face in a given situation. Only, the more generalizing as-
similation permits the subject to incorporate the visual environ-
ment into his schemata, the more the latter dissociate themselves
and permit precise recognition.
But if purely functional and generalizing assimilation can
be observed thanks to the mere behavior of the child, how can
what we have just said about recognitory assimilation be verified?
From the time when the nursling is able to smile and thus to
differentiate his gestures and the expression of his emotions, the
analysis of recognition becomes possible without too great a risk
of error. Let us try, from this point of view, to analyze the first
smiles produced in the presence of visual images and to collect
what they can teach us about the beginnings of recognition.
The smile is, as we know, a reflex mechanism whose associa-
tion with pleasurable states makes it possible sooner or later to
make a social sign assuming varied meanings but always related
to contact with people. Must it be said, therefore, that the smile
is a hereditary social behavior pattern which from the beginning
constitutes, as Gh. Buhler maintains, a "reaction to people" or
is it possible to think that the smile only becomes specialized
progressively in its functions as a social sign and consists during
the first months of a simple pleasurable reaction to the most
varied excitants, even though it begins in the presence of the
voice or movements of the human face? Ours is the second in-
terpretation which is why the smile seems to us a good indication
of the existence of recognition in general. Ch. Biihler's interpre-
tation does not seem to us to withstand factual examination as
72 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
has been already elucidated by C. W. Valentine. 7 In a somewhat
categorical note 8 Ch. Buhler has answered him by presenting
statistics which contradict his observations. But an acute observa-
tion, especially when made by as good an observer as C. W.
Valentine, surpasses all statistics. As for us, examining our three
children has left us no doubt concerning the fact that the smile
is primarily a reaction to familiar images, to what has already
been seen, inasmuch as familiar objects reappear suddenly and
release emotion, or again inasmuch as a certain spectacle gives
rise to immediate repetition. It is only very gradually that people
monopolize the smile precisely in so far as they constitute fa-
miliar objects most inclined to this kind of reappearances and
repetitions. But in the beginning anything at all can give rise to
the emotional recognition which elicits the smile.
Observation 57. Laurent smiled for the first time at 0;1 (15) at 6
o'clock, 10 o'clock and 11:30 while looking at his nurse who is wagging
her head and singing. Apparently there is a global impression involv-
ing visual recognition, perception of a rhythmic movement, and hear-
ing. The following days the voice remains necessary to produce the
smile but at 0;1 (25) merely seeing the nurse suffices. Same observation
at 0;1 (30). On the other hand, it is not until 0;2 (2) that he smiles at
his parents when they do not make noises. At 0;2 (3) he refuses to smile
at his grandmother and an aunt despite all their advances, but he
finally smiles at the latter when she removes her hat. At 0;2 (4) he smiles
a lot at his mother (while she remains silent) but a few moments later
refuses to smile at a woman of the same age. During this third month
I do not succeed in making him smile only on seeing me if I remain
immobile (without head movements) or if I appear at a distance (of
1 meter or more). On the other hand, during the fourth month these
conditions are no longer inhibiting. At 0;2 (26) Laurent does not recog-
nize me in the morning before I am groomed. He looks at me with a
frightened expression and drooping mouth, then he suddenly redis-
covers me and smiles. Seeing his systers does not cause him to smile as
quickly as seeing his parents, but the reaction became identical after
the middle of the third month. During the fourth month he even
seems already to prefer children to adults when his acquaintance with
both is equally slight. Thus, at 0;3 (7) Laurent is afraid of a neighbor
but reveals great interest, with smiling eyes, in the man's 12-year-old
son (blond with a very youthful appearance comparable to Laurent's
sisters).
7 C. W. Valentine, British -Assoc. 1930, The Foundations of Child Psy-
chology.
8 Ch. Buhler, op. cit.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 73
Observation 38. With regard to inanimate objects, from the beginning
of the third month Laurent revealed great interest in the cloth and
celluloid toys hanging from the hood of his bassinet. At Q;2 (5) he looks
at them as yet unsmilingly but emitting periodically the sound aa with,
an expression of enchantment. At 0;2 (II) he smiles broadly when he
sees his toys move. He has not seen or heard anyone either previously
or when confronted by this spectacle, for I move the toys from a dis-
tance with a stick. Besides, the toys have no human appearance; they
are little balls of wool or celluloid. The sound of the toys which could
have played a role in this first smile, does not do so subsequently; five
times in succession on the same day Laurent smiles at these motionless
toys. The evening of the same day I hung a handkerchief next to the
toys. Laurent compares them (see above, Obs. 35) then smiles (he has
not seen or heard me). The following days the reaction is just as definite
and frequent. At 0;2 (15) I notice seven smiles at things (the motion-
less toys and hood of the bassinet, the movements of the bassinet when
it is carried without the person making noise or showing himself to
Laurent, etc.), and three smiles at people (his mother). At 0;2 (18) he
smiles five times in succession while looking at the mosquito net (I ob-
serve this through the bassinet hood). The same day he laughs and
babbles with great excitement while watching the toy. As soon as he is
naked he laughs loudly, gesticulating and looking at the objects sur-
rounding him including the brown wall of the balcony. At 0;2 (19) he
did not smile at people a single time in a whole day; on the other
hand, he smiled at all the familiar objects. In particular he smiles for the
first time (five times during the day) at his left hand which he looks at
since about fifteen days before (see Obs. 62). At 0;2 (21) he even smiles
beforehand while drawing his hand toward his face. The same day he
learns to look backward (as seen in Obs. 36) and almost infallibly smiles
at this new perspective. From 0;2 (25) he smiles during his experi-
ments with grasping; in shaking a toy, etc. At 0;3 (6 and 7) for example,
he manifests a certain astonishment and even anxiety in the presence
of new objects which he would like to grasp (shiny paper, tinfoil,
medical tubes, etc.) but smiles (or smiles only with his eyes) while taking
familiar objects (cloth and celluloid toys, package of tobacco, etc.).
Observation 3.~Lucienne likewise expresses with smiles certain defi-
nite recognitions of things and people. She too begins by smiling at a
personat 0;1 (24) as the result of head movements and sounds.
Then she smiles at her mother merely at the sight of her, at 0;1 (27)
before smiling at her father. Then from 0;2 (2) she smiles at familiar
objects attached to the bassinet or its hood. At 0;2 (13) for example,
she smiles at the hood. She looks attentively at a particular place, then
smiles while wriggling all over, then returns to this place, etc. At 0;2
(19) the ribbon which always hangs from this hood arouses her hi-
74 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
larity; she looks at it, laughs while twisting herself about, looks at it
again, etc. At 0;2 (27) same reactions with, in addition, broad smiles
at the toys which are swinging. At 0;3 (0) smile at the hood which is
being replaced in position (without Lucienne's seeing or hearing the
person).
Thus may be seen the extent to which smiles evidence
subtle differences in recognition. The reactions differ with
respect to different people and to the same person, to different
situations (according to distances, movements, etc.). If, then,
primitive recognition is "global" that is to say, related to varied
situations and to different types of looking becoming differenti-
ated as a function of generalizing assimilation and of accommoda-
tion combined nevertheless this recognition becomes more and
more precise. The reaction is exactly the same with regard to
things.
In conclusion, visual circular reaction or acquired adapta-
tion in the realm of looking requires a component of accommoda-
tion of the function to the object and a component of assimilation
of the object to the function. Such assimilation, at first simply
functional and reproductive (repetition or pure circular reac-
tion), becomes simultaneously generalizing and recognitory. It is
when it attains a certain level of recognition that visual percep-
tion may be considered as perception of images distinct from one
another and no longer only as a simple exercise of which the
sensorial image constitutes the aliment without exciting interest
in itself.
But the process is far from adequate to explain the growing
objectification of visual adaptation. It is not enough that a
sensorial image be recognized when it reappears for it to consti-
tute by itself an external object. Any subjective state can be
recognized without being attributed to the action of objects in-
dependent of the ego. The newborn child who nurses recognizes
the nipple by the combination of sucking and swallowing re-
flexes without making the nipple a thing. So also a month-old
child can recognize certain visual images without, however,
really exteriorizing them. What is the next condition necessary
for the solidification of such images? It seems to us essential that
the visual schemata be coordinated with other schemata of as-
similation such as those of prehension, hearing, or sucking. They
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 75
must, in other words, be organized in a universe. It is their in-
sertion in a totality which is to confer upon them an incipient
objectivity.
This leads us to the third aspect of visual circular reactions
their organization. It may be stated that the visual images to
which the child adapts himself are, through the very fact of this
adaptation, coordinated among themselves and also in relation
to other kinds of schemata. The organization of visual images
among themselves can itself give rise to a distinction. First there
are the coordinations of distance, size, etc., which constitute visual
space and which we shall not mention here because the matter
deserves special study (see Vol. II). Then there are the wholly
qualitative coordinations (relationships of color, light, etc., and
the sensorimotor relationships), whose activity is made manifest
in generalizing and recognitory assimilation. Thus it may be
said that, independently of any coordination between vision and
the other schemata (prehension, touch, etc.), the visual schemata
are organized among themselves and constitute more or less well-
coordinated totalities. But the essential thing for this immediate
question is the coordination of the visual schemata, no longer
among themselves, but with the other schemata. Observation
shows that very early, perhaps from the very beginnings of orien-
tation in looking, coordinations exist between vision and hearing
(see Obs. 44-49). Subsequently the relationships between vision
and sucking appear (see Obs. 27), then between vision and pre-
hension, touch, kinesthetic impressions, etc. These intersensorial
coordinations, this organization of heterogeneous schemata will
give the visual images increasingly rich meanings and make
visual assimilation no longer an end in itself but an instrument
at the service of vaster assimilations. When the child seven or
eight months old looks at unknown objects for the first time be-
fore swinging, rubbing, throwing and catching them, etc., he no
longer tries to look for the sake of looking (pure visual assimila-
tion in which the object is a simple aliment for looking), nor
even to look for the sake of seeing (generalizing or recognitory
visual assimilation in which the object is incorporated without
adding anything to the already elaborated visual schemata), but
he looks in order to act, that is to say, in order to assimilate the
76 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR. ADAPTATIONS
new object to the schemata of weighing, friction, falling, etc.
There is therefore no longer only organization inside the visual
schemata but between those and all the odiers. It is this progres-
sive organization which endows the visual images with their
meanings and solidifies them in inserting them in a total uni-
verse.
From the point of view of the functional categories of
thought which correspond to the biological invariants of mental
development, it is interesting to note the extent to which this
element of organization is, here as everywhere, the source of
totalities and of values. In so far as the organization of the visual
schemata forms a more or less closed totality, vision constitutes
a value in itself and the assimilation of things is an assimilation
to vision itself. On the other hand, in so far as the visual universe
is coordinated to the other universes that is to say, where there
is reciprocal organization and adaptation between the visual and
other schemata visual assimilation becomes a simple means at
the service of higher ends, and consequently a value derived in
relation to principal values (the latter being constituted by the
totalities pertaining to hearing, prehension and the activities
proceeding from it). This is what we shall see in the following
pages.
3. PHONATION AND HEARING. As is the case with
sucking and vision, phonation and hearing give rise to acquired
adaptations superimposing themselves on hereditary adaptations
and, again in this case, the first acquired adaptations consist in
circular reactions to the breast in which it is possible to distin-
guish the processes of accommodation, assimilation, and organi-
zation.
Phonation is evidenced at birth by the cry of the newborn
child and his whining in the first weeks. That this reflex be-
havior might from the beginning be subject to some complica-
tions analogous to those we have rioted in connection with vision
and especially sucking, is not impossible if one considers these
two observations, both unfortunately to be received with caution.
The first is this sort of rhythm which appears very early in the
child's cries. Laurent has hardly ever cried at night during the
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 77
first three weeks but almost every day between 4 and 6 P.M.;
Lucienne cries mostly in the morning, etc. The second is the
possibility of a contagious spreading of crying beginning the
first week. When a baby cries in the room shared by the newborn
babies in a clinic, several seem to copy him; furthermore it
seemed to me that my voice (I said, "Aha, aha/' etc.) made
Laurent cry beginning 0;0 (4 and 5). But the rhythm in question
may be due to an organic rhythm (particularly digestive) without
any reflex involvement, and the supposed contagious spreading
of crying may be due to coincidence or to the simple fact that
the others' voices awaken the child and a newborn child cries
almost immediately upon awaking. Let us therefore conclude
nothing.
On the other hand, circular reaction is superimposed on
reflex phonation as soon as, at one or two months, the little wail
which precedes crying is kept up for its own sake and gradually
gives rise to modulations. This is the point of departure for our
analysis of phonation in so far as it is acquired adaptation.
With regard to hearing, an interest in sound may be ob-
served in the first days of life. At the end of the second week, for
instance, Laurent stopped crying for a moment In order to listen
to a sound coming from near his pillow. But it cannot be called
acquired adaptation until the second month from the time the
heard sound provokes a somewhat prolonged interruption of the
action in progress and an actual search.
If we study phonation and hearing simultaneously, we ob-
serve that, from the stage when circular reaction prolongs, in
these two realms, hereditary adaptation, to the child hearing
and voice are connected. Not only does the normal child regu-
late his own phonation primarily according to the acoustic
effects he notices, but also the voices of others seem to react on
his own voice. Is such a connection between hearing and phona-
tion partly hereditary and consolidated by acquired adaptation,
or is it only acquired? It is very difficult to decide. If from birth
the cries were really imitative there would definitely exist a
hereditary connection. But, as we have just seen, even if the
fact of a contagious spreading of crying were established, it
could be explained otherwise than by imitation. Let us therefore
78 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
not form hypotheses concerning the heredity of connections be-
tween phonation and hearing and limit ourselves to studying the
behavior patterns related to these functions from the time when
acquired adaptation exists.
First, here are some observations concerning phonation:
Observation 40. Jacqueline, until the middle of the second month, has
only used her voice for daily wails and certain more violent cries of
desire and anger when hunger became persistent. Around 0;1 (14) It
seems as though crying stops simply expressing hunger or physical dis-
comfort (especially intestinal pains) to become slightly differentiated.
The cries cease, for example, when the child is taken out of the crib
and resume more vigorously when he is set down for a moment before
the meal. Or again, real cries of rage may be observed if the feeding is
interrupted. It seems evident, in these two examples, that crying is con-
nected with behavior patterns of expectation and disappointment which
imply acquired adaptation. This differentiation of mental states con-
comitant with phonation is soon accompanied by a differentiation in
the sounds emitted by the child. Sometimes crying is imperious and
enraged, sometimes plaintive and gentle. It is then that the first "circu-
lar reactions" related to phonation may definitely be observed. Some-
times, for instance, the wail which precedes or prolongs the crying is
kept up for its own sake because it is an interesting sound: 0:1 (22).
Sometimes the cry of rage ends in a sharp cry which distracts the child
from his pain and is followed by a sort of short trill: 0;2 (2). The smile
may be accompanied by indistinct sounds: Q;l (26). Finally, the sounds
thus produced as prolongations of crying or of smiles are immediately
rediscovered and sustained as such: at 0;2 (12) Jacqueline ^ prattles for
a moment without smiling or wailing. At 0;2 (IS) she emits a sort of
trill. At 0;2 (15) the crying is transformed into playing with the voice,
"aha," "ahi," etc. At 0;2 (15) she even interrupts her meal to resume her
babbling. Finally, at 0;2 (18) playing with her voice becomes routine
when she is awake.
It is to be noted, as we shall see concerning imitation, that these
first circular reactions are almost immediately accompanied by vocal
contagion and then, at 0;2, by definite imitation,
Observation */. Until 0;1 (8) I noticed nothing in Laurent resembling
a vocal circular reaction. His phonation only consists of cries of hunger
and pain or In wails preceding and prolonging the cries. True, at 0;0
(9) Laurent makes a sound similar to aha, without crying, but only
once; usually this sound precedes crying. On the other hand, beginning
0;I (8) vague voice exercises may be observed, but these could be the
beginning of a wail interrupted by a visual or auditory interest. At 0;1
(9) on the other hand, the wailing is maintained for its own sake, for
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 79
several seconds before the crying. As soon as the first cry ensues I
imitate Laurent's wailing; he then stops crying and begins to wail
again. This first vocal imitation seems to me to substantiate the exist-
ence of circular reaction. If imitation of others exists, there also exists,
in effect and a fortiori, imitation of oneself, that is to say "circular
reaction/' At 0;1 (15) I note a sort of fleeting arr or rra, and at 0;1
(20) a sound resembling en indicating contentment interspersed with
sucking-like movements in which he indulges, alone and wide awake.
The latter sound reappears intermittently at 0;1 (22) and at 0;1 (26) in
the same situations, whereas the sound aa or rra which I emit in
Laurent's presence in order to copy him releases analogous sounds, after
a smile, at 0; 1 (22). At 0; 1 (28) circular reaction begins with the sounds
aha, en hen f etc., and at the third month vocalizations are produced.
At 0;2 (7) Laurent babbles in the twilight and at 0;2 (16) he does this
on awakening early in the morning often for half an hour at a time.
Observation 42. In certain special cases the tendency to repeat, by
circular reactions, sounds discovered by pure chance, may be observed.
Thus at 0;2 (12) Lucienne, after coughing, recommences several times
for fun and smiles. Laurent puffs out his breath, producing an in-
definite sound. At 0;2 (26) he reproduces the peals of his voice which
ordinarily accompany his laughter, but without laughing and out of
pure phonetic interest. At 0;2 (15) Lucienne uses her voice in similar
circumstances, etc.
It is useless to continue this description since phonation does
not interest us for its own sake but simply inasmuch as it is sub-
ject to adaptations of general form. In this respect it is easy to
find in circular vocal reactions of which we have just spoken,
the processes of accommodation, assimilation and organization to
which sucking and vision have already accustomed us. Accom-
modation, first, because circular reaction is an effort to rediscover
the new sound discovered by chance. There is thus perpetual
accommodation of the vocal organs to phonic reality perceived
by hearing (see for example Obs. 42) even though this reality is the
product of their own activity. Very early too, vocal accommoda-
tion will consist in the imitation of new sounds made by others,
but we can remit study of this question to the volume on
"Imitation." The use of the voice is then assimilation in the
triple sense of the term. There'is assimilation through repetition,
to the extent that each, vocal system is consolidated while func-
tioning. There is generalizing assimilation to the extent that
circular reaction progressively diversifies the phonic material in
80 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
indefinite combinations which the authors have noted in detail.
There is recognitory assimilation to the extent that circular re-
action and beginning imitation entail the discrimination of one
sound in relation to another. Finally phonation is organization
in two complementary senses, first inasmuch as the totality of
the sounds produced constitutes a system of interdependent
articulations and then inasmuch as phonation is immediately
coordinated with other schemata and in particular with the
auditory schemata.
This leads us to hearing. The first acquired adaptations
related to hearing date from the second month, from the time
when two essential coordinations are established coordination
with phonation and coordination with vision. Until then the
only reaction observed is the child's interest in the voice. But as
this reaction is accompanied by no other visible accommodation
except the smile and the coordinations of which we have just
spoken, it is very difficult to fix the boundary of reflex adaptation
and of acquired adaptation.
Observation 43. -At 0;1 (0) Jacqueline still limits herself to inter-
rupting her crying when she hears an agreeable voice or sound but she
does not try to mark the sound. At 0;1 (6 and IB), same reaction. At
0;1 (10) on the other hand, she begins to smile at the voice. From now
on it is possible in a general way to distinguish the sounds which she
recognizes and which make her smile (vocalizations, singing intonations,
etc., resembling her own phonations) from those which astonish, worry,
or interest her. The same is true of Lucienne, beginning Ojl (13). The
sound rra which is a copy of her own vocalizations almost invariably
makes her smile for three or four weeks, beginning at 0;1 (25) and
produces a vague imitation beginning 0;1 (26), Laurent smiles at the
voice alone beginning 0;1 (20), but at 0;0 (12) the voice sufficed to
interrupt his crying and this interest in sound gave rise to attempts at
localization from 0;1 (8). As a rule high-pitched sounds in a childish
intonation make him smile; deep tones surprise and disturb him. The
sound bzz is sure to make him smile during the third month (before he
himself emits it) provided that it is sung on a sufficiently high key. At
0;1 (22) he easily recognizes the sound of the metal rattle in his cel-
luloid balls and he immediately looks in the right place as soon as he
hears them.
These facts suffice to make us state that the child behaves
with respect to sounds as with respect to vision. On the one hand,
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 81
he progressively accommodates himself to them; on the other
hand, he assimilates them. This assimilation is at first the simple
pleasure of hearing (circular reaction to the sound or assimilation
through repetition). Then, to the extent that there is discrimina-
tion of the sounds heard, there is simultaneously generalizing
assimilation (that is to say, interest in Increasingly varied sounds)
and recognition of certain sounds (rra, bzz, etc.).
Let us proceed to the coordinations between sound and sight:
Observation 44. At 0;2 (12) Jacqueline turns her head to the side
whence the sound comes. For example, hearing a voice behind her,
she turns in the right direction. At 0;2 (26) she localizes the source of
the sound quite accurately. It seems she searches until she finds the
person who Is speaking but it is of course difficult to say whether she
identifies the source of the sound and the original image or whether
there is simply accommodation to the sound.
Observation 45. At 0;1 (26) Lucienne, whose head is turned to the left
when I call her from the right, turns her head at once and seeks by
looking. At 0;1 (27) she is carried under my window whence I call her;
she turns her head left and right and finally above her at an angle 45
too much to the left but revealing obvious control. In this last example
it seems as though she tries to see what has produced the sound and
not only to accommodate herself to the sound. At 0;2 (12) also, she
turns her head when I call her and looks until she has seen me, even if
I remain motionless.
Observation 46.-- At 0;1 (8) Laurent reveals an incipient localization of
sound. He lies on his back without seeing me and looks at the roof of
the cradle while moving his mouth and arms. Then I call him softly,
"Aha, aha." His expression immediately changes, he listens, motionless,
and seems to try to locate the sound by looking. His head oscillates
slightly from right to left without yet finding the right location and
his glance, instead of remaining fixed as previously, also searches. The
following days Laurent better directs his head toward the sound and of
course he then looks in the right direction, but it is impossible to de-
cide whether the child tries to see the source of the sound or whether
his looking simply accompanies pure auditory accommodation.
Observation 47. At 0;1 (15), on the other hand, it seems that on hearing
my voice Laurent tries to see the face that goes with it but with two
conditions which we shall try to specify. That morning Laurent smiled
for the first time, three times, and, as we have seen, It is probable that
the smile was started by a global impression, auditory as well as visual.
That afternoon I stand at Laurent's left while he is lying in his cradle
and looks to the right. I call, "Aha, aha. M Laurent then slowly turns his
82 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
head to the left and suddenly sees me after I have stopped singing. He
looks at me at length. Then I move to his right (without his being able
to follow me with his eyes) and I call. Laurent again turns in my direc-
tion and his eyes seem to search. He sees me and looks at me but this
time without an expression of understanding (I am immobile at this
moment). I move back to the left, call, and he turns back again. As a
counterproof I repeat the same experiment but I tap the window panes
with my hand (the cradle is between the two leaves of a French window).
Each time Laurent turns to the correct side and looks in the direction
of my face which, however, he perceives in passing. It appears therefore
that he associates the sound of the voice with the visual image of the
human face and that he tries to see something else upon hearing a new
sound. But the rest of the observation shows that two conditions are
still necessary for Laurent to look at a face when he has heard a voice:
he must have seen this face shortly beforehand and it must be in mo-
tion. For example at 0;1 (20) I enter unobserved by Laurent and say.
"Aha." He looks and searches most attentively (his arm movements
stop completely) but limits himself to exploring the visual field ex-
posed to him through his initial position (he examines the hood of the
bassinet, the ceiling of the room, etc.). A moment later I appear in
front of Laurent, then disappear and call him sometimes at the left
sometimes at the right of the bassinet. Henceforth he searches in the
right direction every time. The next day, same experiment and same
result; furthermore I note that if I remain immobile he looks at me
without interest and without even recognizing me, whereas if I move
he looks at me and his searching ends as though he knew it was I who
sang. At 0;1 (22) in the same way he searches anywhere at all although
manifesting much attention to my voice; then he perceives me while T
am immobile and continues searching without attributing importance
to my visual image; after this I shake my head and thereafter he turns
toward me whenever I call and seems satisfied as soon as he has dis-
covered me. The following days, same phenomenon.
Observation 48, From 0;1 (26) on the other hand, Laurent turns in
the right direction as soon as he hears my voice (even if he has not seen
me just before) and seems satisfied when he has discovered my fane
even when it is immobile. At 0;1 (27) he looks successively at his
father, his mother, and again at his father after hearing mv voice. It
therefore seems that he ascribes this voice to a visually familiar face.
At 0;2 (14) he observes Jacqueline at 1.90 to 2 meters, at the sound of
her voice; same observation at 0;2 (21)- At 0;3 (1) I squat before him
while he is in his mother's arms and I make the sound bzz (which he
likes). He looks to his left, then to his right, then ahead, then below
him; then he catches sight of my hair and lowers his eyes until he sees
my motionless face. Finally he smiles. This last observation may be con-
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 83
sidered as definitely indicating identification of the voice and visual
image of the person.
Observation 4P. Regarding the noises made by things, it seems as
though Laurent acquired his auditory-visual coordination around the
same time as that relating to persons. At 0; 1 (22) for example, he turns
immediately in the direction of a celluloid ball in which there is a
rattle. True, it is moving, but at 0; 1 (26) he finds it again when it is im-
mobile. At 0;2 (6) he looks at an electric kettle as soon as I produce a
sound by means of its lid. At 0;2 (11) he is sucking his thumb while
looking to the right when I shake a celluloid rattle which has been
attached to the hood of his bassinet for several days only (two weeks at
most). He immediately lets go his thumb to look up at the right place,
thus showing that he knows where the sound came from. That evening,
same reaction, very rapid even though he was half asleep after a long
nap. The next day and the following days: same phenomena. At 0;2
(14) Laurent observes, one meter away, my pipe which I knock lightly
on wood; he stops looking at the place of contact when the sound stops
and immediately finds it again when I resume. Same reactions at 0;2
(15), with a cane (at 1.50 to 2 meters), then he rediscovers the cane in
various places when I change the point of contact.
It is therefore permissible to regard as certain the existence
of coordination between sight and hearing from the third month
on, whereas the facts observed during the second month can be
due to a simple accommodation of the head to the direction of
the sound. These ideas coincide with the results obtained by
B. Ldwenfeld. 9
This coordination between sound and vision poses an in-
teresting question. The coordinations which we have hitherto
encountered oscillate between two extreme types. On the one
hand, there is the more or less passive association imposed by the
environment; thus the special position at mealtime is accom-
panied in the 1- or 2-month-old nursling by a search for the
breast. True, such associations have seemed to us only capable of
being constituted through accommodations and searchings, in-
dicating a certain activity. But, granted this element of active
accommodation, it must be recognized that it is reduced to its
simplest expression and that the environment imposes the con-
tent of these accommodations before the child really assimilates
9 Berthold Lowenfeld, Systematisches Studium der Reaktionen der
Sauglinge auf Klange und Gerausche, Zeitschr. /. Psychol. CIV, 1927, pp. 62-
96.
84 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
them in detail (through recognition, etc.). At the other extreme
we have the active recognition of a sign charged with meaning.
It is thus that the 3- to 4-month-old nursling recognizes his bib by
visual perception and knows that it announces the coming meal.
With regard to the coordination between hearing and sight, we
are now confronted by behavior patterns contemporaneous with
coordinations of position and of sucking (first type), but behavior
patterns which resemble the later coordinations of vision and of
sucking (second type). How should they be interpreted? Must
we state that the sound of the voice is a simple signal forcing the
baby to search with his eyes for the face corresponding to this
voice in the manner in which the sound of the bell sets in motion
salivation in the dog by conditioned reflex, or must we think that
the sound of the voice constitutes a sign charged with meaning
and is recognized by the child as going with the visual perception
of someone's face? If, in the coordinations of position and suck-
ing, we admit the existence of an element of active accommoda-
tion, however small, then it is evident that a series of inter-
mediaries will link the two extreme types (active and passive
coordination) and that the coordination between sight and hear-
ing will be located midway between these extremes. In other
words, the association between a sound and a visual perception
is never a purely passive association, but it is not at the outset a
relationship of understanding (recognition of meanings). How
then can this intermediary state and the progress of understand-
ing be explained?
In view of all we have seen regarding assimilation we may
hypothesize that every assimilatory schema tends to conquer the
whole universe including the realms assimilable by means of
other schemata. Only the resistances of the environment or the
incompatibilities due to the conditions of the subject's activity
curb this generalization. So it is that the child sucks everything
that touches his mouth or face and learns to coordinate the
movements of his hands with those of sucking as a function of his
pleasure in sucking his thumb. When he will know how to grasp
he will suck everything he will have in his hands. Concerning
what he sees or hears, if the nursling does not try to suck this
from the outset it is perhaps less because these realms have no
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 85
connection with sucking (it often happens that he makes sucking-
like movements as soon as he hears a sound) than because it is
difficult for the child to do two things at once (looking atten-
tively and making sucking-like movements, etc.). But instead of
immediate coordination between sucking and sight it is possible
that there exists nevertheless excitation of the sucking cycle in
the presence of especially interesting visual images. The re-
markable protrusion of the lips observed in the youngest children
(see Obs. 31) in states of great attention could not be other than
sucking-like movements if it cannot be explained by a purely
automatic or tonic postural mechanism. 10 In the same way, with
regard to the visual, hearing and grasping schemata, etc., the
child will try little by little to see everything, hear everything,
take everything, etc. This is well put by Ch. Biihler when she
says with regard to the first sensorial reactions that the response
to an excitant during the first months depends more on the
subject's functional needs than on the nature of this excitant. 11
Consequently it is natural that the nursling should try in the
course of his first auditory adaptations to look at the same time
as listen, at least from the time when he has learned to direct the
movement of his eyes [at 0;1 (7) in Laurent's case (see Obs. 32)].
This beginning of coordination between hearing and sight does
not necessarily presuppose a passive association but can be ex-
plained by active assimilation. It is true that, when he turns his
head to accommodate himself to the sound, the child comes
automatically, in the case of the human voice, to perceive an
interesting visual image (the corresponding face); the element of
passive association is not to be entirely excluded. But simple as-
sociations would never give rise to actual searching in the co-
ordination between sight and hearing (looking for the face which
corresponds to the voice and later for the sounds which cor-
respond to the objects seen) if the schemata of visual and audi-
lOPreyer, op. cit., p. 251-252, construes this protrusion of the lips as
being a hereditary association between sucking and sight (his son evidenced it
the tenth day while looking at a candle). But it goes without saying that, if
association exists, it can be explained by reflex assimilation without recourse
to heredity.
11 Op. dt., p. 26.
86 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR. ADAPTATIONS
tory assimilation did not succeed in reciprocally directing their
respective realms by assimilating them in an active way.
More precisely, if at a given moment the child applies him-
self to searching systematically for the visual images which cor-
respond to the sounds heard, this is so in the first place because
he forces himself to look at everything. Without yet knowing that
a sound necessarily comes from a visible object, the child is
visually excited by the sound as well as through hearing it. Thus
in Observation 46 the sound aha releases a need in Laurent to
look as well as to listen; and this is true, probably, not because
Laurent already knows that this sound emanates from a precise
visual image but simply because the excitant arouses all his
needs at once; in other words, because the child tries to integrate
the new reality into all the available schemata of assimilation.
In the second place, the child turns his head in the direction of
the sound through an accommodation to the sound comparable
to the movements of the eye following an object. It is self-evident,
consequently, that the glance is directed to the same side as the
head, whence the observer's impression that the baby tries to see
what he hears (see end of Obs. 46), whereas he undoubtedly only
tries to see at the same time he hears. In the third place, in cer-
tain cases success confirms the searching. The sound of the voice
of others in this respect constitutes a privileged example; such a
sound nearly always gives rise to double assimilation, auditory
and visual. In other words, the human face has the almost unique
property, in the universe of the child of 1 to 2 months, of lending
itself to a totality of simultaneous assimilation. This face is at
the same time recognizable and mobile, thus exciting visual in-
terests to the highest degree; it is this face that the baby contem-
plates or rediscovers when he fixes his attention on the sound of
the voice; again it is this face which is central in the most interest-
ing moments of existence (coming out of the bassinet, dressing,
meal, etc.). In the case of the appearance of other people it is
possible to speak, not of association between various assimila-
tions, but of global assimilation, and it is apparently this fact
which explains why the smile occurs more frequently in the
presence of persons than with respect to things. As far as co-
ordination between hearing and sight is concerned it is thus
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 87
evident that the child early identifies someone's face inasmuch
as it is a visual image o this same face, inasmuch as it is a sonor-
ous image. It is self-evident that, to the child, another person is
not yet an object conceived as cause of the voice. But it cannot
be said, inversely, that sound and vision are simply associated.
This is why it must be asserted that visual and auditory schemata
are reciprocally assimilated. The child tries, in a sense, to listen
to the face and to look at the voice. It is this reciprocal assimila-
tion that constitutes the identification of visual and sonorous im-
ages prior to the more complex solidifications which are to give
rise to the object and to the causality. 12 In other words, the hu-
man face is one entity with regard to looking, listening, etc., and
once he has acquired, in this case and some other privileged ex-
amples (rattles, etc.), coordination between hearing and sight, the
child will search systematically and everywhere for correlations
between sounds and visual images.
Let us finally proceed to the coordination between hearing
and phonation. This coordination seems much simpler since ev-
ery phonation is accompanied from the outset by auditory per-
ception and is controlled by it. It seems therefore that here there
is not intersensorial coordination, but pure circular reaction; a
series of movements culminating in a sensorial effect and main-
tained by the interest of this result. But if that is true of simple
phonation, the inverse process may also be observed: the action
of hearing on phonation. In effect, as we have seen (Obs, 41) vo-
cal contagion is almost as precocious as the first circular reactions
which are the basis of phonation; the wailing of another person
maintains that of the child, etc. What does this mean, if not
that the schemata of phonation and hearing are reciprocally as-
similated and in the same way as those of hearing and sight?
Just as the child comes to listen to the sound of his voice instead
of merely crying and thus inaugurates acquired circular reactions,
so also he listens to the voice of another and, inasmuch as the
sounds heard are analogous to the sounds he himself makes, he
can only perceive them by means of corresponding auditory-vocal
schemata. The imitation of sounds, in the beginning, is thus only
12 This explains why attributing the voice to a face is only achieved by
relatively long stages; see Obs. 47 and 48.
88 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the confusion of one's own voice with that of another, coming
from the fact that the voice of others is actively perceived, that
is to say, assimilated to the schemata o phonation.
In conclusion, analysis of the schemata of phonation, of hear-
ing and of their coordination completely confirms what we have
stated with regard to sucking and vision. Each of these adapta-
tions brings with it a measure of accommodation to the external
environment accommodation to the direction of sounds, to their
gradual variety, etc. But each one also involves an element of
assimilation. First it is assimilation by pure repetition listening
for the sake of listening, crying or wailing in order to hear these
sounds, etc. Then it is generalizing assimilation listening to or
producing increasingly varied sounds. Finally it is recognitory
assimilation rediscovering a definite sound. These perceived or
produced sounds at first only present an internal organization.
Related to each other they only have meaning in relation to the
system they form; it is this system that the child maintains and
uses, to which he assimilates the various heard sounds and which
he accommodates as much as possible to the new heard sounds.
Then this internal organization is itself inserted into a wider or-
ganization which gives it new meanings; sound is coordinated
with vision, etc. But this coordination involves no new process;
it is constituted by reciprocal assimilation of the visual and audi-
tory schemata, etc.
If the latter process is difficult to study at so early an age as
1 to 2 months, analyzing prehension will now afford us the op-
portunity to extend the description of the mechanism of the co-
ordinations among heterogeneous schemata.
4. PREHENSION. With the mouth, the eye, and the ear,
the hand is one of the most essential instruments of which the
intelligence, once it has been established, will make use. One can
even say that the definitive conquest of the mechanisms of grasp-
ing marks the beginning of the complex behavior patterns which
we shall call "assimilations through secondary schemata" and
which characterize the first forms of deliberate action. It is there-
fore important to analyze fundamentally the way in which this
discovery of grasping takes place: here, more even than with the
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 89
preceding schemata, we find an indispensable connecting link
between organic adaptation and intellectual adaptation.
The hand's chief activity is grasping. But it is self-evident
that this function cannot entirely be dissociated from touching or
the coordinations between kinesthesia and sight, etc. We shall
therefore touch on these questions in passing, but only in passing.
The aim of this work is not to supply an inventory of behavior
patterns of the first year of life and we shall only dwell on exam-
ples of use to the analysis of intelligence.
It seems to us five stages may be discerned in the development
of grasping. If, as revealed by studying our three children, these
stages do not correspond to definite ages, their sequence neverthe-
less seems necessary (except perhaps with regard to the third
stage). Let us therefore examine the facts by classifying them ac-
cording to the way they succeed one another.
The first stage is that of impulsive movements and of pure re-
flex. The newborn child closes his hand when the palm is lightly
touched. Lucienne, a few hours after birth, closed her fingers
around my index finger without resistance of the thumb. But at
first it seems as though this reflex were unaccompanied by any
search or appreciable use: the child immediately relinquishes
that which he grasped. It is only while nursing when his hands
are tightened and almost clenched, before the general relaxation
of tonicity, that the child is able to hold on to a solid object for
a few minutes (pencil, etc.). But it would be rash to conclude
that this is due to a pure automatism and thus to contrast the
grasping reflexes to those of sucking whose use we have seen pre-
supposed to a great extent active accommodation and assimila-
tion. In effect when the child closes his hand around the object
which touched his palm, he reveals a certain interest, Laurent,
at 0;0 (12) stops crying when I put my finger in his hand and
recommences shortly afterward. The grasping reflex is thus com-
parable to sight or hearing during the first two weeks and not at
all comparable to reflexes such as sneezing, yawning, etc., which
do not attract the subject's attention in any way. True, things
remain thus for a long time and prehension does not from the
outset lend itself to systematic use as does sucking But we may
ask ourselves whether the impulsive movements of arms, hands,
90 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
and fingers, which are almost continuous during the first weeks
(waving the arms, slowly opening and closing the hands, moving
the fingers, etc.) do not constitute a sort of functional use of these
reflexes.
The second stage is that of the first circular reactions related
to hand movements, prior to any actual coordination between
prehension and sucking or vision. We shall group here the whole
o the circular reactions leading to prehension for its own sake
(grasping and holding objects without seeing them or attempting
to carry them to the mouth), tactile and kinesthetic reactions
(scratching a body, moving the fingers, hands or arms, etc.), the
coordinations between sucking and hand movements (finger suck-
ing, etc.) and finally the coordination between sucking and actual
prehension (grasping an object in order to carry it to the mouth),
the coordination which characterizes the third stage and realizes
notable progress in the way of systematic prehension and the co-
ordinations between sight and grasping (grasping in order to
look, grasping objects perceived in the visual field), which will
be formed during the fourth and fifth stages and indicate defini-
tive success in grasping.
Thus defined, the first circular reactions related to hand
movements and to prehension begin by autonomous activities of
hands or fingers which prolong in a continuous way the impulsive
movements and reflexes of the first stage. We have stated, in effect,
that from birth certain impulsive movements seem to constitute
an empty use of the grasping mechanism. From the second month
it becomes evident that some of these movements are so systema-
tized that they give rise to true circular reactions, capable of
gradual accommodation and assimilation.
Observation 50. At 0;1 (8) Laurent's arm is stretched out and almost
immobile while his hand opens, half closes and then opens again, etc.
When the palm of his hand strikes the covers, he grasps them, lets them
go in unceasing oscillating motion. It is difficult to describe these vague
movements, but it is also difficult not to see in them grasping for the
sake of grasping, or even empty grasping analogous to the phenomena
described in connection with sucking, vision, etc. But there does not
yet exist, in such behavior patterns, either true accommodation to the
object or even any continuity.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 91
Observation 51. Until 0;1 (19) I did not observe in Laurent any ac-
commodation, even momentary, of the hand to the object outside of
reflex accommodation. It seems, on the contrary, that today the contact
of my hand with his little finger or of a handkerchief with the outer
surface of his finger sets in motion a certain searching. True, his hand
does not remain on the spot as it will do later on. There are attempts,
back and forth, and each time his hand touches my fingers or the
handkerchief and seems more ready to grasp (the palm seems to be
directed toward the object). But it is self-evident that the interpretation
of such movements remains a very delicate one. At 0;1 (20) also, contact
of his dosed left hand with a rolled up handkerchief which I hold
produces this result: the hand moves away while opening, then returns,
open, to strike the object, grasps it feebly, then moves away again, re-
turns to grasp it, etc. The hand seems to be stimulated by contact with
the object, a beginning of accommodation. But the hand comes and
goes instead of remaining immobile and really searching.
Observation 52, Beginning at 0;1 (22), on the other hand, there seems
to be more continuity in the grasping movements. Thus at 0;1 (22)
Laurent holds in his hand four and a half minutes an unfolded hand-
kerchief which he grasped by chance (his arm is occasionally immobile
and occasionally in slow movement). At 0;1 (23) he holds about two
minutes a toy which I placed on his palm. When he half lets it go he
grasps it again by himself (twice). But soon complete lack of interest
ensues. Same observation at 0;1 (26) and 0;1 (29). At 0;1 (25) he opens
his hand and grasps my index finger when I touch the back of his
fingers. This observation seems doubtful at first but seems to be con-
firmed on the following days. In particular, at 0;1 (30) for a few
moments Laurent pulls my thumb without letting it go, having by
chance knocked it with the back of his hand.
Observation 55. From 0;2 (3) Laurent evidences a circular reaction
which will become more definite and will constitute the beginning of
systematic grasping; he scratches and tries to grasp, lets go, scratches and
grasps again, etc. On 0;2 (S) and 0;2 (6) this can only be observed dur-
ing the feeding. Laurent gently scratches his mother's bare shoulder.
But beginning 0;2 (7) the behavior becomes marked in the cradle
itself. Laurent scratches the sheet which is folded over the blankets,
then grasps it and holds it a moment, then lets it go, scratches it again
and recommences without interruption. At 0;2 (11) this play lasts a
quarter of an hour at a time, several times during the day. At 0;2 (12)
he scratches and grasps my fist which I placed against the back of his
right hand. He even succeeds in discriminating my bent middle finger
and grasping it separately, holding it a few moments. At 0;2 (14) and
0;2 (16) I note how definitely the spontaneous grasping of the sheet
reveals the characteristics of circular reaction-groping at first, then
92 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
regular rhythmical activity (scratching, grasping, holding and letting
go), and finally progressive loss of interest.
But this behavior grows simpler as it evolves in that Laurent
scratches less and less, and instead really grasps after a brief tactile
exploration. Thus already at 0;2 (11) Laurent grasps and holds his
sheet or handkerchief for a long time, shortening the preliminary
scratching stage. So also at 0;2 (14) he pulls with his right hand at a
bandage which had to be applied to his left. The following days his
tactile interest is entirely absorbed by reciprocal hand grasping and
tactile exploration of the face to which we shall return. With^ regard to
object grasping Laurent (whose precocity has been noted with regard
to thumb sucking) begins, at the end of the third month, to grasp in
order to suck. He thus passes from the second to the third stage.
Observation 54.~-Lucienne manifested the same vague reactions as
Laurent (see Obs. 50-52) until about the age of 2 and i/ 2 months. About
0;2 (12) I note agitation of her hands when in contact with the covers-
grasping and releasing, scratching the material, etc. Same reactions on
the following days. At 0;2 (16) she pulls at a pillow. At 0;2 (20) she
opens and shuts her hands in space, and scratches a piece of material.
At 0;2 (27) she holds her cover for a few moments, then a corner of
the sheet which she grasped by chance, then a small doll which I placed
against her right palm. At 0;3 (3) she strikes her quilt with her right
hand; she scratches it while carefully watching what she is doing, then
lets it go, grasps it again, etc. Then she loses contact with it, but as
soon as she feels it again, she grasps it without scratching it first. Same
reaction several times in succession. There exists therefore a quite
systematic circular reaction directed by touch and not by sight.
It is not difficult to find in these reactions the first behavior
patterns pertaining to sight or hearing; assimilation by pure
repetition (grasping for the sake of grasping) and the beginning
of accommodation (orientation of hand and fingers as a function
of the object when they are in contact with this object). But there
are not yet subtler accommodations or recognitory or generaliz-
ing assimilations.
From the onset of these primitive behavior patterns, on the
other hand, a coordination between hand movements and those
of sucking may be observed. Actually, with regard to our three
children, the systematic sucking of the fingers either preceded
or accompanied the first acquired activities involving only the
hand or the fingers. It is also possible to find other very preco-
cious reactions of the fingers coordinated not only with sucking
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 93
but also with all the tactile sensibility of the face and discovered
parts of the body:
Observation 55 .Jacqueline, while learning to suck her fingers [achieved
at 0; 1 (28)] constantly moved her hand over her face without appearing
to explore it systematically but undoubtedly learning to recognize cer-
tain contacts. For instance at 0;2 (77) she puts her right hand on her
nose when it is being cleaned. So also, during the third month, she
rubs her eyes several times in succession so that they become irritated.
Observation 56. At 0;2 (17) and the days following, Lucienne more or
less systematically puts the fingers of her right hand on her right eye
and goes to sleep in this position. Perhaps the irritation of the eye be-
fore her nap provoked this repeated reaction. At 0;2 (25) she scratches
her eye with the back of her hand and recommences momentarily so
that the whole eyelid is reddened.
Observation 57. Beginning Q;2 (8) Laurent constantly pulls at his face
before, during, or after sucking his fingers. This behavior slowly gains
interest for its own sake and thus gives rise to two distinct habits. The
first consists in holding his nose. Thus at 0;2 (17) Laurent babbles and
smiles without any desire to suck, while holding his nose with his right
hand. He begins this again on 0;2 (18) while sucking (he holds his nose
with four fingers while sucking his thumb), then continues later. At
0;2 (19) he grasps his nose sometimes with his right, sometimes with his
left hand, rubs his eye in passing but constantly returns to his nose.
That evening he holds his nose with both hands. At 0;2 (22) he seems
to raise his right hand to his nose when I pinch it. At 0;2 (24) and the
following days he touches his nose again.
Observation 58. The second habit acquired by Laurent at the same
period consists in rubbing his eyes sometimes with the back of his hand,
sometimes with the fingers. This may be observed when he awakens and
is stretching but not only a particular reflex must be involved for
stretching is present from birth but eye rubbing has just occurred and
only sporadically. Furthermore and more important, Laurent rubs his
eyes all the time independently of his nap as though he has made the
tactile discovery of his eyes and kept returning to it through circular
reaction. At 0;2 (16) I even note that he closes his eye before his right
hand approaches it and while he does not yet see it. At 0;2 (18), same
reaction: both of his eyes close before he scratches the right eye. At
0;2 (19) he turns his head to the left as his left hand is being directed
toward his eye. Then he rubs both eyes simultaneously with both hands
At 0;2 (20) he makes fists in order to rub his eyes, again closes his eyes
beforehand and smiles with joy; there is no connection with stretching
The following days, same reactions.
94 ELEMENTARY SENSORJMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
Observation 52. The activity of the hands with, respect to the body Itself
is not limited to the nose and eyes. Sometimes the whole face is covered
by both hands joined together. Sometimesin Laurent's case at 0;2 (24)
the chest receives regular blows. But it is chiefly the hands which dis-
cover and touch one another. This phenomenon was particularly im-
portant with respect to Laurent not only because it gave rise to an
especially tenacious habitual schema but also because this schema
subsequently set in motion very precocious behavior patterns of pre-
hension coordinated with sucking and above all with vision. It is note-
worthy in the first place that already during the acquisition of thumb
sucking (Obs. 6-21) Laurent often clasped his hands while he sucked
the fingers of one of them. This pattern was revealed sporadically
until the end of the second month. At the beginning of the third month
it gave rise to a very systematic habit. 1 note that at 0;2 (4) and 0;2 (10)
he seems to touch his hands. At Q;2 (14) his right hand pulls a bandage
on his left. At 0;2 (17) 1 draw away his left hand by means of a string
(attached to it to prevent Laurent from sucking his left thumb), he
catches this hand several times by means of his right hand. The pre-
cision with which he performs this function while his left hand tries to
overcome the resistance of the string and to enter his mouth, shows
that a solidly constructed schema has already been formed. At 0;2 (19)
Laurent clasps his hands several times and toward evening does it al-
most continuously. He touches them, then sucks them together, lets
them go, grasps them again, etc. The interest is primarily in grasping
and only secondarily in sucking. The following days this behavior is
increasingly frequent but here we must interrupt our description of it
because looking intervenes and begins to modify this "schema of
junction." Beginning 0;2 (24) Laurent is observed to examine his clasped
hands so attentively that their movement is transformed by this, which
is characteristic of the third stage. Primarily, the systematization of this
habit of joining results in hastening the moment when Laurent will
grasp with both hands some object in order to keep it in his mouth
which is also typical of this third stage (it is even by this last charac-
teristic that we shall arrive at defining the transition from the second
to the third stage of prehension).
These coordinations between the movement of hands and
face (Obs. 55-58) do not raise any particular question. They are
not, like the coordination between sight and hearing, for exam-
ple, reciprocal assimilations of independent schemata; they only
actually constitute an extension of the primitive and purely tac-
tile schemata of prehension (Obs 50-54). The clasping of the
hands on the contrary, is in one sense a mutual assimilation,
but not outside the realm of tactile prehension. Until now the
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 95
above-mentioned coordination of the thumb and of sucking (Obs.
16-24) involves a beginning of reciprocal assimilation between
independent schemata; but if the mouth sucks the hand and the
hand directs itself to the mouth, the hand is not yet able to grasp
everything that the mouth sucks.
Let us now proceed to the coordinations between vision and
hand movements. Preyer and Tournay observed that during the
seventeenth week the child looked at his hands for the first time
in a systematic way. Wallon 13 who quotes this, seems to envisage
it as an indication of a general truth.
Observation of our children unfortunately does not corrob-
orate these dates; rather it seems to show that coordination be-
tween vision and hand movements is a continuous process de-
pending on functional use more than on acquisitions which can
definitely be placed in time. The only date which is easy to de-
termine is that of the appearance of the following behavior pat-
tern: at a given moment the child grasps the objects which he
has perceived in the same visual field as his hand and before
grasping them he alternately looks at his hand and the objects.
Now this occurrence (fixed by Preyer at the 17th week) took place
in Jacqueline's case at 0;6 (1), in Lucienne's at 0;4 (15) and in
Laurent's at 0;3 (6). It characterizes what we shall call the fourth
stage of prehension. But earlier all sorts of coordinations between
vision and hand movements may be observed, coordinations
which begin at the present stage and continue through the third.
Here are those which we have observed during the second stage:
Observation 60. Lucienne, at 0;2 (3), that is to say, the day after the
day she began systematically to suck her thumb, twice looked at her
fingers as they came out of her mouth (see above, Obs. 23). This glance
was fleeting, but with accommodation of the eye to distance. At 0;2
(12), on the other hand, and the next day she looked at her hand more
attentively. At 0;2 (15) I watch her while she lies on her right side and
sticks her bib. Her hands move in front of her (the fingers constantly
moving), grasping and letting go the sheets, scratching the cover, and
the right hand or both hands momentarily enter her mouth. Lucienne's
eyes seem to follow the movements of her hands (her glance rises and
falls correctly, etc.) but her hands do not yield to the exigencies of the
visual field. Vision, therefore, adapts itself to the movements of the
hand but the converse is not yet true.-At 0;2 (16) Lucienne is lying on
18 op. <jt., pp. 97-98.
96 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
her left side, her right hand pulling at the pillow; she attentively looks
at this hand. At 0;2 (17) Lucienne is on her back, her right hand
stretched out and the fingers moving slightly; she looks at this hand
most attentively and smiles. A moment later she loses sight of it (her
hand having lowered); her glance obviously seeks it and, when her hand
is raised again, it immediately follows it. At 0;2 (20) Lucienne con-
tinues to look at her hands, including the left one. For instance the
hands open and close alternately; they do so simultaneously and fre-
quently outside the visual field which surely reveals that an entirely
motor circular reaction independent of vision is involved. But as soon
as the phenomenon is produced opposite her face, Lucienne directs her
glance to her hand and watches it for a long time. She also inspects her
right hand which scratches a piece of material. At 0;2 (27) she looks at
her right hand which is holding a doll but is unable to keep this spec-
tacle in her visual field. She also looks at her empty hands, the left al-
most as much as the right, but also without keeping them in the visual
field; the glance searches for the hands but they are not subordinated
to the glance. At 0;3 (3) she looks attentively at her right hand which
scratches a quilt, then relinquishes it, then grasps it again, etc. While her
hand loses contact with the quilt she looks at the latter but without co-
ordination with the hand movements. Her hand rediscovers the quilt
through tactile accommodation and not through accommodation with
sight. That evening, she watches her hand open and close. There is as
yet no precise coordination between these movements and sight except
that the fingers seem to move more when Lucienne looks at them. At
0;3 (8 and 9) she looks attentively at her clasped hands while sucking
the index finger and the back of her right hand. We shall stop with
this observation for, from this date on, Lucienne begins to carry to her
mouth the objects she has grasped which marks the beginning of the
third stage.
Observation 61. Jacqueline seems not to have looked at her hands be-
fore 0;2 (30). But on this date and the following days she frequently
notices her moving fingers and looks at them attentively. At 0;3 (IB)
she rumples her quilt with both hands. When her hands move into her
visual field she looks fixedly at them just as she looks at the folds of the
quilt when they appear before her but, if her eyes attempt to see the
hands, the hand movements do not yet depend on vision at all. At
0;3 (21) likewise, her eyes follow her hands. At 0;3 (22) her glance fol-
lows her hands which turn aside and she seems very much surprised to
see them reappear.
Observation 62,A.t 0;2 (4) Laurent by chance discovers his right index
finger and looks at it briefly. At 0;2 (11) he inspects for a moment his
open right hand, perceived by chance. At 0;2 (14), on the other hand,
he looks three times in succession at his left hand and chiefly at his
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 97
raised index finger. At 0;2 (17) he follows its spontaneous movement for
a moment, then examines it several times while it searches for his nose
or rubs his eye. Next day, same observation. At 0;2 (19) he smiles at the
same hand after having contemplated it eleven times in succession
(when it has been untied); I then put this hand in a bandage again; as
soon as I detach it (half an hour later) it returns to the visual field and
Laurent again smiles at it. The same day he looks very attentively at
his two clasped hands. At Q;2 (21) he holds his two fists in the air and
looks at the left one, after which he slowly brings it toward his face
and rubs his nose with it, then his eye. A moment later the left hand
again approaches his face; he looks at it and touches his nose. He
recommences and laughs five or six times in succession while moving
the left hand to his face. He seems to laugh before the hand moves, but
looking has no influence on its movement. He laughs beforehand but
begins to smile again on seeing the hand. Then he rubs his nose. At a
given moment he turns his head to the left but looking has no effect
on the direction. The next day, same reactions. At 0;2 (23) he looks at
his right hand, then at his clasped hands (at length). At 0;2 (24) at last
it may be stated that looking acts on the orientation of the hands which
tend to remain in the visual field. Thus we reach the third stage.
It may thus be seen of what the coordinations between vision
and the first circular reactions of the hand and fingers consist.
We can say that the visual schemata tend to assimilate the man-
ual schemata without the converse being yet true. In other words,
the glance tries to follow what the hand does but the hand does
not tend in any way to realize what the glance sees; it does not
even succeed in remaining in the visual field! Later, on the con-
trary, the hand will be regulated by vision, and vice versa; this
will enable the child to grasp the objects seen. But, for the time
being, the hand moves independently of the glance, the few
vague circular reactions to which it gives rise being only di-
rected by touch, kinesthetic sensations, or sucking. The relations
between sight and hand movements are therefore different from
those which exist between sucking and these movements; in the
case of sucking, the schemata external to the hand movements
control tjiem and incorporate them (sucking entails circular re-
action of the arms and hands) while in the case of vision hand
movements are autonomous and the glance is limited to assimi-
lating without controlling them. It is therefore clear that from
this point of view sucking is ahead of vision. Thus at the third
98 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
stage we shall see the hands grasp objects to carry them to the
mouth and not yet in order to look at them.
In a general way we may conclude the following with re-
gard to the second stage. During this stage the hand movements
are no longer controlled only by reflex and impulsive mechan-
isms but give rise to some acquired circular reactions. The re-
actions certainly remain indefinite and it seems as though with
respect to the most primitive of them (opening and closing the
hands, scratching with the finger tips, grasping and letting go,
etc.) that a simple impulsive automatism were always involved.
But the question is to know if these behavior patterns are inde-
terminate because they are still entirely "impulsive" or because
as yet they only constitute empty circular reactions without in-
terest in the object grasped. The case of prehension is, in effect,
exactly analogous to that of sucking, vision, or hearing. Just as
there exists empty sucking, tongue sucking, etc., so also the nurs-
ling can wave his arms, open and close his hands, clench them,
move the fingers, etc., for weeks without an object and without
true contact with a reality which resists. And just as vision passes
through a stage during which objects are aliments for the glance
without assuming interest as external images, so also the first
contacts of the hand with the things it grasps, touches and
scratches by chance, bear witness to a purely functional phase of
assimilation (grasping for the sake of grasping) by repetition and
not yet by combined generalization and recognition. It is to this
phase that Observations 50-52 apply- On the other hand, Ob-
servation 53 and Observations 55-58 are evidence of a generaliz-
ing assimilation and a beginning of tactile recognition in addi-
tion to this primitive functioning. On the one hand, as soon as
the child learns to scratch and pull at objects (Obs. 53) he ex-
tends this behavior to everything, including his face and his
own hands (Obs. 55-58). On the other hand, through the very
fact of the extension of the schema it becomes differentiated and
gives rise to a recognitory assimilation. This is why the child rec-
nizes his nose, eydl and hands by touch, when he is searching for
them. In correlation with the progress of assimilation there is
gradual accommodation to objects. The hand takes the form of
a thing, the thumb gradually is opposed to the other fingers,
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 99
beginning the third month (or even shortly before) it is enough
to touch the back of the hand to make the hand attempt to
grasp, etc. With regard to coordinating organizations there is, as
we have seen, a beginning of coordination with sucking and with
vision but without reciprocal assimilation of the schemata. The
mouth sucks the hands but the hands do not try to carry to the
mouth everything they grasp nor to grasp everything that the
mouth sucks, and the eye looks at the hands but the hands do not
try to feel or to grasp everything the eyes see. These two essential
coordinations will develop during the three succeeding stages.
The coordination between sucking and grasping is more pre-
cocious and thus characterizes the third stage. But there is no
logical necessity for this order of succession and it is possible to
conceive of the existence of a partial reversal in the case of cer-
tain exceptional subjects.
During a third stage notable progress is revealed: henceforth
there is coordination between prehension and sucking. In other
words, the hand grasps objects which it carries to the mouth and
reciprocally it takes hold of objects which the mouth sucks.
Let us first describe the facts in order later to analyze their
various aspects.
Observation 63. At 0;3 (8) Lucienne grasps her coverlet in her right
hand and sucks it. I then place a pencil in her hand; her hand moves
slightly toward her mouth and stops. As yet it is impossible to decide
between chance and coordination. But that evening three times in suc-
cession I place a soft collar in her right hand which is stretched out on
the coverlet and each time she carries it to her mouth. No attempt at
seeing. At Q;3 (9) I place a wooden object in her hand; she brings it
toward her mouth, then lets it go. At 0;3 (13), same experiment: she
holds the object, carries it to her mouth and alternately licks the object
and her hand without appearing to dissociate these two bodies from
one another. At Q;3 (24) she grasps bib, quilt, covers by herself and
carries them to her mouth. At 0;4 (4) she grasps a toy by chance (of
course without seeing it) and holds it firmly for a few moments. Then
a sudden movement to put it in her mouth without trying to look. Same
reaction with a part of the coverlet. She does not yet direct the object;
she sucks that which comes first. There exists therefore in some way a
conjunction of two schemata (grasping and holding) and (putting the
hand to the mouth) and not yet the single act of putting the object to
the mouth.
100 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
Observation 64. At 0;4 (9) I put a rattle before her eyes: no reaction.
Then I place it in her hands: she immediately puts it in her mouth,
sucks it, then moves it at random while looking at it. It seems as though
this time the act of grasping a substance in order to suck it forms a
single organized whole. This is confirmed by the following reaction.
That evening I show Lucienne her usual rattle: she looks at it fixedly,
opens her mouth, makes sucking movements, opens her mouth again,
etc., but she does not grasp it. The sight of the toy, therefore, set in
motion movements of sucking and not of prehension. But barely
touching her stretched-out hand with the handle of the rattle suffices
to produce movements of prehension: successive attempts with the
fingers until the opposition of the thumb leads to success. The rattle,
as soon as it is grasped, is carried to the mouth. At 0;4 (10) same
reactions: the object, as soon as it is grasped, regardless of the visual
field, is carried to the mouth. If it falls to the side groping ensues until
success is attained.
Observation 65. At 0;4 (10) Lucienne is lying on her back. I put a doll
in front of her mouth. She manages to suck it while moving her head,
but with difficulty. She then moves her hands but without bringing them
together appreciably. A moment later, on the other hand, I place the
rattle in her mouth, the handle lying on her chest; she immediately
brings her hand to it and grasps it. The experiment is repeated three
times: same reactions. At 0;4 (15) as soon as the rattle is in contact
with the mouth, the hand moves in this direction. But Lucienne does
not persevere. That evening, however, she grasps it immediately. This
behavior seems to be definitely acquired and coordinated. To accom-
plish this Lucienne does not look at her hands at all and as soon as she
touches the rattle she succeeds in grasping it. She does this with her
left as well as with her right hand, but less often. From this observa-
tion on, Lucienne begins to coordinate her grasping movements with
vision, and thus enters the fourth stage.
Observation <56.~~ At 0;3 (2) Lucienne carries to her mouth what she has
grasped at random, opposing her thumb to the other fingers. At 0;4 (8)
too, she carries to her mouth ribbons, corners of pieces of material, her
bib, etc.
Observation 66 repeated. Already at 0;2 (17) Laurent, after grasping
his sheet, sucks it at the same time as his hand. There is therefore a
chance connection between the schema of prehension and that of finger
sucking. The next day he sucks the bandage on his left hand while
holding it with his right. The following days the relations between pre-
hension and sucking remain at random. On the other hand, at 0;2 (28)
it is enough for me to place his rattle in his left hand (outside the visual
field and the extended arm) to cause Laurent to introduce this object
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 101
into his mouth and suck it. The experiment succeeds a series of times,
with the right hand as well as the left, and the systematization of the
reaction shows that this new schema was constituted several days be-
fore. Same result on the following days. At 0;3 (4) he carries to his
mouth ribbons, fringes of covers, cloth dolls, etc., and, at 0;3 (5) he
does the same with unfamiliar objects (package of tobacco, cigarette
lighter, tobacco pouch, etc.) which I put in front of his face and which
he grasps after having touched them while putting his hands together.
So also it suffices that I place in his outstretched hand, outside the
visual field, ,an object which is unfamiliar (visually and tactilely) such
as a clothes pin, for Laurent to carry it immediately to his mouth and
not to his eyes.
Thus it may be seen that from the second half of the third month
there exists, in Laurent, coordination between sucking and grasping
but, as we shall see later, this third stage was shortened in his case by
a certain precocity in coordination between vision and prehension.
Moreover the sequential order of the acquisition of coordinations was
almost reversed in the case of this child.
Such observations are interesting inasmuch as they indicate
how systematic prehension is acquired. Following the circular
reactions of the second stage (pure, generalizing, and recognitory
assimilations) the child begins to interest himself in the objects
themselves which his hand has touched. Here the same phenome-
non is produced as with respect to vision or hearing. After having
looked for the sake of looking the child becomes interested in
the objects he looks at, because the assimilation of reality to vision
is completed through coordination between vision and the other
schemata. So also, after having practiced in space various hand
movements and having grasped for the sake of grasping, after
having used his prehension with respect to all the solid objects
he encounters and having thus acquired an increasingly precise
accommodation to objects concomitant to generalizing assimila-
tion, after having even developed a sort of tactile-motor recog-
nition of things, the child finally becomes interested in the
objects he grasps inasmuch as prehension, which has thus be-
come systematic, is coordinated with an already completed
schema, such as that of sucking. How can this coordination be
explained? In the beginning (Obs. 63) it seems that there is only
partial coordination that is to say, simple conjunction of two
partially independent schemata. The hand takes hold of the
102 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
objects and the mouth attracts the hand. Thus at 0;4 (4) Lucienne
s.till Indifferently sucks hand or object when the hand brings the
objects to the mouth. At a given moment, on the other hand,
coordination becomes total. But here as with regard to sight and
hearing, it clearly appears that this coordination results from a
reciprocal assimilation of the schemata under consideration. The
mouth seeks to suck what the hand grasps just as the hand seeks
to grasp what the mouth sucks. In effect, in Observation 64, the
mouth is ready to suck before the hand has discovered the object
and then what the child grasps is at once brought to the mouth.
Inversely, at 0;4 (10) (Obs. 65) Lucienne seeks to grasp the object
which her mouth sucks when this object has not previously passed
through manual prehension. Thus it may once more be seen of
what the progressive organization of schemata consists: a mutual
adaptation with reciprocal accommodation and assimilation.
This leads us to the coordination between vision and pre-
hension. We recall that during the second stage the glance already
follows the hand movements but the latter are not governed^by
the former. During the fourth stage we shall see that prehension
itself is controlled by vision. With regard to the third stage which
concerns us at the moment, it may be said that vision, without
yet controlling prehension (which still only depends on touch
and sucking) already exerts an influence on hand movements.
The act of looking at the hand seems to augment the hand's
activity or on the contrary to limit its displacements to the in-
terior of the visual field.
Observation rf7.-Lucierme, at 0;3 (IB) looks at her right hand for a
long time (her arm is outstretched) and opens and closes it. Then
her hand moves quite suddenly toward her left cheek. Her eyes follow
this movement with exactitude, her head moving continuously as
though there were prevision. The hand then resumes its position.
Lucienne looks at it again and smiles broadly while shaking herself,
then the same game begins again. The following days her visual in-
terest in hand movements or the hand holding an object remains con-
stant, but vision does not seem to have any effect other than a vague
dynamogenization of these movements.
Observation 68. At 0;4 (9) Lucienne makes no motion to grasp a
rattle she is looking at. But when she subsequently brings to her mouth
the rattle she has grasped independently of sight and sees the hand
which holds this object, her visual attention results in immobilizing
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 103
the movement of her hands; however, her mouth was already open to
receive the rattle which is 1 cm. away from her. Then Lucienne sucks
the rattle, takes it out of her mouth, looks at it, sucks again, and so
on. The same day, a new experiment: I place a case in her left hand.
Lucienne carries it directly to her mouth, but, as she is about to put it
in (her lips already open) she perceives it, moves it away and holds it
before her eyes at a distance of about 10 cm. She looks at it most at-
tentively while holding it almost motionless for more than a minute.
Her lips move and she carries the object to her mouth and sucks it for
several seconds but she removes it to look at it. The same day, Lucienne
engages in the same play with her coverlet, but as yet there is no co-
ordination between the sight of an object or of the hand and pre-
hension as such.
Observation 69. At 0;4 (10) Lucienne looks at her rattle with the same
reactions of buccal desire. She opens her mouth, makes sucking-like
movements, raises her head slightly, etc. But she does not stretch out
her hands although they make grasping-like movements. A moment
later, her right hand being outstretched, I place a rattle next to her.
Lucienne looks alternately at her hand and the rattle, her fingers
constantly moving, but she does not move her hand closer. However,
when the rattle touches her hand she grasps it immediately.
Observation 70. Jacqueline, at 0;4 (1) looks attentively at her right
hand which she seems to maintain within the visual field. At 0;4 (8)
she sometimes looks at the objects which she carries to her mouth and
holds them before her eyes, forgetting to suck them. But there does
not yet exist prehension directed by sight nor coordinated adduction
of objects in the visual field. It is when the hand passes at random be-
fore her eyes that it is immobilized by the glance. Sometimes, too, she
looks attentively at her hands which happen to be joined. At 0;5 (12)
I observe that she constantly looks at her hands and fingers but always
without coordination with prehension. At 0;6 (0) she has not yet estab-
lished this coordination. She watches her hand move; her hand moves
toward her nose and finally hits her eye. A movement of fright and
retreat: her hand still does not belong to herl Nevertheless the hand is
maintained more or less successfully within the visual field.
Observation 71. At 0;S (23) Lucienne's right arm is outstretched, her
hand remaining outside the visual field. I grasp this hand. She tries to
free it but does not look in this direction at all. Same result at 0;4
(9), etc. It is only during the following stages that Lucienne will
search with her eyes for the hand which is held.
Observation 72. Jacqueline still reacts in the same way at 0;5 (12)
that is to say, during the present stage. She is on her back and I alter-
nately hold her right and left hands which are lying flat on the mattress.
104 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
She makes vain attempts to face her hand but without looking in the
right direction although she tries to see what is going on. At a given
moment while wriggling about Jacqueline happens to perceive my
hand which is holding her right hand. She looks attentively at this
unfamiliar image but without making an effort to free herself at this
exact moment. Then she resumes the struggle while looking all around
her head but not in the right direction. The consciousness of effort is
therefore not localized in the visual image of the hand, but in the
absolute. At 0;5 (25) same reaction.
Observation 73 .-Laurent has revealed, with regard to the coordination
of vision and hand movements, remarkable precociousness which must,
we feel, be attributed to his development acquired by the schema of
joining the hands (see Obs. 59). In effect, through clasping of the hands
which necessarily takes place in front of the face in a reclining child,
Laurent eventually studied them by looking at them attentively [see
Obs. 52 at 0;2 (19) and 0;2 (23)]. This regular connection, although its
cause is fortuitous, results quite naturally in leading to the influence of
the glance on the movement of the hand. Thus at 0;2 (24) Laurent rubs
his hands, 5 to 10 cm. from his mouth, without sucking them. He
separates them and then grasps them again at least twenty times in
succession while looking at them. It would appear, in such an instance,
that visual pleasure alone were the cause of the repetition of the
phenomenon. An hour later this impression is strengthened when
Laurent, having grasped his right hand with his left and having re-
moved the bandage (placed on the right thumb) holds the bandage
within the visual field and looks at it with curiosity. At 0;2 (25) Laurent
looks at his motionless left hand, after having rubbed his eye. At 0;2
(26 and 28) he looks at a rattle which he has in his hands and at 0;2
(29) I observe a new combination derived from differentiation of this
schema of clasping the hands. Laurent holds his hands with the tips of
his fingers only, and 10 to 15 cm. away, exactly opposite his eyes. He
obviously keeps them within the visual field and reveals no tendency to
suck or even actually to grasp for at least a quarter of an hour. There
is only involved playing with the fingers discovered tactilely and
agreeable to the eye. The next day, same observation.
Observation 74. The significance of the preceding behavior patterns
is that, with regard to Laurent, they give rise to a very curious reaction
which particularly facilitated access to the definitive coordination
characteristic of the fourth and fifth stages of prehension. Beginning
0;3 (3) Laurent began to grasp my hand as soon as it appeared before
his face because my hand was visually assimilated to one of his hands
and so set in motion the schema of hand clasping.
At 0;3 (3), around 2 P.M. I place my motionless hand opposite his
face, 10 to 15 cm. from his mouth. He looks at it and immediately makes
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 105
sucking-Iike movements while looking at it, as though b^ were as-
similating it to his hand which he constantly examines before or after
sucking. But he looks at my hand without trying to grasp it. Then,
without changing its location, I open my hand more and manage to
touch his left hand very lightly with my little finger. Laurent immedi-
ately grasps this finger without seeing it. When I withdraw it, Laurent
searches for it until he rediscovers it (which is the first example of a
reaction important to the development of prehension: recapturing
that which escaped the hands). Finally this use of prehension passes
into the visual field and Laurent looks at my finger most attentively.
The same day, at 6 P.M. if I display my hand in the same position this
is enough to make Laurent grasp it! I touched his hand (with my little
finger) just once, then five times in succession he grasps my hand
without my having previously touched his nor his having seen his
hand at the same time as mine! At first I assumed this phenomenon to
be a coordinated act of prehension regulated by sight of the object
alone (hence an act characteristic of the fifth stage) but the rest of the
observation suggested a simpler interpretation. The sight of my hand
simply set in motion the habitual cycle of movements of bringing the
hands together (the schema of clasping) and as my hand was in the
trajectory of his hands, he met and grasped it.
The next day, at 0;3 (4) he at once grasps my hand even though
I have not touched his at all. I find, moreover, confirmation of the pre-
ceding interpretation in the following three facts. In the first place,
when I present Laurent with some objects instead of my hand, he does
not attempt to grasp them and confines himself to looking at them. In
the second place, when I present my hand at a certain distance (20 to 30
cm.) and not just in front of his face, he is content to grasp his hands
without trying to reach my hand. In the third place, when I separate
and clasp my hands, at a distance of about 50 cm., Laurent imitates me,
as we shall see later. These three combined facts seem well to demon-
strate that, if Laurent grasps my hand in front of his face, this is
through assimilating my hand to the schema of clasping his own.
At 0;3 (5) Laurent imitates less well my clasping movement when
I am at a distance. As soon as I bring my hand closer to his face, he
joins his hands and, at the proper distance, grasps them. When I again
move my hands away, he joins his. That afternoon, I present my motion-
less hand: he grasps it and laughs. Then I replace my hand with a
package of tobacco, a cigarette lighter and finally my tobacco pouch: he
grasps all three in sequence! By means of my hand and the schema of
joining, Laurent thus arrives at the beginning of the fourth stage.
Observation 75. At 0;3 (5) that is to say, the third day of the preced-
ing observation I immobilize Laurent's hands outside the visual field:
he does not look (see Obs. 71 and 72).
106 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
Observation 76. Finally here is an example of the conjunction of the
combined schemata of vision, prehension and sucking. At 0;4 (4) I
show Lucienne my motionless hand. She looks at it attentively, then
smiles, then opens her mouth wide and finally puts her own fingers
into it. Same reaction many times. It appears that Lucienne assimilates
my hand to hers and thus the sight of my fingers makes her put hers
into her mouth. It is noteworthy that shortly afterward she looks at her
own index finger, sucks it, looks at it again, etc. So also Laurent, at
0;3 (6), while looking at my hand in the same position, opens wide his
mouth. Then he grasps my hand and draws it toward his open mouth
while staring at my fingers.
It may thus be seen in what these coordinations between
vision and hand movements consist. It is not yet possible to speak
of coordination between vision and prehension, since the child
knows neither how to grasp what he sees (he does not grasp what
he touches or sucks) nor how to hold before his eyes that which
he has grasped (he carries things to the mouth and not to the
eyes), nor even how to look at his own hand when it is held by
the hand of someone else (Obs. 71, 72 and 75). It can no longer
be said, however, that the child is limited to looking at his hands
without having them react to his looking. When the hand by
chance enters the visual field it tends to remain there. It even
happens that the child postpones sucking the grasped object
through pure visual interest (Obs. 68 and 70). In short, there is a
beginning of true coordination that is to say, of reciprocal
adaptation. The hand tends to conserve and repeat the move-
ments that the eye looks at, just as the eye tends to look at every-
thing the hand does. In other words the hand tends to assimilate
to its schemata the visual realm just as the eye assimilates to Its
schemata the manual realm. Henceforth when the child perceives
certain visual images (sees the fingers move, the hands hold an
object, etc.) this is enough to make his hand tend to conserve
them through reproductive assimilation to the extent that these
images are assimilated to manual schemata.
How is this reciprocal assimilation to be explained? We
understand the meaning of the assimilation of the motor realm
by the visual schemata, since the hand and its movements can be
seen and watched. But what does the assimilation of the visual
by the manual mean? In what follows this will be tantamount to
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 107
saying that the hand tries to grasp everything that the eye sees.
But this coordination will only be exactly produced later, during
the fourth or fifth stage. For the time being the manual schemata
only assimilate the visual realm to the extent that the hand con-
serves and reproduces what the eyes see of it. Now how is this
possible? Associationism simply responds: the visual image of the
hand, through being associated to the movements of this hand,
acquires by transfer the value of a signal and governs sooner or
later these very movements. Concerning the fact, as such, of this
associative transfer, everyone is of course in agreement. Every
accommodation involves putting into relationship known quanti-
ties imposed by experience, and the child discovers the connection
between the visual image of the hands and their movements
quite a while before attributing this image and the correspond-
ing kinesthetic. impressions to a unique and substantial "object."
But the problem is to find out whether this relation between the
visual and the motor is established by "association." On the con-
trary, we place in opposition to the passive concept of association
the active concept of assimilation. That which is fundamental and
without which no relationship between sight and hand move-
ments could be established is that the hand's activity constitutes
schemata which tend to conserve and reproduce themselves
(opening and closing, grasping bodies and holding them, etc.).
Through the very fact of this tendency toward conservation such
activity incorporates in itself every reality capable of supporting
it. This explains why the hand grasps that which it encounters,
etc. Now comes the moment when the child looks at his hand
which is moving. On the one hand, he is led, by visual interest,
to make this spectacle last that is to say, not to take his eyes off
his hand; on the other hand, he is led, by kinesthetic and motor
interest, to make this manual activity last. It is then that the co-
ordination of the two schemata operates, not by association, but
by reciprocal assimilation. The child discovers that in moving
his hand in a certain way (more slowly, etc.) he conserves this
interesting image for his sight. Just as he assimilates to his glance
the movement of his hands, so also he assimilates to his manual
activity the corresponding visual image. He moves with his hands
the image he contemplates just as he looks with his eyes at the
108 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
movement he produces. Whereas until now only tactile objects
served as aliments for the manual schemata, visual images now
become material for exercises of the hands. It is in this sense that
they may be called "assimilated" to the sensorimotor activity of
the arms and hands. This assimilation is not yet an identification:
the visual hand is not yet a tactile-motor hand. But the substantial
identification will result from assimilation as the geometric point
of the crossing of lines. The intersection of the assimilating ac-
tivities will define the object, in proportion as these activities
applied to the outside world will constitute causality.
An excellent illustration of this process is supplied by Ob-
servations 73 and 74. After watching his hands join for several
days, at 0;3 (3) Laurent manages to grasp a privileged object as
represented by my hand. How can this precocious prehension be
explained, if not precisely as being due to the fact that this visual
image of my hand is assimilated to the visual image of his hands,
and that this latter image is already incorporated in the schema
of joining the hands. 14 Here we see at work, in the most definite
way, the play of assimilation in its dual reproductive and recog-
nitory character. If the coordination of vision and prehension
were a matter of pure physiological maturation of the nervous
system, the differences in dates of acquisitions as revealed by
three normal children such as Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent
could not be understood. On the other hand, by following in
detail Laurent's psychomotor assimilations (the use of the cycle
i* it may be thought strange that we should assert with regard to Ob-
servation 74 that at 0;3 (3) Laurent manages to assimilate my hand to his,
despite differences in size and position. But a good reason impels us to this
interpretation. Beginning 0;3 (4) I have been able to establish that Laurent
imitates my hand movements; he separates, then joins his hands in response
to my suggestions. This imitative reaction recurred at 0;S (5), 0;3 (6), at 0;S
(8), at Q;3 (23), etc. Now if there is imitation of such a movement, to the ex-
clusion of so many others, it is obvious that there is assimilation. That this
assimilation is entirely synthetic, without objective identification, is evident;
it does not yet involve either the distinguishing of another's body and his own
body or the concept of permanent and comparable objects grouped in cate-
gories, and it is doubtless even based upon a confusion rather than an actual
comparison. But no more than this is needed to enable us to speak of assimi-
lation. Assimilation, which is the source of imitation as it is of recognition,
is an earlier mechanism than objective comparison and, in this sense, there
is no obstacle to asserting that a 3-month-old child can assimilate another's
hand to his own.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 109
to the joining of the hands, the assimilation to this schema of the
visual image of the hands and finally the assimilation of my hand
to his hands) the reason for his precocity may be understood.
The same applies to the still more complex example of as-
similation of the visual to the manual furnished by observation
76. At 0;4 (4) Lucienne sucks her hand while looking at mine. Be-
fore that time Lucienne has already coordinated the grasping of
objects to sucking movements. She carries to her mouth every-
thing that she grasps, regardless of the visual field. In addition she
visually recognizes the objects she sucks or is going to suck and
thus a coordination between vision and sucking is established
which we have analyzed in connection with the latter. Now,
among these objects the hand plays a central role, since Lucienne
is visually acquainted with it at about two months, that she knows
how to suck from a still earlier date and knows how to carry her
hand to her mouth after having looked at it. There exists, there-
fore, as far as the hand is concerned, a conjunction of at least
three schemata sucking, vision, and motor activity to the ex-
clusion of actual prehension. Lucienne looks at my hand; her
reaction is to suck it immediately and perhaps to move it. But,
either she confuses it at first with her own and then sucks her
own, or else, what is more likely, she has the impression, due to
global assimilation, of an object capable of being carried to the
mouth more easily than the others, and, not knowing how to
grasp what she sees, it is her own hand that she brings between
her lips. In this second case, there was only semiconfusion; but
in both cases the visual image of my hand is assimilated to the
simultaneously visual, motor, and buccal schema of her own hand.
Regardless of these last examples, the coordination between
vision and hand movements until the present only affect the
latter to the exclusion of prehension. In other words, except in
Observations 74 and 76, the child still only grasps objects when
he touches them by chance, and, if he looks at his hands when they
are holding the object, vision does not yet help at all in the
actual act of grasping. During the fourth and fifth stage, the
coordination between vision and hand movements will be ex-
tended until it arrives at actual prehension.
The fourth stage is that during which there is prehension as
110 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
soon as the child simultaneously perceives his hand and the de-
sired object. I have been able to observe, In effect, in the most
definite way with respect to my three children that the grasping
of objects which have simply been looked at only begins to be-
come systematic in cases in which the object and the hand are
perceived in the same visual field.
Observation 7 7. -At 0;6 (0) Jacqueline looks at my watch which Is 10
cm. from her eyes. She reveals a lively interest and her hands flutter as
though she were about to grasp, without however discovering the right
direction. I place the watch in her right hand without her being able
to see how (the arm being outstretched). Then I again put the watch
before her eyes. Her hands, apparently excited by the contact just
experienced, then proceed to move through space and meet violently,
subsequently to separate. The right hand happens to strike the watch:
Jacqueline immediately tries to adjust her hand to the watch and^thus
manages to grasp it. The experiment is repeated three times: it is al-
ways when the hand Is perceived at the same time as the watch that the
attempts become systematic.-The next day, at 0;6 (1) I resume the
experiment. When the watch is before her eyes Jacqueline does not at-
tempt to grasp it although she reveals a lively interest in this object.
When the watch is near her hand and she happens to touch It, or it is
seen at the same time as her hand, then there is searching, and searching
directed by the glance. Near the eyes and far from the hands, the watch
is again simply contemplated. The hands move a little but do not ap-
proach each other. I again place the object near her hand: immediate
searching and again, success. I put the watch a third time a few centi-
meters from her eyes and far from her hands: these move In all direc-
tions but without approaching each other. In short, there are still two
worlds for Jacqueline, one kinesthetic and the other visual. It Is only
when the object is seen next to the hand that the latter is directed
toward it and manages to grasp it. That evening, the same experiments
with various solid objects. Again and very regularly, when Jacqueline
sees the object facing her without perceiving her hands, nothing hap-
pens, whereas the simultaneous sight of object and of hand (right or
left) sets prehension in motion. Finally it is to be noted that, that day,
Jacqueline again watched with great interest her empty hand crossing
the visual field: The hand is still not felt to belong to her.
Observation 78. Lucienne, at 0;4 (12) looks attentively at her mother's
hand while taking the breast. She then moves her own hand while look-
ing at her mother's. Then she perceives her own hand. Her glance then
oscillates between the aforementioned hands. Finally she grasps her
mother's hand.The same day, In the same situation, Lucienne again
perceives her mother's hands. She then lets go the breast to stare at
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 111
this hand while moving her lips and tongue. Then she puts forward
her own hand in the direction of the maternal hand and suddenly, she
puts her own between her lips, sucks it a moment and takes it out, the
while looking at her mother's hand. There ensues a reaction analogous
to that of Observation 65. As she did a week earlier, Lucienne sucks
her own hand out of confusion with the hand she perceives. But this
time the confusion does not last; after having removed her hand rom
between her lips she moves it about at random, haphazardly touches
her mother's hand and immediately grasps it. Then, while watching
this spectacle most attentively, she lets go the hand she was holding,
looks alternately at her own hand and the other one, again puts her
hand in her mouth, then removes it while contemplating the whole
time her mother's hand and finally grasping it and not letting it go for
a long moment.
Observation 75>.-Lucienne, at 0;4 (15) looks at a rattle with desire, but
without extending her hand. I place the rattle near her right hand. As
soon as Lucienne sees rattle and hand together, she moves her hand
closer to the rattle and finally grasps it. A moment later she is engaged
in looking at her hand. I then put the rattle aside; Lucienne looks at
it, then directs her eyes to her hand, then to the rattle again, after
which she slowly moves her hand toward the rattle. As soon as she
touches it, there is an attempt to grasp it and finally, success. After
this I remove the rattle. Lucienne then looks at her hand. I put the
rattle aside. She looks alternately at her hand and at the rattle, then
moves her hand. The latter happens to leave the visual field. Lucienne
then grasps a coverlet which she moves toward her mouth. After this
her hand goes away haphazardly. As soon as it reappears in the visual
field, Lucienne stares at it and then immediately looks at the rattle
which has remained motionless. She then looks alternately at hand and
rattle after which her hand approaches and grasps it.
Observation 80. The same day progress is revealed after the facts
related in Observation 65 (taking the rattle placed against the mouth).
I put the rattle above Lucienne's face. The immediate reaction consists
in trying to suck it; she opens her mouth, makes sucking-like movements,
pulls her tongue, pants with desire. Thereupon her hands approach
her mouth and seem to stretch toward the object. As soon as the right
hand is seen, it directs itself toward the rattle and grasps it. It is there-
fore the desire to suck the object which set the hand in motion; therein
is progress toward the fifth stage .I then place the rattle higher up.
Same expression of buccal drive. The hand tries to grasp, in space. As
soon as Lucienne perceives her hand she looks alternately at the rattle
and at her hand, then tries to grasp, which she achieves after some
groping. At 0;4 (19) same reactions with my finger: she makes sucking-
112 ELEMENTARY 5ENSORIMOTOR A0APTAT1GNS
like movements while looking at it, then moves her hand toward her
mouth and when she sees the hand, grasps.
Observation 81. At 0;3 (6) that is to say following Observation 73
and 74 Laurent looks at my watch which I hold not in front of his
face, but to his right. This spectacle sets in motion activity of both
hands, but not a joining movement. The right hand remains in the
zone of the watch, as though he were searching for it. As soon as
Laurent sees watch and hand together, he grasps! The hand was well
oriented, open, with the thumb opposite, A moment later, I present
a cloth doll on the left side. The reaction is the same; Laurent looks
at the doll, then perceives his left hand, looks at it, then his eyes
return to the doll. He then grasps it, carries it to his mouth and sucks it.
That evening, an essential observation. Laurent's hands are out-
stretched and he looks ahead of him, wide awake. I present to him the
customary objects (rattle, cloth doll, package of tobacco, etc.): he grasps
nothing and looks at them as though he knew nothing whatever about
grasping. Thereupon 1 place my motionless hand in front of his face,
in the same place as the objects: he grasps it immediately; my hand is
barely in position when his hands move and with one motion seize my
hand. It seems that, through lack of seeing a hand, Laurent did not
have the idea of grasping the objects presented at first, arid that the
sight of my hand (in its role of hand and not of object) immediately
stimulated his schema of prehension.
A little later I present to Laurent a cloth doll (on the left side):
he looks at it attentively without moving his hand (except for a few
vague movements). But, as soon as he sees his hand (I observe his glance
through the hood of the bassinet), he grasps. Same experiment with the
customary series of objects and same reactions.
Observation 82, At 0;3 (7), the following day, Laurent is motionless,
his hands outstretched, engaged in babbling, when I begin the day's
first experiment. I present to him on the left side (without showing
myself) a roll of tinfoil (to him an unfamiliar object). Three definite
reactions succeed one another. In the first place, his hands immediately
move, open and tend to approach one another. Meanwhile Laurent
looks at the object without looking at his hands. His left hand passes
near the paper, very slowly, but instead of bifurcating in the direction
of the object, it pursues its trajectory toward the other hand which
comes to meet it. The hands then meet while Laurent continues to look
at the object. The sight of the object has therefore set in motion the
cycle of the functioning of the hands, without modifications. In the
second place, while Laurent's hands are joined, I put the tinfoil op-
posite him. He looks at it but does not react at all. In the third place,
I put the paper in the same visual field as his hands. He then looks at
his hands, losing sight of the object for a moment, then again looks at
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS US
the object; then he separates his hands and directs them toward the
object which he manages to grasp. The simultaneous viewing of hands
and object is therefore still necessary for prehension.
The next day, same observations, in the morning. In the afternoon
I present one of his rattles to Laurent; when the rattle is in the trajec-
tory of his hands, he grasps it immediately. Otherwise he looks alter-
nately at his hand and the object. In particular, when I place the rattle
on his quilt, before his face at a distance of about 10 cm., he looks at
length at his hand and the rattle before attempting to grasp; his hand
remains 5 cm. from the rattle. Then at last he makes an attempt and
succeeds.
Same reaction for two more days, then Laurent enters the fifth
stage.
Observation 83. During this fourth stage I was able to observe in
Laurent a beginning of the reciprocal relation between vision and
actual prehension. But it is only a beginning. At 0;3 (7) when he has
succeeded in grasping the tinfoil, Laurent lets it go soon after (with
his left hand). He then turns his head to look at his empty hand. Same
observation a moment later. I then hold each of his hands in succes-
sion, outside the visual field, to see whether he takes notice of the posi-
tion. In seven attempts Laurent succeeds twice on the left side, but not
at all on the right. Then I place an object in his right hand (tinfoil).
He at once carries it to his rnouth. But, before introducing it between
his lips, he perceived it and then maintains it in his visual field.
At 0;3 (8) after the experiment with the rattle (Obs. 82) he loses
it on the right side (but he has let it go with his left hand while he was
shaking it from side to side). Laurent then looks four or five times in
succession at his empty left hand. He even shakes his hand very
markedly, at a certain moment, as though this shaking would start the
sound of the rattle! Regardless of this last point, in any case he marks
with his glance the position of his hand.
The importance of this fourth stage Is evident. Henceforth
the child grasps the objects which he sees, and not only those he
touches or those he sucks. It is thus the beginning of the essential
coordination which will aid prehension. The only limitation
which still exists and which thus makes the fourth stage stand
in the way of the fifth is that the child only tries to grasp the
objects seen to the extent that he perceives, in the same visual
field, his own hand. It is even, as is clearly apparent from examin-
ing the facts, the simultaneous sight of hand and object which
induces the child to grasp; neither the sight of the object nor of
the hand alone leads to this result. It might appear that an ex-
114 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
ceptlon should be made of Observation 80. Lucienne tries to
grasp the rattle or the finger that she wants to suck. But the ex-
ception is only ostensible. Either Lucienne simply brings her
hand to her mouth and it is on seeing it that she tends to grasp
the object, or else from the outset it is in order to grasp that she
simply prolongs the behavior patterns recorded in Observation
65 (grasping objects placed against her mouth) which was re-
vealed several minutes before those of Observation 80 which is in
question.
How can we explain this tendency to grasp objects when
they are perceived in the same visual field as the hand? It is pos-
sible to waver between two extreme solutions: the associative
transfer and the Gestalt. Concerning associationism, as the sight
of the hand holding the object has been associated to the act of
grasping a certain number of times, it suffices, at a given moment,
for the hand and the object to be visually perceived separately
but simultaneously, in order that this perception may set pre-
hension in motion. But, as we have already seen with regard to
the third stage, such an explanation overlooks the element of
activity peculiar to such establishing of relationships. The visual
image of the hand is not only a signal which sets prehension in
motion; it constitutes, with the grasping movements a total
schema, in the same way that, during the third stage, the visual
schemata of the hand are coordinated with the motor schemata
other than that of prehension. Is it then necessary to speak of
Gestalt and to say that the simultaneous sight of the hands and
of the object causes a "structure" to appear which neither the
sight of the hands nor of the object was sufficient to give rise to?
About the fact itself we are certainly in agreement, and Observa-
tions 77-83 may be compared to those of W. Kohler according to
which the monkey uses the cane when he perceives it at the same
time as the objects to be drawn to him and not when the cane has
been seen outside of the same visual field. Only it must be noted
that this "structure" did not appear suddenly, but in close rela-
tion to a whole series of earlier searchings and of coordinations
between sight and hand movements. Once the child has learned,
during the third stage, to conserve and reproduce by means of
movements of the hand that which the eye has been able to see
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 115
of these same movements, he becomes able to grasp under the
influence of the glance. In other words, it is not so much the new
"structure" which is of importance here as the process leading to
this structure. This is why we speak of active assimilation.
Actually, once the visual schemata and the sensorimotor
schemata of the hand have been mutually assimilated during the
third stage (the eye looks at the hand just as the hand reproduces
those of its movements which the eye sees), this kind of coordina-
tion is applied sooner or later to the very act of grasping. Look-
ing at the hand which grasps an object, the child tries, with the
hand, to maintain the spectacle which the eye contemplates as
well as continuing, with his eye, to look at what his hand is
doing. Once this double schema has been constituted, it is self-
evident that the child will try to grasp an object while he looks
at the same time at his hand when he is not yet capable of this
behavior when he does not see his hand. Grasping the object
when he sees the object and the hand at the same time is there-
fore, for the child, simply assimilating the sight of the hand to
the visual and motor schema of the act consisting in "looking at
grasping."
Proof that this act of "looking at grasping" simply con-
stitutes a double schema of assimilation and not a "structure"
independent of the effort and progressive activity of the subject
is that this act was revealed at 0;3 (6) by Laurent, at 0;4 (12 to 15)
by Lucienne and at 0;6 (0-1) by Jacqueline that is to say, with
a distance of nearly three months between the extremes. Now
this difference between one child and another is explained by
the whole history of their ocular-manual coordinations. Lucienne
looked at her fingers since 0;2 (3), Laurent since 0;2 (4) whereas
Jacqueline waited until 0;2 (30) and 0;3 (0), etc. However, noth-
ing justifies us in considering Jacqueline retarded in relation to
Lucienne. The explanation is very simple: Jacqueline, born
January 9th and spending her days outdoors on a balcony, was
much less active in the beginning than Lucienne and Laurent,
born in June and in May. Furthermore and by virtue of this
very fact, I made many fewer experiments on her during the first
months, whereas I was constantly busy with Laurent. Regarding
the latter, his precocity can be explained, as we have seen, first by
116 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the fact that he sucked his fingers much earlier than the others
(partly because of my experiments), and chiefly by the fact that
this finger sucking gave rise to a very firm schema, that of joining
the hands (Obs. 59). Constantly joining his hands, he applied
himself to watching them function (Obs. 73). Once accustomed
to this spectacle, he precociously grasped niy hands through
assimilation with his own (Obs. 74), and he thus arrived quite
naturally at grasping objects (see Obs. 81: he only grasps objects,
at a given moment, after having seen and grasped my hand). It
seems therefore that the appearance of the essential coordinations
between sight and grasping depends upon the whole psychological
history of the subject and not on structures determined by an
inevitable physiological unfolding. It is therefore the history, the
assimilating process itself, which is of the essence and not the
isolated "structure" of this history. It even appears as though a
certain chance intervenes in the child's discoveries and the as-
similating activity which utilizes these discoveries is thus more
or less slowed down or accelerated, as the case may be.
During the fifth stage, at last, the child grasps that which he
sees without limitations relating to the position of the hand. 15
First here are the facts:
Observation 84. At 0;6 (3) that is to say, three days after the beginning
of the fourth stage Jacqueline, at the outset, grasped pencils, fingers,
neckties, watches, etc., which I present to her at a distance of about 10
cm. from her eyes, regardless of whether or not her hands are visible.
Observation 55. The same day Jacqueline brings before her eyes the
objects I put into her hand outside the visual field (pencils, etc-). This
reaction is new and did not appear on the previous days.
Observation 86. Finally, the same day, Jacqueline instantaneously
looks in the right direction when I hold her hand outside the visual
field. This too is new (see Obs, 72). These three behavior patterns which
appeared simultaneously (grasping what one sees, carrying the objects
to the eyes, and looking at the hand which is being held) were main-
tained and established the following days.
Observation 87. Lucienne, at 0,*4 (20), looks at my finger and opens
her mouth in order to suck. Meanwhile her right hand touches mine,
is See in this connection H. Hetzer, with H. H. Beaumont and E. Wiehe-
meyer, Das Schauen und Greifen des Kindes, Zeitschr, f. PsychoL, 113, 1929,
p. 239 (see in particular pp. 257 and 262-263).
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 117
feels it and climbs little by little toward the finger, while her glance is
lowered and looks for the hand. This coordination of the direction
of the glance with a gesture made by the hand outside the visual field
is new in connection with the fourth stage and presages the fifth stage.
So also, a moment later, Lucienne looks at a rattle located above her
face. Without seeing her hand, she raises it toward the rattle. As soon
as she perceives the hand, prehension follows (left hand). When the
rattle is higher, Lucienne wavers between putting her hands in her
mouth and trying to grasp. The sight of the hand stimulates prehension.
At 0;4 (21) in the same situation, Lucienne brings her hand at once into
the visual field, looks alternately at this hand and at the rattle and
grasps. When I place the rattle higher up, on the other hand, she
gesticulates without bringing the hand nearer and it is necessary for
her to have perceived the hand for her to attempt to grasp the object.
When the rattle is lower down, the hand is then brought into the visual
field and then the simultaneous sight of hand and object induces
grasping. Likewise, when the rattle is high up, but Lucienne has just
touched it (without seeing it), she tries to grasp while steering her hand
in the right direction. All these facts, therefore, indicate an inter-
mediary behavior pattern between the fourth and the fifth stage. Sight
of the hand remains adjuvant to prehension, but sight of the object
suffices to bring the hand into the visual field.
Observation ##. Beginning at 0;4 (26), on the other hand, it seems that
sight of the object at once sets prehension in motion in the case of
Lucienne; all the day's attempts are positive. At 0;4 (28) she seems at
first to have regressed; simultaneous sight of hand and object is neces-
sary, at the beginning of the day. But that evening she immediately
tries to grasp what she sees. For instance, I place my slide rule above
her eyes. She looks for a moment at this unfamiliar object, then both
her hands simultaneously direct themselves toward it. From 0;5'(1)
there is no longer any hesitation; Lucienne attempts to grasp every-
thing she sees.
Observation #. At 0;5 (1) also, Lucienne immediately brings to her
eyes the object she grasps or which is placed in her hands, regardless of
the visual field. Then she sometimes sucks the object, but not always.
It is only on an average of 3 out of 10 times that she sucked before
looking. Furthermore, at the moment that she brings the object toward
the visual field she expects to see something and searches with her
glance even before seeing.
Observation #0. At 0;5 (1) Lucienne looks in the direction of her hand
which is being held. For example, I clasp her right hand while she
looks to the left; she immediately turns in the right direction. Until
now such an experiment yielded negative results. A moment later, I
place in her left hand (outside the visual field) a bulky object (a
118 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
gourd), which she immediately tries to grasp but which I retain. She
then definitely looks for this hand, even though her ami is outstretched
beside her body and thus her hand is hard to see.
At 0;5 (18), Lucienne corroborates these last acquisitions: taking
what she sees, bringing the object before her eyes when she has grasped
it outside the visual field, and looking in the direction of the hand
which is being held.
Observation 91. At 0;3 (11) Laurent is pulling toward himself sheets,
covers, etc., to suck them (he does this a part of each day since he has
learned how to grasp). When I hold out directly in front of him a
package of tobacco, he grasps it immediately, without looking at his
hand. Same reaction with an eraser. At 0;3 (12) under the same condi-
tions he grasps my watch chain which is on his left and outside the
trajectory of the joining of his hands. That evening, same reaction with
this chain and with a roll of cardboard. At 0;3 (13) he immediately
grasps a case which I hold out to him. He does not look at his hands
or attempt to join them but at once directs the right hand toward the
case. When he has grasped it, he does not suck, but examines it.
Observation 92. At 0;3 (12) when I put a key in his hand, outside the
visual field, he carries it to his mouth and not to his eyes. But he is very
hungry (five hours have elapsed since his last meal). That evening same
reaction with the case with which he is familiar but, when I place my
watch chain in his hand, he looks at it before attempting to suck it.
The next day he swings a hanging chain in order to move his
rattle (see below, Obs. 98). He has grasped it without looking at it, but
twice he looks at his hand while it is holding the chain. In the same
way, he rolls part of his sheet into a ball before sucking it and from
time to time he looks at what he is doing (with both his hands).
At 0;3 (13) likewise, while he still holds in his left hand the case
which he grasped (see Obs. 91) and looks straight at me, I slip into his
right hand without his noticing it, my watch chain rolled into a knot
(his hand is outstretched beside him). Then I withdraw and observe
through the hood of the bassinet. He immediately brings the chain
before his eyes (and not to his mouth) and, as he still holds the case
in his left hand, he looks alternately at case and chain. At a certain
moment he loses his case. He searches for it (without seeing and still
with his left hand), then he touches it without succeeding in extricating
it from the folds of the coverlet. A long attempt. As soon as he suc-
ceeds in grasping it, he brings it before his eyesl
Observation 93.~~At 0;3 (12) Laurent's left hand is outstretched. I then
hold it outside the visual field: he immediately looks at it. The experi-
ment fails with his right hand, but he seems unnerved. That evening,
when I hold his right hand, he looks at it at once.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 119
We see what comprises the acquisitions belonging to the
fifth stage which denote the definitive triumph of prehension.
The coordination between vision and prehension is now suffi-
cient for each object which meets the eye to give rise to a grasp-
ing movement even when the hand is not yet perceived in the
same visual field as the object.
How can this final coordination be explained? It can be
conceived as being the simple result of the effort of reciprocal
assimilation which the visual and manual schemata have hitherto
revealed. As early as the second stage the glance attempts to fol-
low (hence to assimilate itself) everything that the hand performs.
During the third stage the hand attempts, in return, to repro-
duce those of its movements which the eye sees; that is to say, as
we have seen, to assimilate the visual realm to the manual
schemata. During the fourth stage this assimilation of the visual
to the manual is extended to prehension itself when the hand
appears in the same field of observation as the object to be
grasped. The hand thus takes hold of what the eye observes, just
as the eye tends to look at that which the hand grasps. During
the fifth stage reciprocal assimilation is finally complete. All that
is to be seen is also to be grasped and all that is to be grasped is
also to be seen. It is natural that the hand should seek to grasp
everything that the eye looks at, since the behavior patterns
characteristic of the fourth stage have taught the child that this
was possible when the hand is perceived at the same time as the
object. The behavior belonging to the fifth stage is in this respect
only a generalization of the coordinations belonging to the
fourth stage. With regard to looking at everything that is grasped,
it is remarkable that this tendency appears precisely at the same
time as the complementary tendency. Observations 85 and 89
show that Jacqueline at 0;6 (3) and Lucienne at 0;5 (1) bring to
their eyes that which they grasp, on the very date when they
begin to grasp systematically what they see. The same day they
also tend to look at their hand when it is held outside the visual
field (Obs. 86 and 90). Such facts adequately demonstrate how
much the coordination of vision and prehension is a matter of
reciprocal assimilation and not of simple and irreversible as-
sociative transfer.
120 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
In conclusion, the conquest of prehension, while much more
complex than that of sucking and the other elementary acquired
adaptations, confirms what we have observed of the latter. All
adaptation is a putting in equilibrium of a complementary ac-
commodation and assimilation and is itself correlative to an
internal and external organization of the adaptational systems.
In the realm of prehension, the accommodation of the hand to
the object is what has chiefly held writers' attention. Pure reflex
in its beginnings, it subsequently involves an apprenticeship
during which the accomplishment of hand movements and the
opposing of the thumb are on a par with the coordination of
these movements as a function of sucking and of the tactile and
visual characteristics of the object. This aspect of the question
is important, particularly in regard to the elaboration of the con-
cept of space. With respect to the assimilation of the real to the
grasping schemata, this develops analogously to what we have
seen in the other realms. The child begins by moving his hand
for the sake of moving it, to grasp for the sake of grasping, and
hold for the sake of holding, without any interest in the objects
themselves. This purely functional or reproductive assimilation
(assimilation through simple repetition) is seen in the course of
the reflex stage and of the second stage. How will the subject
proceed from this purely functional interest (denoting an ele-
mentary assimilation of the real to the activity) to an interest in
the objects grasped? Through a dual process of complication of
assimilation and coordination among the sensorimotor schemata.
As far as an assimilation itself is concerned, it becomes compli-
cated through generalization. In the beginning the nursling
limits himself to grasping immobile objects of a certain con-
sistency which come in contact with the palm of the hand or the
inside of the fingers; then through very repetition of the act of
prehension he applies the same schemata to objects of various
consistencies, animated by different movements and which the
hand approaches in different ways. There exists, therefore,
"generalizing" assimilation and through that very thing, the
constitution of differentiated schemata, that is to say, "recogni-
tory" assimilation. But the manifestations of the latter are less
clear in the realm of prehension than in that of sight, hearing,
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 121
etc., because prehension is too quickly subordinated to external
ends, such as sucking or sight. Nevertheless tactile recognition
exists as revealed by the different ways in which a child grasps a
handkerchief or a pencil, for example: from the first contacts
the accommodation is different. This diversification of schemata
during which generalizing and recognitory assimilation are on
a par with the progress of accommodation explains in part how
interest in the objects grasped follows purely functional interest.
But it is chiefly the coordination of prehension with sucking and
vision that accounts for the progressive objectifying of the uni-
verse in its relations to the activity of the hands.
Here we reach the organization of the grasping schemata.
These schemata become organized among themselves through the
fact that they adapt themselves to the external world. Thus every
act of prehension presupposes an organized totality in which tac-
tile and kinesthetic sensations and arm, hand and finger move-
ments intervene. Hence such schemata constitute "structures" of
a whole, although they were elaborated in the course of a slow
evolution and over a number of attempts, gropings, and correc-
tions. But above all these schemata are organized in coordination
with schemata of another kind, chief of which are those of suck-
ing and of vision. We have seen in what this organization con-
sists: it is a reciprocal adaptation of the schemata in view, natu-
rally with mutual accommodation but also with collateral
assimilation. Everything that is looked at or sucked tends to be
grasped and everything that is grasped tends to be sucked and
then to be looked at. This coordination which crowns the acqui-
sition of prehension also indicates an essential progress in ob-
jectification. When an object can be simultaneously grasped and
sucked or grasped, looked at and sucked, it becomes externalized
in relation to the subject quite differently than if it could only
be grasped. In the latter case it is only an aliment for the function
itself and the subject only attempts to grasp through the need to
grasp. As soon as there is coordination, on the contrary, the
object tends to be assimilated to several schemata simultaneously.
It thus acquires an ensemble of meanings and consequently a
consistency, which endow it with interest.
122 ELEMENTARY SENSOHlMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
5. THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS: CONCLU-
SIONS. After having analyzed in detail the first adaptations
which are superimposed on the reflex adaptations, it is appropri-
ate to draw some general conclusion which can subsequently
guide us in our study of actual intelligence. The behavior pat-
terns which we have described in the foregoing chapters in effect
form the transition between the organic and the intellectual.
They cannot yet be described as intelligent behavior patterns
because intention is lacking (the differentiation between means
and ends) and also mobility, which allows adaptation to continue
in new circumstances. But certain intersensorial coordinations,
such as those of prehension with vision, are not far removed from
intelligent connection and already presage intention. On the
other hand, these adaptations can no longer be characterized as
purely organic because they add to the simple reflex an element
of accommodation and asimilation related to the subject's ex-
perience. It is therefore important to understand how the be-
havior patterns of this second stage prepare intelligence.
Expressed in ordinary language, the problem which con-
fronts us here is that of acquired association or habit and the
role of these mechanisms in the genesis of intelligence. Sucking
thumb or tongue, following with the eyes moving objects, search-
ing for where sounds come from, grasping solid objects to suck
or look at them, etc., are the first habits which appear in the
human being. We have described their appearance in detail but
the question may be asked in a general way, what sensorimotor
habit is and how it is constituted. Furthermore, and it is with this
sole aim that we have studied the first acquired adaptations, it
may be asked in what way habitual association prepares the
intelligence and what the relationships are between these two
types of behavior patterns. Let us begin with this last point.
In psychology there has always been a tendency to trace
back the active operations of intelligence to the passive mecha-
nisms arising from association or habit. To reduce the causal
link to a matter of habit, to reduce the generalization charac-
teristic of the concept to the progressive application of habitual
systems, to reduce judgment to an association, etc. such are the
common positions of a certain psychology dating from Hume
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 123
and Bain. The Idea of the conditioned reflex, which is perhaps
misused today, undoubtedly revives the terms of the problem,
but its application to psychology certainly remains in the pro-
longation of this tradition. Habit, too, has always seemed to
some people to be the antithesis of intelligence. Where the second
is active invention, the first remains passive repetition; where
the second is awareness of the problem and an attempt at com-
prehension, the first remains tainted with lack of awareness and
inertia, etc. The solution we shall give to the question of intelli-
gence thus partly depends on that which we shall choose in the
realm of habit.
Now at the risk of sacrificing precision to a taste for sym-
metry, we believe that the solutions between which one may
waver with regard to the relationships between habit and intelli-
gence are five principal ones and that they are parallel to the
five solutions (delineated in our Introduction) regarding the
genesis of the morphological reflex structures and their relation-
ship to intelligence. Let us examine these various solutions.
The first consists in asserting that habit is a primary fact
from which, through progressive complication, intelligence is
derived. This is the associationist solution and the doctrine of
conditioned reflexes insomuch as the latter attempts to be an
instrument of general explanation in physiology. We have seen
(Introduction, 3) to which Lamarckian attitude this first solu-
tion in biology proper corresponds.
The second solution which is on a par with vitalism in
biology and the doctrine of "intelligence faculty" in psychology,
consists in considering habit as being derived, through automati-
zation, from higher operations involving intelligence itself. Thus
to Buytendijk, the formation of habits, in animal psychology,
presupposes something quite different from association: "Not
only are the phenomena much more complicated, but here we
see appear, in the sensitive-motor realm, phenomena which bear
considerable analogy to the higher process of thought/' 10 This
analogy, according to this writer, rests upon the fact that "the
center whence emanate all the functions of the soul ... is an
i Buytendijk, Psychologic des animaux, Paris, Payot, p. 205.
124 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
immaterial cause, as much, of sensorial activities as of the motor
(activities) of the animal's psychic function." 17
A third and a fourth solution, which are on a par with the
theories of preformation and mutation in biology and with
apriority and pragmatism would be tantamount to saying that
habit is absolutely or relatively independent of intelligence and
in some ways even its opposite. Although this point of view has
not yet been systematically supported with regard to the theory
of habit itself, many indications of it may be found in connection
with intelligence in the work of writers whose chief common
preoccupation is to emphasize the originality of the intellectual
act. Thus it is that the Gestalt theory (third solution) radically
opposes the putting into structures fitted to understanding and
the simple automatism due to habit. Among the French psy-
chologists H. Delacroix is also very decisive: "Far from neces-
sarily depending on habit, it seems on the contrary as though it
(generalization) were connected with the power to free oneself
of it. ... Thus, even while asserting the importance of habit as
a means of grouping, all generalization remains irreducible to
it/' 18 So also when Clapar&de (fourth solution) describes intelli-
gence to us as a searching arising on the occasion of the defeats
of instinct and of habit, he partially puts the latter in opposition
to the former. 19
A fifth solution is, finally, conceivable: this is to consider
the formation of habits as being due to an activity whose analogies
with intelligence are purely functional, but which will be found
again at the point of departure of intellectual operations when
the suitable structures will permit it to go beyond its initial
structure. As we understand the very important work of J. M.
Baldwin, it seems to us that the concept of "circular reaction" is
precisely destined to express the existence of this active factor,
the principle of habit, and at the same time the source of an
adaptational activity which intelligence will prolong by means
of new techniques. It is through being inspired by this kind of
tradition that we have, for our part, interpreted the genesis of
., pp. 290-291.
is Delacroix, in Duman, TraiU, 1st edition, II, p. 135.
i9Claparde, op. cit. f pp. 137-161.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 125
the first habits of the nursling in terms of active assimilation and
accommodation. This is not to say that this adaptational activity
of which habit is only an automatization is already intelligence.
For this it lacks the structural characteristics (intention, systems
of mobility, etc.) whose advent we shall describe in connection
with the following stage. But it does present all the functional
characteristics of intelligence which will arise from it through
reflexive progress and a differentiation of the relationships be-
tween subject and object more than by simply being placed in
opposition to acquired habits.
Having distinguished these five solutions, let us try to dis-
cuss them in the light of the facts previously established. This
will provide us with an opportunity to state precisely the mean-
ing of the general concepts of conditioned reflex, associative
transfer, habit, and circular reaction to which we have alluded
without sufficient criticism, and finally to elaborate upon the
concepts of accommodation, assimilation and organization which
will subsequently aid us in analyzing intelligence itself.
The first solution is tantamount to explaining the formation
of habits by the hypothesis of training or of passive association.
Do the facts which we have analyzed in the course of 1-4 lend
themselves to such an interpretation? We do not think so. Neither
the physiological concept of the "conditioned reflex" transposed
into psychology without addenda, nor the concept of "associative
transfer" seems adequate to account for the formation of the first
habits which we have described.
As far as the conditioned reflex is concerned it is certain that
this concept corresponds to facts which have been well estab-
lished in physiology. But are these facts of sufficient importance
in that field to support on themselves alone the whole weight of
psychology, as some people demand of them today? In the
second place, assuming that they are utilized in psychology,
should they then be translated into the language of association
as desired by the new associationism born of reflexology, or else
have they a quite different meaning? To the first of these two
questions we shall reply that the conditioned reflex is essentially
fragile and unstable if it is not constantly "confirmed" by the
external environment. And to the second, we shall reply that,
126 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
to the extent that the conditioned reflex is "confirmed" it ceases
to be a simple association and is inserted in the more complex
schema of the relationships between need and satisfaction, conse-
quently the relationships of assimilation. That the conditioned
reflex is fragile that is to say, that the results of training are
soon lost if not constantly confirmed by new training has been
brought to light by the physiologists. Moreover, they have re-
mained much more prudent than psychologists in employing
this concept. In order that a conditioned reflex may become
stabilized it is, in effect, necessary either that it cease to be con-
ditioned and become hereditarily fixed, or else that it be "con-
firmed" by experience itself. But the hereditary fixing of condi-
tioned reflexes, maintained at first by Pavlov who subsequently
withdrew his assertion, and then by MacDougal, seems im-
probable and we have seen why in our Introduction. Therefore
there only remains stabilization by the environment itself and
this brings us back to psychology.
A conditioned reflex can be stabilized by expedience when
the signal which sets the reflex in motion is followed by a con-
firmation that is to say, a situation in which the reflex has the
opportunity to function effectively. Hence in order to confirm
the association between a sound and the salivary reflex, the
animal is periodically given real food which gives the signal back
its first meaning. So also could many of our observations be in-
terpreted in terms of conditioned reflexes confirmed by experi-
ence. When the nursling makes ready to nurse when in his
mother's arms and then actually finds the breast; when he turns
his head to follow with his eyes a moving object and indeed finds
it; when he searches with his eyes for a person whose voice he
has heard and succeeds in discovering his face; when the sight of
an object excites his movements of prehension and he subse-
quently manages to grasp it, etc.; it might be said that the re-
flexes of sucking, of visual and auditory accommodation and of
prehension have been conditioned by signals of a postural,
visual, etc., nature and that these conditioned reflexes have been
stabilized because of being constantly confirmed by experience
itself. But such a manner of speaking would elude the main
question: How does experience confirm an association; in other
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 127
words, what are the psychological conditions necessary in order
that success may consolidate a behavior pattern? It is in order to
answer this question that we have invoked combined assimilation
and accommodation and this is why the term pure conditioned
reflex seems to us inadequate.
In effect, when a conditioned reflex is confirmed by ex-
perience, through this very fact it enters a whole schema that is
to say, it ceases to be isolated and becomes an integral part of a
real totality. It is no longer a simple term in the series of acts
leading to satisfaction and it is this satisfaction which becomes
the essential. In effect a series of movements resulting in gratify-
ing a need cannot be interpreted as a juxtaposition of associated
elements: it constitutes a whole that is to say, the terms which
compose it only have meaning in relation to the act which regu-
lates them and to the success of this act. It is because the objects
perceived by the child are thus assimilated to the act of grasping
that is to say, because they have set in motion the need to
grasp and allow it to be gratified that the hand reaches for
them, and not because an association has been established be-
tween a visual image and the reflex of prehension. The latter
association, in the capacity of a conditioned reflex, is only an
abstraction, only a movement artificially cut in the series itself
which also presupposes an initial need and a final satisfaction.
Judgment has long been explained by the association of images
or of sensations. Today we know that the simplest association
already presupposes some activity which participates in the
judgment. In the same way the act of grasping objects visually
perceived may be explained by a chain of conditioned reflexes.
But the links will never be coordinated except insomuch as a
single act of assimilation will confer on the object seen the
meaning of an object to be grasped.
What we say about the conditioned reflexes is all the more
acceptable in that this is already true of the simple reflexes
themselves. It is known to what extent the story of reflexes has
been renovated by Sherrington's fine works. We became aware
that the classic reflex arc is an abstraction rather than a reality.
In the living organism, the reflexes form organized totalities and
not juxtaposed mechanisms. According to Graham Brown, a
128 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
rhythm of the whole always precedes the differentiation in
reflexes: "The reflex does not explain the rhythm. In order to
understand the reflex, the rhythm itself must first be invoked."
And Herrick and Coghill, in studying the embryologkal de-
velopment of the locomotor reflexes in the batrachians, speak of
a "total" locomotor reaction which is subsequently dissociated
into a particular reflex. 20 If all this is true of the reflexes them-
selves there is all the more reason to accept it as true of the con-
ditioned reflexes. Let us be careful not to make of the conditioned
reflex a new psychological element through whose combinations
we shall reconstruct complex acts, and let us wait until the
biologists have defined its real meaning rather than use it inordi-
nately to explain that which is most elementary and consequently
most obscure in mental phenomena.
In short, wherever we may speak of conditioned reflexes
being stabilized as the result of experience, we always perceive
that a schema of the whole organizes the parts of the associations.
If the nursling seeks the breast when he is in position to nurse,
follows moving objects with his eyes, tends to look at the people
whose voice he hears, grasps objects he perceives, etc, it is be-
cause the schemata of sucking, vision, and prehension have
assimilated increasingly numerous realities, through this very
fact endowing them with meaning. Accommodation and as-
similation combined, peculiar to each schema, insure its useful-
ness and coordinate It to the others, and it is the global act of
complementary assimilation and accommodation which explains
why the relationships of the parts which presuppose the schema
are confirmed by experience. 21
But is that not a completely verbal explanation and would
not things be clarified if, for the concepts of assimilation and
accommodation, the apparently clearer concept of "associative
transfer" were substituted? The concept of the associative trans-
20 Concerning all these points see Larguier, Introduction & la psychologic,
pp. 126-138.
21 This continuous subordination of the conditioned reflexes to organized
totalities or global schemata of assimilation is demonstrated experimentally in
the realm of the conditioned motor behavior patterns by a series of studies
which M. Andr Rey, Chief of the work at our Institute, is pursuing at the
present time and which will soon be published.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 129
fer is more general than that of the conditioned reflex: associa-
tion is involved, no longer only between a signal and some move-
ment. Thus the sight of stairs suffices to set in motion appropriate
movements of the legs and feet in the subject accustomed to
climbing a staircase, etc. The associative transfer is thus regarded
as the basis of the habit, by the first of the five above-mentioned
solutions. According to this hypothesis our schemata of assimila-
tion would not be anything other than the totalities of associative
transfers whereas, according to us, every associative transfer pre-
supposes a schema of assimilation in order to be constituted. It is
therefore fitting to discuss this point closely; only this discussion
is able to elucidate the true nature of sensorimotor assimilation
and accommodation.
Let us first distinguish the two principal cases in which the
associative transfer seems to intervene the associations which are
constituted within the same schema and the associations between
heterogeneous schemata. The criterion of this distinction is the
following. When the sensorial movements and elements are as-
sociated which do not yet present themselves, by another road,
in the isolated state, we shall say that there is a single schema. We
shall say, on the contrary, that coordination between schemata
exists when they are able to function separately in other situa-
tions. For example, putting the thumb in the mouth constitutes
a single schema and not a coordination between the sucking
schema and the manual schemata because, at the age at which the
child learns to suck his thumb he knows, it is true, how to suck
something other than his thumb, but he does not know how to
accomplish in other circumstances, by means of his hand, the
action which he performs in putting it into his mouth (the few
spontaneous movements of the hands which we have noted at
about 1 to 2 months cannot even yet be definitely considered as
independent schemata for it is not certain that they already
constitute circular reactions distinct from impulsive movements).
On the other hand, the behavior pattern consisting in grasping
objects seen (4 to 5 months) may be cited as an example of co-
ordination between heterogeneous schemata, for grasping objects
independently of sight constitutes, as early as the fourth month,
an autonomous schema and looking at objects independently of
130 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
prehension is prevalent from i to 2 months. Hence we see how
the two cases are different: in the first association appears as con-
stitutive of the schema itself, whereas in the second it superadds
itself to already existing schemata. The concept of the associative
transfer must therefore be discussed separately in each case.
Concerning the first case, the doctrine of the associative
transfer is tantamount to saying that each of our schemata is
constituted by virtue of a sequence of independent associations.
For example, if the child has acquired the habit of sucking his
tongue, then his thumb, and then seeking the breast when he is
in position to nurse, this would be for the following reasons:
certain sensations of lips and tongue having regularly preceded
the movements of the latter, and these movements having led to
agreeable sucking sensations, the first sensations (contact of the
tongue and the lips, etc.) would become a sort of signal auto-
matically starting tongue movements and leading to the desirable
result. In the same way that certain sensations of empty sucking
have preceded the introduction of the thumb into the mouth a
sufficient number of times and this has been followed by agreeable
sensations of thumb sucking, it would suffice for the child to
make sucking-like movements or to have just finished his meal in
order that the sensorial elements peculiar to this situation serve
as a signal and set in motion by association the putting of the
thumb into the mouth. Finally if these sensations peculiar to the
nursing situation set in motion the search for the breast, it is be-
cause they would be associated to these movements in the ca-
pacity of a signal regularly preceding them. So also, in the realm
of vision, if the glance follows objects it is because, the perception
of the initial displacements having regularly preceded the move-
ments of the muscles of the eye permitting it to rediscover the
displaced object, this perception would have become a $ignal
regulating the movements of the eye itself: hence there would be
in the act of following with the glance, a chain of associative
transfers. Such an interpretation thus applies to everything: it
is not one of the schemata, which we have delineated, which could
not be conceived of as being a combination of associative trans-
fers.
But such a manner of speaking seems to us more convenient
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 181
than precise. The same criticisms can be applied to the as-
sociationist explanation thus renovated as can be applied to the
generalization of the conditioned reflex. As the essential 'in every
behavior pattern seems to result from an associative transfer,
the essential is not the association itself; it is the fact that the
association leads to a favorable or unfavorable result: without the
relationship sui generis existing between this result and the
subject himself, the association would not be consolidated in
anything. When the hand is retracted when confronted by fire
or the foot is raised at the step of a staircase, the precision of the
sensorimotor accommodations which constitute these behavior
patterns depends entirely on the meaning which the subject at-
tributes to the flame or to the staircase. It is this active relation-
ship between the subject and the objects that are charged with
meanings which creates the association and not the association
which creates this relationship. So also, when the child sucks his
tongue and his thumb, seeks the breast when he is in nursing
position, follows with his eyes moving objects, etc.; it goes without
saying that such habits presuppose regulated associations be-
tween sensorial elements and movements, but these associative
transfers were only able to be constituted and consolidated
thanks to a fundamental relationship between the activity of the
subject (sucking, vision, etc.) and the sensorial subject endowed
with meanings because of this very activity. It may therefore be
said, in a general way, that if the association of ideas presupposes
judgment instead of constituting it, so also the associative transfer
presupposes a relation sui generis between the act and its result
instead of constituting it.
What, then, is this relation between the act and its objective?
Here intervene the concepts of assimilation, accommodation and
organization, outside of which the associative transfer seems to
us meaningless. The point of departure of all individual activity
is, in effect, one or several reflexes already hereditarily organized.
There are no elementary habits which do not graft themselves
upon reflexes; that is to say, upon an already existing organiza-
tion, capable of accommodation to the environment and of as-
similation of the environment to its own functioning. Now,
where a habit begins that is to say where the associative trans-
132 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
fers begin to constitute themselves there may always be observed
this relationship of combined assimilation and accommodation
between the reflex activity of the subject and the new result
which the nascent habit tends to attain and conserve. It is, in
effect, the relation between the act and its result which alone
permits the establishing of associative transfers. Now, such a
relationship involves assimilation, for what makes the interest or
the meaning of the new result pursued by the subject is pre-
cisely the fact that it can be assimilated to the reflex activity
upon which the habit information grafts itself: hence the tongue
and thumb are sucked because they serve as aliments for sucking,
objects are followed by the eye because they serve as aliments for
looking, etc. In short, the result of the acts, which alone gives
to these acts their direction and thus "confirms" the associative
transfers, sustains, with the initial reflex schemata, a functional
relation of gratifying need, consequently of assimilation. Be-
sides, and by virtue of that very fact, the assimilation of new
objects to schemata preformed by the reflexes presupposes an
accommodation of these schemata to the situation insomuch as it
is new. Thus it is that in order to suck his tongue and his thumb
the newborn child is obliged to incorporate into the movements
constituting his hereditary sucking schema new movements, dis-
covered in the course of individual experience: pulling the
tongue, bringing the hand to the mouth, etc. It is precisely this
incorporation of movements and of sensorial elements into the
schemata which have already been constituted that is called in
associationist terminology conditioned reflex or associative trans-
fer. Only this accommodation is inseparable from assimilation
and in this resides the fact that it is much more than an associa-
tion. It is an insertion of new sensorimotor elements into a
totality which has already been organized, which totality consti-
tutes precisely the schema of assimilation. Hence, in sucking his
tongue or his fingers, the child incorporates the new sensations
he experiences into those of former sucking (sucking the breast,
etc.) therein is assimilation and, at the same time, he inserts
movements of putting out his tongue or putting his thumb into
his mouth into the already organized totality of sucking move-
ments and this is what constitutes accommodation. It is this
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 138
progressive extension of the total schema that enriches itself
while remaining organized which constitutes accommodation.
That is not "association" but progressive differentiation. Thus
when the child seeks the breast when he is in nursing position, it
cannot simply be said that the attitudes peculiar to this position
are henceforth associated to sucking. It must be said that the
global schema of sucking movements has incorporated into itself
these attitudes and that from this moment they form a whole
with the schema itself. In short, the associative transfer is only a
moment, artificially cut, in the act of accommodation, which
proceeds by differentiation from an earlier schema and by the
incorporation of new elements into this schema, and not by as-
sociation; furthermore, this accommodation is inseparable from
assimilation, since it presupposes a total schema and this schema
only functions in assimilating to itself new realities. This assimi-
lation alone can explain the satisfaction to which the act leads
and which determines the so-called "associative transfers."
As far as the associations producing themselves within an
identical schema are concerned, it is therefore illusory to speak
of associative transfer. Only the result of an act determines its
contexture, which is tantamount to saying, in associationist
terminology, that sanction is necessary to consolidate training
and stabilize associations. The relationship between an activity
and its object cannot be dissociated from the assimilation of the
objective result to this activity and of accommodation of the
activity to this result. This being so, it necessarily follows that the
activity proceeds by global schemata of organization and not by
associations. Not only, in effect, does assimilation presuppose such
schemata, but further, it unceasingly reconstitutes their unity.
If we now go on to the second possible case that is, the
coordination between two separate schemata we do not find
more associative transfers in the pure state. When the child co-
ordinates his hearing with his vision (and tries to see what he
hears) or his prehension with sucking and vision, etc., it cannot
be said that this is simple association between a sensorial signal
(acoustic, visual, or tactile) and the movements of eye, mouth, or
hand. In effect, all the reasons previously involved with regard to
the single schemata apply here. The only difference is that in the
134 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
present case there is no relationship of simple assimilation and
accommodation between the activity of the subject and the
object of this activity, but rather reciprocal assimilation and ac-
commodation between two already existing schemata. Between
the coordination of schemata and their internal constitution,
there is therefore only a difference of degree and not of quality.
In conclusion, the first solution could not account for the
facts which we have analyzed in this chapter, for reasons analo-
gous to those which prevent simple Lamarckism from explain-
ing the hereditary morphological reflex variations and which
prevent associationism from exhausting intelligence itself. In
the three realms of reflexes, sensorimotor acquisitions and intel-
ligence, the primacy of habit or of passive association, leads to a
neglect of the factor of organization, hence of combined assimila-
tion and accommodation which is irreducible to automatism.
Habit, as such, is certain only an automatization, but in order
to be constituted it presupposes an activity which goes beyond
simple association.
Then is it necessary to adopt the second solution and to
consider, as do vitalism or spiritualistic intellectualism that every
habit is derived from intelligence itself? The preceding remarks
on the complementary relationships of assimilation and accom-
modation which connect the act to its result bring to mind
Buytendijk's arguments concerning the intelligent finality in-
herent in every activity giving rise to habits, even in the animal.
Must the conclusion be drawn from this that habit presupposes
intelligence? For our part we would refrain from going that far.
It seems indisputable, in effect, that the formation of habits pre-
cedes all truly intelligent activity. It is functionally, and not from
the point of view of structure, that the behavior patterns described
in this chapter can be compared to those we shall subsequently
analyze as characterizing the beginnings of intelligence itself.
Furthermore the workings of assimilation and accommodation do
not necessitate any recourse to finalism or to "immaterial" ac-
tivities. In yielding to a realism useless to psychology one deduces
from the fact of psychological organization the hypothesis of a
special force of organization, or one projects into assimilatory
activity the structure of an implicit intelligence. Pseudopsycho-
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 135
logical realism of which one is thus the victim simply springs
from the twofold illusion of philosophical common sense ac-
cording to which we can grasp in ourselves our own intellectual
activity as a known datum of internal experience (whence the
ideas of synthetic ''reason/' of spiritual energy, etc., which extend
the Geist or the "soul" itself) and according to which this given
activity is structurally preformed at the most primitive stages
(whence the ideas of vital force, of a priori reason, etc.). Quite
different is the meaning which we would attribute to the concepts
of organization, assimilation, and accommodation. Those are
functional processes and not forces. In other words, these func-
tions crystallize in sequential structures and never give rise to an
a priori structure which the subject would discover directly
within himself. In this respect nothing is more instructive than
the comparison of the picture of the first infantile activities with
the renowned studies by Maine de Biran. Probably no writer has
observed better than Maine de Biran the contrast between ac-
tivity and passive associations in the individual's elementary
acquisitions. Concerning hearing and the voice, vision, touch
and prehension and many other primordial functions, Maine
de Biran always emphasizes the factors of effort and of active
motive power which are contrary to the passivity of "affective
sensibility" and he concludes the impossibility of an associa-
tionistic explanation. In this respect the concepts of assimilation
and accommodation which we have employed could be conceived
as hypotheses extending, without adding anything, Biran's doc-
trine of activity. But an obstacle remains, which seems to us to
be the following: Biran's "effort" which is found at all levels of
psychological activity and explains the "living intelligence" of
the adult reflected in the formation of the first habits, is the
emanation of a self which apprehends directly in the capacity
of substance. It is therefore a force remaining identical to itself
in the course of its history and opposing itself to the environ-
mental forces which it comes to know by their resistance. Quite
different is active adaptation such as the analysis of assimilation
and accommodation obliges us to conceive it. Neither assimila-
tion nor accommodation is a force which presents itself just as it
is to consciousness and which furnishes in the capacity of im-
136 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
mediate data the experience of a "self and of an external world.
On the contrary, through the very fact that assimilation and ac-
commodation are always on a par, neither the external world nor
the self is ever known independently of the other. The environ-
ment is assimilated to the activity of the subject at the same time
as the latter accommodates itself to the former. In other words, it
is through a progressive construction that the concepts of the
physical world and of the internal self will become elaborated as
a function of each other, and the processes of assimilation and
accommodation are only instruments of this construction without
ever representing the actual result of it. Regarding this result, it is
always relative to the construction as such, and besides there
does not exist, at any level, direct experience either of the self or
of the external environment. There only exist "interpreted" ex-
periences and this is true precisely thanks to this double play of
correlative assimilation and accommodation. In short, the organi-
zation peculiar to intellectual becoming is not a faculty which
would form intelligence itself nor a force which would form the
"self": it is only an operation of which the sequential structural
crystallizations never realize intelligence as such. All the more
reason why it is unlikely that the most elementary acquisitions
that is to say the subject's first habits which are under discussion,
derive from the higher intellectual processes as spiritualism
would have it.
But if habit does not derive from intelligence, without add-
ing anything, it cannot be said, as in the third and the fourth
solution that it does not have, or almost does not have, any
relationships to intellectual activity. If association and habit are
considered not in their automatized form, but to the extent that
they become organized at the level at which we have considered
them in analyzing the facts, it seems indisputable that they reveal
close functional analogies to intelligence. The same is true, in
effect, of habit as of imitation. Its automatic form is not the
primitive form and the primitive form presupposes a more com-
plex activity than the evolved forms. In the case of habit, this
elementary activity is that of the sensorimotor organizations
whose schemata function in the same way as intelligence itself,
through complementary assimilations and accommodations. We
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 137
shall see in what follows that there are present all the transitions
between these schemata and those of intelligence. Besides, it is
too early to show now in which respect the Gestalt theory has
exaggerated the contrast between the higher structures and the
more fluctuating behavior of the elementary stages, and in which
respect the schema of assimilation is to be conceived of as a sys-
tem of relations less rigid than a Gestalt and itself involving an
organizing activity of which it is only the expression. Let us limit
ourselves to recalling that schemata such as those of sucking
thumb or tongue, grasping seen objects, the coordination of hear-
ing and of vision, etc., never arise ex abrupto but constitute the
point of arrival of a long effort of gradual assimilation and ac-
commodation. It is this effort which foretells intelligence. Besides,
when Delacroix tells us that intellectual generalization is in a
sense the opposite of habit, that is true of habit which has been
formed and is degenerating in passivity, but that is not certain
concerning the assimilation which is at the point of departure of
this habit. There is, as we have seen, a generalizing assimilation
which works in the same way as intelligence, through a sequence
of choices and corrections. Even groping, which Clapar&de re-
gards as the characteristic of nascent intelligence is therefore not
excluded from the formation of habits which does not mean that
the latter are already intelligent, but rather that there is a con-
tinuous organizing activity connecting organic adaptation to in-
tellectual adaptation through the intermediary of the most ele-
mentary sensorimotor schemata.
It is therefore the fifth solution which we shall adopt. Asso-
ciation and habit form the automatization of an activity which
functionally prepares intelligence while yet differing from it by
a more elementary structure. Let us try to state these assertions
precisely and to do so let us first recall the general characteristics
of the stage under consideration, contrasting them to those of
the preceding stage and those of the following one.
In general it may be said that the behavior patterns studied
in 1-4 consist in searchings which prolong reflex activity and
which are as yet devoid of intention but which lead to new re-
sults of which the mere discovery is fortuitous and whose con-
servation is due to a mechanism adapted from combined sensori-
138 ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
motor assimilation and accommodation. These behavior patterns
prolong those of the first stage in that the needs connected with
the reflex (sucking, looking, listening, crying, grasping, etc.) are
still their only motive power without there yet being needs con-
nected with derived and deferred aims (grasping in order to
throw, in order to swing to and fro, etc.). But, contrary to purely
reflex searching, the searching peculiar to the present stage is
displayed in gropings which lead to new results. Contrary to the
subsequent stage, these results are not pursued intentionally.
They are therefore the product of chance, but, resembling in-
telligent behavior patterns, the behavior patterns of which we
are speaking tend, as soon as the result is obtained, to conserve
it by correlative assimilation and accommodation.
This conservation of advantageous results obtained by
chance is, of course, what Baldwin has called "circular reaction/'
This concept of which we have made use in describing the facts
seems to us exactly to define the position of the present stage.
Circular reaction involves the discovery and the conservation of
the new, and in that it differs from the pure reflex; but it is an-
terior to intention, and in that it precedes intelligence. Only,
such a concept requires interpretation. If one limits oneself, as
is frequently done, to explaining repetition by the "reaction of
excess" and tracing, one returns to automatism to account for
what is, on the contrary, preeminently active searching. If the
child tends to rediscover an advantageous result, this is not be-
cause that is the course of least effort, but on the contrary, it is
because the result is assimilated to an earlier schema and the
question is to accommodate this schema to the new result. The
"circular reaction" is, accordingly, only a global concept, em-
bracing in reality two distinct processes. Let us try, in conclusion,
to summarize what we know about these processes.
First there is accommodation. The great novelty inherent in
circular reaction and habit compared to the reflex, is that ac-
commodation begins to be differentiated from assimilation. At
the heart of the reflex, in effect, accommodation mingles with
assimilation. The use of the reflex is at once pure repetition
(that is to say, assimilation of the object to an already constructed
schema) and accurate accommodation to its object. On the other
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 139
hand, from the moment when the sensorimotor schema is ap-
plied to new situations and thus dilates to embrace a larger realm,
accommodation and assimilation tend to be differentiated. Take,
for example, thumb sucking. During the reflex stage this be-
havior pattern consisted in a simple, occasional animated appli-
cation of the sucking schema to a new object but without having
this circumstance transform the schema in any way whatever.
The new object was assimilated to the old schema and this gen-
eralizing assimilation had no other effect than to exercise the re-
flex in general; at most it permitted it to discriminate in future
breast sucking from what was not breast sucking. During the
present stage, on the contrary, application of the sucking schema
to a new object such as the thumb or tongue transforms the
schema itself. This transformation constitutes an accommodation
and this accommodation is consequently distinct from pure as-
similation. In a general way, contact of some schema with a new
reality results, during the present stage, in a special behavior
pattern, intermediate between that of the reflex and that of in-
telligence. In the reflex the new is entirely assimilated to the old
and accommodation thus mingles with assimilation; in intelli-
gence, there is interest in the new as such and accommodation is
consequently definitely differentiated from assimilation; in the
behavior patterns of the intermediary stage, the new is still only
of interest to the extent that it can be assimilated to the old, but
it already cracks the old frameworks and thus forces them to an
accommodation partly distinct from assimilation.
How does this accommodation work? We have seen in the
above: not through association, but through differentiation of
an existing schema and insertion of new sensorimotor elements
among those which already form it. In effect, with the reflex ac-
tivity a series of already constructed schemata are hereditarily
given and their assimilatory function thus represents an activity
directed toward performance dating from the very beginning of
life and prior to all association. When these schemata are differ-
entiated by accommodation in other words, in physiological
terminology, when a reflex connection is subordinated to a cor-
tical connection and with it forms a new totality it cannot be
said that a given reaction is simply associated to new signals or
140 ELEMENTARY SENSOKIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
to new movements. It must be said that an activity which has al-
ready been organized from the beginnings is applied to new situ-
ations and that the sensorimotor elements connected with these
new situations were comprised in the primitive schema in thus
differentiating it. There is no subordination of the reflex schema
to new associations nor inverse subordination. There is continu-
ity of a single activity with complementary differentiation and
interpretation.
Accommodation, then, presupposes assimilation as, in re-
flective intelligence, empirical association presupposes judgment.
It is this factor of functional assimilation which forms the organ-
izing and totalizing activity insuring the continuity between the
schema considered before accommodation and the same schema
after the insertion of new elements due to this accommodation.
What, then, is assimilation?
Assimilation is first of all purely functional that is to say,
cumulative repetition and assimilation of the object to the func-
tion: sucking for the sake of sucking, looking for the sake of look-
ing, etc. As such psychological assimilation prolongs without add-
ing anything to organic functional assimilation and does not re-
quire any special explanation. Then, to the extent that assimila-
tion of the object to the function extends to include increasingly
varied objects, assimilation becomes "generalizing"; that is to
say (as regards the present stage), combines with multiple ac-
commodations. Finally, and through the very fact of this differ-
entiation, assimilation becomes 'Yecognitory"; that is to say, per-
ception of objects or more precisely, of sensorial images as a
function oi the multiple activities delineated by the generalizing
assimilation. Therein resides a first principle of exteriorization
which combines with the exteriorization due to the coordination
between heterogeneous schemata.
To describe this assimilation clearly one can do so either
from the point of view of consciousness or from that of behavior.
What can the consciousness of the infant be concerning the
thumb he sucks, the object he looks at, the object he will grasp
after having perceived it, the sounds he makes, etc.? Stern 22 as-
Stern, Psychologic der frtihen Kindheit bis zum sechsten Lebens-
jahre, Leipzig, Quelle & Meyer, 1927.
THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 141
serts that an impression is only individualized if it is connected
with a movement experienced as being active or at least con-
nected with the context of the activity itself. One could, at first,
object to this way of seeing the 2-month-old baby's attention to
things and people (Lucienne, at 0;1 (28) looks at the trees above
her, laughs when people move about in front of her). But, in
order to look, there exists accommodation of the eyes and of the
head and this accommodation is probably experienced as a real
activity much more by the nursling than by us. Mimicry denotes
unceasing effort, tension, expectation, satisfaction or disappoint-
ment, etc. Besides, perception is already extended into imitation,
as we shall see later. We therefore fully concede Stern's remark. 23
Now, the following, it seems to us, results from this, from the
point of view of the states of consciousness concomitant to as-
similation. During the elementary stages of consciousness things
are much less apprehended in their own form than is the case
with the adult or the child who talks. There is not a thumb, a
hand, a ribbon about to be grasped, etc. There is a variety of
tactile, visual, gustatory, etc., images which are not contemplated
but rather operated that is to say, produced and reproduced,
impregnated, so to speak, with the need to be supported or re-
discovered. Hence this conclusion which must always be borne
in mind in order to avoid the associationist error constantly re-
appearing under cover of the law of transfer: the new objects
which are introduced to consciousness have no peculiar and
separate qualities. Either they are at once assimilated to an al-
ready existing schema: a thing to suck, to look at, to grasp, etc.
Or else they are vague, nebulous, because of being unassimilable
and then they create an uneasiness whence comes sooner or later
a new differentiation of the schemata of assimilation.
From the point of view of behavior, assimilation is revealed
in the form of cycles of movements or of acts bringing each other
along and closing up again on themselves. This is clearly true of
the reflex whose various forms of use we have studied. This is
again true of circular reaction: the performed act leaves a vacuum
23 Ch. Btihler, op. cit., adds that the child's interest in a situation culmi-
nates at the moment that actual activity begins to triumph over his diffi-
culties.
142 ELEMENTARY SENS0RIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
which, in order to be filled, leads to the repetition of the same act.
Hence there exists the form of an ensemble or cycle of organized
movements, to the extent that the act gratifies a real need. Each
activity forms a whole. To be sure, the ensemble is not perfect
from the outset. There is groping in its performance and it is
in the course of this groping that it is easy to dissociate the se-
quential movements in order to describe them in terms of as-
sociative transfer. But the so-called signal which would deter-
mine the movements constitutes more of an indication in com-
parison with an activity which tries to gain satisfaction for it-
self than a trigger starting up movements. The true cause of
movement is need; that is to say, the total act of assimilation.
This is not to say yet that the movement is intentional. Need is
nothing other, for the moment, than the vacuum created by the
preceding performance of the act and, at the beginning, by the
chance discovery of an interesting result, interesting because di-
rectly assimilable.
In short, the uniting of accommodation and assimilation
presupposes an organization. Organization exists within each
schema of assimilation since (we have just recalled it) each one
constitutes a real whole, bestowing on each element a meaning
relating to this totality. But there is above all total organization;
that is to say, coordination among the various schemata of assimi-
lation. Now, as we have seen, this coordination is not formed dif-
ferently from the simple schemata, except only that each one
comprises the other, in a reciprocal assimilation. At the point of
departure we are in the presence of needs which attain satisfac-
tion separately. The child looks for the sake of looking, grasps
in order to grasp, etc. Then there is an accidental coordination
between one schema and another (the child looks by chance at
the hand which grasps, etc.) and finally, fixation. How does this
fixation work? It seems at first that this might be by association.
Contact of the hands with an object or of an object with the lips
seems to be the signal which sets in motion the movement of the
object to the lips and sucking. But the opposite procedure is also
possible. The need to suck sets in motion the movement of the
hand to the mouth, etc- The possibility of the two complemen-
tary actions shows sufficiently that they form but one unit. All
. THE FIRST ACQUIRED ADAPTATIONS 143
the more reason why this is so when the coordination of the
schemata is reciprocal, when, for instance, the child grasps what
he sees and brings before his eyes that which he grasps. In short, *
the conjunction of two cycles or of two schemata is to be con-
ceived as a new totality, self-enclosed. There is neither associa-
tion between two groups of images nor even association between
two needs, but rather the formation of a new need and the or-
ganization of earlier needs as a function of this new unity.
It is then, let us remember, that assimilation becomes ob-
jectified and perception is externalized. A sensorial image which
is at the point of intersection of several currents of assimilation
is, through that very fact, solidified and projected into a uni-
verse where coherence makes its first appearance.
In conclusion it may be seen to what extent the activity of
this stage, activity from which the first sensorimotor habits pro-
ceed, is identical, from the functional point of view, with that
of intelligence, while differing from it in structure. Functionally
speaking, the accommodation, assimilation and organization of
the first acquired schemata are altogether comparable to those
of the mobile schemata of which sensorimotor intelligence will
make use and even to those of the concepts and relationships
which reflective intelligence will employ. But, from the struc-
tural point of view, the first circular reactions lack intention.
As long as action is entirely determined by directly perceived
sensorial images there can be no question of intention. Even
when the child grasps an object in order to suck or look at it,
one cannot infer that there is a conscious purpose. The goal of
the action is one with the point of departure only by virtue of
the fact of the unity of the schema of coordination. It is with the
appearance of secondary and mobile schemata and of deferred re-
actions that the purpose of the action, ceasing to be in some way
directly perceived, presupposes a continuity in searching, and
consequently a beginning of intention. But, to be sure, all grada-
tions exist between these evolved forms of activity and the primi-
tive forms of which we have spoken hitherto.
PART II
The Intentional Sensorimotor Adaptations
THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR
ADAPTATIONS
The coordination of vision and prehension, which we have
studied in Chapter II, inaugurates a new series of behavior pat-
terns: the intentional adaptations. Unfortunately, nothing is
more difficult to define than intention. Shall it be said, as is fre-
quently done, that an act is intentional when it is determined by
representation, contrary to the elementary associations in which
the act is controlled by an external stimulus? But if representa-
tion is taken in the strict sense of the word, there would not then
be intentional acts prior to language that is to say, before the
faculty of thinking of reality by means of signs making up the
deficiency of action. Now intelligence presupposes intention. If,
on the other hand, one extends the term representation so that
it comprises all consciousness of meanings, intention would ex-
ist ever since the simplest associations and almost since the be-
ginning of reflex use. Shall it be said that intention is connected
with the power of evoking images and that searching for the
fruit in a closed box, for instance, is an intentional act to the
extent that it is determined by the representation of the fruit in
the box? But, as we shall see, it appears according to all proba-
bilities that even this kind of representations, by images and
individual symbols, makes a tardy appearance. The mental im-
age is a product of the internalization of the acts of intelligence
and not a datum preliminary to these acts. Since then we see
only one method of distinguishing intentional adaptation from
the simple circular reactions peculiar to sensorimotor habit: this
is to invoke the number of intermediaries coming between the
stimulus of the act and its result. When a 2-month-old baby sucks
his thumb this cannot be called an intentional act because the
coordination of the hand and of sucking is simple and direct. It
therefore suffices for the child to maintain, by circular reaction,
147
148 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the favorable movements which satisfy his need, in order that
this behavior become habitual. On the other hand, when an
8-month-old child sets aside an obstacle in order to attain an ob-
jective, it is possible to call this intention, because the need set
in motion by the stimulus of the act (by the object to be grasped)
is only satisfied after a more or less lengthy series of intermediary
acts (the obstacles to be set aside). Intention is thus determined
by consciousness of desire, or of the direction of the act, this
awareness being itself a function of the number of intermediary
actions necessitated by the principal act. In a sense, there is there-
fore only a difference of degree between the elementary adapta-
tions and the intentional adaptations. The intentional act is only
a more complex totality subsuming the secondary values under
the essential values and subordinating the intermediary move-
ments or means to the principal steps which assign an end to the
action. But, in another sense, intention involves a reversing in
the data of consciousness. There is henceforth the influence of
recurrent consciousness of direction impressed on the action or
no longer only on its result. Consciousness arises from dis-adapta-
tion and thus proceeds from the periphery to the center.
In practice, we can acknowledge provided we bear in mind
that this division is artificial and that all the transitions connect
the acts of the second stage to those of the third that intentional
adaptation begins as soon as the child transcends the level of
simple corporal activities (sucking, listening and making sounds,
looking and grasping) and acts upon things and uses the inter-
relationships of objects. In effect, to the extent that the subject is
limited to sucking, looking, listening, grasping, etc., he satisfies
in a more or less direct way his immediate needs, and, if he acts
upon things, it is simply in order to perform his own functions.
In such a case it is hardly possible to speak of ends and means.
The schemata serving as means become mingled with those
which assign an end to the action and there is no occasion for
this influence of consciousness sui generis which determines in-
tention. On the contrary, as soon as the subject, possessing the co-
ordinated schemata of prehension, vision, etc., utilizes them in
order to assimilate to himself the totality o his universe, the
multiple combinations which then present themselves (by gen-
THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS 149
eralizing assimilation and accommodation, combined) bring with
them the momentary hierarchies of ends and means; that is to
say, there is the influence of consciousness of the direction of the
act or of its intention.
From the theoretical point of view, intention therefore
denotes the extension of the totalities and relationships acquired
during the preceding stage and, by the fact of their extension,
their greater dissociation into real totalities and ideal totalities in
relationships of fact and relationships of value. As soon as there
is intention, in effect, there is a goal to reach and means to use,
consequently the influence of consciousness of values (the value
or the interest of the intermediary acts serving as means is sub-
ordinated to that of the goal) and of the ideal (the act to be ac-
complished is part of an ideal totality or goal, in relation to the
real totality of the acts already organized). Thus it may be seen
that the functional categories related to the function of organiza-
tion will henceforth become more precise, from the time of the
global schemata of the preceding stage. Concerning the functions
of assimilation and accommodation, intentional adaptation also
brings with it a more pronounced differentiation of their re-
spective categories, ever since the relatively undifferentiated state
of the first stages. Assimilation, after having proceeded as
hitherto, by nearly rigid schemata (the sensorimotor schemata of
sucking, prehension, etc.) will henceforth engender more mobile
schemata, capable of various involvements and in which we shall
find the functional equivalent of the qualitative concepts and of
the quantitative relationships peculiar to reflective intelligence.
With regard to accommodation, by clasping more tightly the
external universe, it will clarify the space-time relationships as
well as those of substance and causality, hitherto enveloped in
the subject's psycho-organic activity.
In other words, we now arrive at the problem of intelligence
which we shall study with regard to stages III to VI. Hitherto we
have stayed on this side of actual intelligence. During the first
stage this was self-evident, since pure reflexes were involved.
Concerning the second stage it was not known how, despite the
functional resemblances, to identify habit and intelligent adapta-
tion, since it is precisely intention that separates them. This is
150 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
not the place to define this structural difference which analyzing
the facts alone will permit us to fathom and which we shall take
up again at the conclusion of this book. Let us say only that the
sequence of our stages corresponds in the main to the system out-
lined by Glaparede in a remarkable article on intelligence pub-
lished in 1917. 1 To Claparede intelligence is an adaptation to
new situations as opposed to reflexes and habitual associations
which also constitute adaptations, either hereditary or due to
personal experience, but adaptations to situations which repeat
themselves. Now these new situations to which the child will
have to adapt himself appear precisely when the habitual
schemata, elaborated during the second stage, will be applied for
the first time to the external environment in its complexity.
Furthermore, there may be distinguished, among the in-
tentional acts which constitute intelligence, two relatively op-
posite types, corresponding in the main to what Claparede calls
empirical intelligence and systematic intelligence. The first con-
sists in operations controlled by the things themselves and not
by deduction alone. The second consists in operations controlled'
from within by the consciousness of relationships and thus marks
the beginning of deduction. We shall consider the first of these
behavior patterns as characteristic of the stages III to V and shall
make the appearance of the second behavior patterns the criterion
of a sixth stage.
On the other hand, the concept of "empirical intelligence"
remains a little vague as long as one does not put into effect, in
the sequence of facts, some divisions intended, not to make dis-
continuous an actual continuity, but to permit analysis of the
increasing complication of the behavior patterns. This is why we
shall distinguish three stages between the beginnings of the action
upon things and those of systematic intelligence: stages III to IV.
The third stage appearing with the prehension of visual ob-
jectives is characterized by the appearance of a behavior pattern
which is already almost intentional, in the sense indicated before,
which also foretells empirical intelligence but which nevertheless
remains intermediary between the acquired association belonging
to the second stage and the true act of intelligence. This is the
1 Republished in Education jonctionnelle, op* dt.
THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS 151
"secondary circular reaction," that Is to say, the behavior which
consists in rediscovering the gestures which by chance exercised
an advantageous action upon things. Such a behavior pattern, in
effect, goes beyond acquired association to the extent that almost
intentional searching is necessary to reproduce the movements
until then performed fortuitously. But it does not yet constitute
a typical act of intelligence since this searching simply consists in
rediscovering that which has just been done and not in inventing
again or in applying the known to new circumstances: the
"means" are hardly yet differentiated from the "ends" or at least
they are only differentiated after the event, at the time the act is
repeated.
A fourth stage begins at around 8 to 9 months and lasts until
the end of the first year. It is characterized by the appearance of
certain behavior patterns which are superimposed on the preced-
ing ones and their essence is "the application of known means to
new situations." Such behavior patterns differ from the preceding
ones both in their functional meaning and in their structural
mechanism. From the functional point of view for the first time
they fully correspond to the current definition of intelligence:
adaptation to new circumstances. Given a habitual goal tempo-
rarily thwarted by unforeseen obstacles, the problem is to sur-
mount these difficulties. The simplest procedure consists in trying
out different known schemata and in adjusting them to the goal
pursued: in this consist the present behavior patterns. From the
structural point of view they therefore constitute a combination
of schemata among themselves, so that some are subordinated to
others in the capacity of "means"; hence two results: a greater
mobility of the schemata and a more accurate accommodation to
external conditions. If this stage is to be distinguished from the
preceding one with respect to the functioning of intelligence, it
is to be distinguished still more with regard to the structure of
objects, space and causality: it marks the beginnings of the
permanence of things, of "objective" spatial "groups" and of
spatial and objectified causality.
At the beginning of the second year a fifth stage makes
itself manifest, characterized by the first real experimentations;
hence the possibility of a "discovery of new means through active
152 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
experimentation." This is the impetus of the instrumental be-
havior patterns and the acme of empirical intelligence.
Finally this totality of the behavior patterns, the application
of which determines the beginning of the sixth stage, will be
crowned by the "invention of new means through mental com-
bination."
CHAPTER III
THE THIRD STAGE:
The "Secondary Circular Reactions" and
the Procedures Destined to Make
Interesting Sights Last
From the simple reflex to the most systematic intelligence,
the same method of operation seems to us to continue through
all the stages, thus establishing complete continuity between
increasingly complex structures. But this functional continuity in
no way excludes a transformation of the structures being on an
equal footing with an actual reversal of perspectives in the sub-
ject's consciousness. At the beginning of intellectual evolution, in
effect, the act is set in motion all at once and by an external
stimulus and the individual's initiative consisted merely in being
able to reproduce his action when confronted with stimuli
analogous to the normal stimulus, or by simple empty repetition.
At the end of the evolution, on the other hand, every action in-
volves an organization versatile in making dissociations and un-
limited regroupings, the subject thus being able to assign to
himself goals which are increasingly independent of instigation
by the immediate environment.
How does such a reversal work? Due to the progressive
complication of the schemata: by constantly renewing his acts
through reproductive and generalizing assimilation, the child
surpasses simple reflex use, discovers circular reaction and thus
forms his first habits. Such a process is obviously capable of un-
limited extension. After applying it to his own body, the subject
will utilize it sooner or later in order to adapt himself to the
unforeseen phenomena of the external world, whence the be-
153
154 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
havior patterns of exploration, experimentation, etc. Wherefore
the possibility, subsequently, of decomposing and recomposing
the same schemata: gradually as the schemata apply themselves
to more varied external situations the subject is, in effect, led to
dissociate their elements and to consider them as means or as
ends, while at the same time regrouping them among themselves
in all sorts of ways. It is this distinction of means and ends which
sets intention free and so reverses the act's direction. Instead of
being turned toward the past that is to say, toward repetition
the action is directed toward new combinations and actual in-
vention.
Now the stage which we are about to describe forms exactly
the transition between the behavior patterns of the first type and
those of the second. The "secondary circular reactions" prolong,
in effect, without adding anything to, the circular reactions under
examination hitherto; that is to say, they essentially tend toward
repetition. After reproducing the interesting results discovered
by chance on his own body, the child tries sooner or later to con-
serve also those which he obtains when his action bears on the
external environment. It is this very simple transition which
determines the appearance of the "secondary" reactions; ac-
cordingly it may be seen how they are related to the "primary"
reactions. But it is necessary immediately to add that, the more
the effort of reproduction bears upon results removed from those
of reflex activity, the clearer becomes the distinction between
means and ends. To the extent that it is a hereditary assembly
the reflex schema forms an indissociable totality. The repetition
belonging to "reflex use" would only know how to make the
machine go by activating it completely without distinction be-
tween the transitive terms and the final terms. In the case of the
first organic habits (thumb sucking, for example) the complexity
of the schema augments since an acquired element is inserted
among the reflex movements; repeating the interesting result
therefore will involve a coordination between terms not neces-
sarily united with each other. But, as their union, although an
acquired one, was in a way imposed by the conformation of the
body itself and sanctioned by a strengthening of reflex activity, it
is still easy for the child to rediscover through simple repetition
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 155
the result obtained without distinguishing the transitive terms
and the final term of the act. On the other hand, as soon as the
result to be reproduced is connected with the external environ-
ment that is to say, with independent objects (even if their
mutual relationships and their permanence are still unknown to
the child) the effort to rediscover a propitious gesture will lead
the subject, after the event, to distinguish in his action the transi-
tive terms or "means" and a final term or "end." It is from this
time on that it is possible really to speak of "intention" and of a
reversal in acquiring consciousness of the act. But this reversal
will only be definitive when the different terms will be sufficiently
dissociated so that they may recombine among themselves in
various ways; that is to say, when there will be a possibility of
applying known means to new ends or, in a word, when an
intercoordination of the schemata will exist (fourth stage). The
"secondary circular reaction" is not yet at this level; it tends
simply to reproduce every advantageous result obtained in rela-
tion to the external environment, without the child's yet dis-
sociating or regrouping the schemata thus obtained. The goal
is therefore not set ahead of time, but only when the act is re-
peated. Therein the present stage forms the exact transition
between preintelligent operations and truly intentional acts. The
behavior patterns which characterize it still owe a great deal to
repetition while being superior to it from the point of view of
complexity and they already possess intelligent coordination
while remaining inferior to it from the point of view of dissocia-
tion of means and ends.
This intermediary characteristic will be found again, as we
shall see in Volume II, in all the behavior patterns of the same
stage, whether it is a matter of the content of intelligence or of
real categories (object and space, causality and time) as well as of
its form (which we shall study).
With regard to the object, for example, the child at this
stage arrives at a behavior pattern exactly intermediary between
those of nonpermanence, belonging to the lower stages, and the
new behavior relating to objects which have disappeared. On the
one hand, in effect, the child knows henceforth how to grasp the
objects he sees, bring to sight those he touches, etc., and this
156 THE INTENTIONAL SENSIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
coordination between vision and prehension indicates notable
progress in the solidification of the external world: acting upon
things, he considered them unyielding and permanent to the
extent that they prolong his action or thwart it. On the other
hand, to the extent that objects leave the perceptual field and
consequently, the child's direct action, the child no longer reacts
and does not apply himself to active searching to find them again,
as he will do during the next stage. If there is permanence of the
object it is still relative to the action in progress and not a fact
in itself.
Concerning space, the actions brought to bear on things by
the child at the third stage result in forming a perception of
"groups"; that is to say, of schemata of displacements capable of
returning to their point of departure. In this sense, the behavior
patterns of this stage mark important progress in relation to the
preceding ones in fixing securely the intercoordination of the
various practical spaces (visual, tactile, buccal spaces, etc.). But
the "groups" thus formed remain "subjective" for, beyond the
immediate action, the child does not yet take into consideration
the spatial interrelations of objects. Causality, too, takes form to
the extent that the child acts upon the external environment:
henceforth it unites certain separate phenomena to the acts
which correspond to them. But, precisely because the schemata
belonging to this stage are not yet dissociated in their elements,
the child only gets a confused and global feeling of the causal
connection and does not know how to objectify or spatialize
causality.
The same is true a fortiori of the temporal series which will
link the different phases of the act but not yet the different events
produced in an environment independent of the self.
In short, during the first two stages that is to say, so long
as the child's activity consists in mere repetitions without inten-
tion the universe is not yet at all dissociated from the action
itself and the categories remain subjective. As soon as the
schemata become, on the other hand, capable of intentional
decompositions and recombinations that is to say, of really in-
telligent activity the consciousness of the relations thus impli-
cated by distinguishing means and ends will necessarily bring
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 157
with it the elaboration of a world independent of the self. From
this point of view of the contents of intelligence, the third stage,
therefore, also marks a turning point. Its particular reactions
remain midway between the solipsist universe of the beginning
and the objective universe belonging to intelligence. Without
being requisite to the description of the facts which follows, such
thoughts nevertheless clarify many aspects of them.
1. THE "SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS"
I. THE FACTS AND REPRODUCTIVE ASSIMILATION.
We can call the circular reactions of the second stage "primary."
Their character consists in simple organic movements centered
on themselves (with or without intercoordination) and not
destined to maintain a result produced in the external environ-
ment. So it is that the child grasps for the sake of grasping, suck-
ing, or looking, but not yet in order to swing to and fro, to rub,
or to reproduce sounds. Moreover the external objects upon
which the subject acts are one with his action which is simple,
the means being confused with the end. On the other hand, in
the circular reactions which we shall call "secondary" and which
characterize the present stage, the movements are centered on
a result produced in the external environment and the sole aim
of the action is to maintain this result; furthermore it is more
complex, the means beginning to be differentiated from the end,
at least after the event.
Of course, all the intermediaries are produced between the
primary circular reactions and the secondary reactions. It is by
convention that we choose, as criterion of the appearance of the
latter, the action exerted upon the external environment. Hence-
forth if they make their appearance, for the most p'art, after the
definitive acquisition of prehension, it is nevertheless possible to
find some examples of this phenomenon prior to that.
First here are some examples of circular reactions relating
to the movements the child gives to his bassinet and to the hang-
ing objects:
Observation 94. At 0;3 (5) Lucienne shakes her bassinet by moving her
legs violently (bending and unbending them, etc.), which makes the
cloth dolls swing from the hood. Lucienne looks at them, smiling, and
158 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
recommences at once. These movements are simply the concomitants of
joy. When she experiences great pleasure Lucienne externalizes it in
a total reaction including leg movements. As she often smiles at her
knick-knacks she caused them to swing. But does she keep this up
through consciously coordinated circular reaction or is it pleasure
constantly springing up again that explains her behavior?
That evening, when Lucienne is quiet, I gently swing her dolls.
The morning's reaction starts up again, but both interpretations re-
main possible.
The next day, at 0;3 (6) I present the dolls: Lucienne immediately
moves, shakes her legs, but this time without smiling. Her interest is
intense and sustained and there also seems to be an intentional circular
reaction.
At 0;3 (8) I again find Lucienne swinging her dolls. An hour later
I make them move slightly: Lucienne looks at them, smiles, stirs a
little, then resumes looking at her hands as she was doing shortly before.
A chance movement disturbs the dolls: Lucienne again looks at them
and this time shakes herself with regularity. She stares at the dolls,
barely smiles and moves her legs vigorously and thoroughly. At each
moment she is distracted by her hands which pass again into the visual
field: she examines them for a moment and then returns to the dolls.
This time there is definite circular reaction.
At 0;3 (13) Lucienne looks at her hand with more coordination
than usually (see Obs. 67). In her joy at seeing her hand come and go
between her face and the pillow, she shakes herself in front of this
hand as when faced by the dolls. Now this reaction of shaking reminds
her of the dolls which she looks at immediately after as though she
foresaw their movement. She also looks at the bassinet hood which also
moves. At certain times her glance oscillates between her hand, the
hood, and the dolls. Then her attention attaches itself to the dolls
which she then shakes with regularity.
At 0;3 (16) as soon as I suspend the dolls she immediately shakes
them, without smiling, with precise and rhythmical movements with
quite an interval between shakes, as though she were studying the
phenomenon. Success gradually causes her to smile. This time the circu-
lar reaction is indisputable. Same reaction at 0;3 (24). Same observa-
tions during the succeeding months and until 0;6 (10) and 0;7 (27) at
sight of a puppet and at 0;6 (13) with a celluloid bird, etc.
Observation 94 repeated. At 0;3 (9) Lucienne is in her bassinet with-
out the dolls. I shake the bassinet two or three times without her seeing
me. She looks very interested and serious and begins again, for a long
stretch of time, rough and definitely intentional shaking. That evening
I rediscover Lucienne in the act of shaking her hood spontaneously.
She laughs at this sight.
Here is involved, therefore, the schema described in the foregoing
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 159
observation, but applied to a new object. Same observation on the fol-
lowing days.
At 0;4 (4) in a new bassinet, she moves her loins violently in order
to shake the hood. At 0;4 (13) she moves her legs very rapidly while
looking at the festoons on the bassinet hood; as soon as she sees them
again, after a pause, she begins once more. Same reaction with regard
to the hood in general. At 0;4 (19) she recommences by examining each
part of the hood in detail. At 0; 4 (21) she does the same in her carriage
(and no longer in the bassinet): she studies the result of her shaking
most attentively. Same observations at 0;5 (5) etc., until 0;7 (20) and
later.
Observation 95. Lucienne, at 0;4 (27) is lying in her bassinet. I hang
a doll over her feet which immediately sets in motion the schema of
shakes (see the foregoing observations). But her feet reach the doll
right away and give it a violent movement which Lucienne surveys with
delight. Afterward she looks at her motionless foot for a second, then
recommences. There is no visual control of the foot, for the movements
are the same when Lucienne only looks at the doll or when I place the
doll over her head. On the other hand, the tactile control of the foot
is apparent: after the first shakes, Lucienne makes slow foot movements
as though to grasp and explore. For instance, when she tries to kick the
doll and misses her aim, she begins again very slowly until she succeeds
(without seeing her feet). In the same way I cover Lucienne's face or
distract her attention for a moment in another direction: she neverthe-
less continues to hit the doll and control its movements.
At 0;4 (28), as soon as Lucienne sees the doll she moves her feet.
When I move the doll toward her face she increases her movements
and thus resumes the behavior described in the preceding observations.
So also at 0;5 (0) she oscillates between the global reaction and specific
foot movements, but at 0;5 (1) she resumes the latter movements only
and even seems to regulate them (without seeing them) when I raise the
doll a little. A moment later she gropes until she has felt contact be-
tween her naked foot and the doll: she then increases her movements.
Same reaction at 0;5 (7) and the days following.
At 0;5 (18) I place the doll at different heights, sometimes to the
left, sometimes to the right: Lucienne first tries to reach it with her feet,
and then, when she has succeeded, shakes it. The schema is therefore
definitely acquired and begins to be differentiated through accommoda-
tion to various situations.
Observation 96.- At 0;5 (8) Jacqueline looks at a doll attached to a string
which is stretched from the hood to the handle of the bassinet. The
doll is at approximately the same level as the child's feet. Jacqueline
moves her feet and finally strikes the doll whose movement she im-
mediately notices. A circular reaction ensues comparable to that in the
160 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
foregoing observation but less coordinated in view of Jacqueline's re-
tarded development as she was born in winter and had less physical
exercise than Lucienne. The feet move, first without conscious co-
ordination, then certainly by circular reaction. The activity of the feet
grows increasingly regular whereas Jacqueline's eyes are fixed on the
doll. Moreover, when I remove the doll Jacqueline occupies^ herself
quite differently, and when I replace it, after a moment, she immedi-
ately recommences to move her legs. But, contrary to Lucienne,
Jacqueline does not understand the necessity for contact between feet
and doll. She limits herself to noting the connection between the move-
ment of the object and the total activity of her own body. This is why,
as soon as she sees the doll, she places herself in the situation of total
movement in which she has seen the doll swing. She moves her arms,
her torso and her legs in a global reaction without paying particular
attention to her feet. The counterproof is easy to furnish. I place the
doll above Jacqueline's face, outside the range of any possible contact:
Jacqueline recommences to wriggle her arms, torso, and feet, exactly as
before, while staring only at the doll (and not at her feet). Jacqueline
accordingly establishes a connection between her movements in general
and those of the object and not between her feet and the object. I do
not observe any tactile control either.
The objection might then be raised that Jacqueline establishes no
connection and limits herself to manifesting her joy at the doll's move-
ments without attributing them to her own activity. The child's
wriggling would thus be only an attitude accompanying pleasure and
not a circular reaction tending toward an objective result. But, without
having proofs in the particular case, we can conclude that there is an
intentional connection by analogy with the foregoing and following
observations in which the child's much more precocious reactions per-
mitted us to make quite a different interpretation.
Observation 7. Laurent, from the middle of the third month, revealed
global reactions of pleasure, while looking at the toys hanging from the
hood of his bassinet, or at the hood itself, etc. He babbles, arches him-
self, beats the air with his arms, moves his legs, etc. He thus moves the
bassinet and recommences more vigorously- But it is not yet possible
to speak of circular reaction: there is no connection felt between the
movements of his limbs and the spectacle seen, but only an attitude of
joy and of physical exertion. Again, at 0;2 (17) I observe that when his
movements induce those of the toys, he stops to contemplate them, far
from grasping that it is he who produces them; when the toys are
motionless, he resumes, and so on. On the other hand, at 0;2 (24) I
made the following experiment which set in motion a beginning of
secondary circular reaction. As Laurent was striking his chest and
shaking his hands which were bandaged and held by strings attached
to the handle of the bassinet (to prevent him from sucking), I had the
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 161
idea of using the thing and I attached the strings to the celluloid balls
hanging from the hood. Laurent naturally shook the balls by chance
and looked at them at once (the rattle made a noise inside them). As
the shaking was repeated more and more frequently Laurent arched
himself, waved his arms and legs in short, he revealed increasing
pleasure and through this maintained the interesting result. But nothing
yet authorizes us to speak of circular reaction; this could still be a simple
attitude of pleasure and not a conscious connection.
The next day, at 0;2 (25) I connect his right hand to the celluloid
balls but leave the string a little slack in order to necessitate ampler
movements of the right arm and thus limit the effect of chance. The
left hand is free. At first the arm movements are inadequate and the
rattle does not move. Then the movements become more extensive,
more regular, and the rattle moves periodically while the child's glance
is directed at this sight. There seems to be conscious coordination but
both arms move equally and it is not yet possible to be sure that this is
not a mere pleasure reaction. The next day, same reactions.
At 0;2 (27), on the other hand, conscious coordination seems
definite, for the following four reasons: (1) Laurent was surprised and
frightened by the first shake of the rattle which was unexpected. On
the other hand, since the second or third shake, he swung his right arm
(connected to the rattle) with regularity, whereas the left remained al-
most motionless. Now the right could easily move freely without mov-
ing the rattle, the string being loose enough to permit Laurent to suck
his thumb, for instance, without pulling at the balls. It therefore seems
that the swinging was intentional. (2) Laurent's eye blinks beforehand,
as soon as his hand moves and before the rattle moves, as though the
child knew he was going to shake it. (3) When Laurent temporarily
gives up the game and joins his hands for a moment, the right hand
(connected to the rattle) alone resumes the movement while the left
stays motionless. (4) The regular shakes that Laurent gives the rattle
reveal a certain skill; the movement is regular and the child must
stretch his arm backward sufficiently to make the rattle sound. The
reaction is the same on the following days: the right arm connected
to the rattle is always more active than the left. Moreover the interest
is growing and Laurent swings his right arm as soon as he has heard
the rattle (while I fasten the string) without waiting to shake it by
chance.
At 0;3 (0) I attached the string to the left arm after six days of
experiments with the right. The first shake is given by chance: fright,
curiosity, etc. Then, at once, there is coordinated circular reaction: this
time the right arm is outstretched and barely mobile while the left
swings. Now Laurent has plenty of room to do something else with
his left arm than shake the rattle, but he does not try at all to free his
hand from the string and his glance is directed at the result. This time
162 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
it is therefore possible to speak definitely of secondary circular reaction,
even though Laurent only learned a week later to codrdinate his
prehension with his vision. The fact is all the more certain because at
0;2 (29) I observed the following. Putting my middle finger in his left
hand I made his arm swing in a movement analogous to that required
to set the rattle in motion: when I stopped, Laurent continued this
movement by himself and directed my finger. Such a movement there-
fore lends itself to intentional coordination beginning at this age.
At 0;3 (10), after Laurent has learned to grasp what he sees, I
place the string, which is attached to the rattle,, in his right hand,
merely unrolling it a little so that he may grasp it better. For a moment
nothing happens but, at the first shake due to chance movements of his
hand, the reaction is immediate: Laurent starts when looking at the
rattle and then violently strikes his right hand alone, as if he felt the
resistance and the effect. The operation lasts fully a quarter of an hour
during which Laurent emits peals of laughter. The phenomenon is all
the more clear because, the string being slack, the child must stretch his
arm sufficiently and put the right amount of effort into it.
Observation ^.-Subsequently, at 0;B (12) Laurent is subjected to the
following experiment. I attach to the rattles (hanging from the bassinet
hood) my watch chain and let it hang vertically until it almost reaches
his face in order to see whether he will grasp it and thus shake the
celluloid balls. The result is completely negative: when I put the chain
in his hands and he shakes it by chance and hears the noise, he im-
mediately waves his hand (as in the foregoing observation) but lets the
chain go without understanding that he must grasp it in order to shake
the rattle. The following day, however, he discovers the procedure. At
first, when I place the chain in his hand (I only do so in order to start
the experiment as this act of prehension would in any case be produced,
sooner or later and fortuitously), Laurent waves his hand, then lets
the chain go, while looking at the balls. Then he strikes great blows at
random which shake the chain (and the rattle) without his grasping it.
Then, without looking, he takes hold of the sheet in front of him
(doubtless to suck it, as he does a part of the day) and at the same time
grasps the chain without recognizing it. The chain then moves the
rattle and Laurent again is interested in this sight. Little by little,
Laurent thus arrives at discriminating tactilely the chain itself: his
hand searches for it and as soon as the outer side of his fingers strikes
it, he lets go the sheet or coverlet in order to hold the chain alone.
Then he immediately swings his arm while looking at the rattle. He
therefore seems to have understood that it is the chain, and not his
body movements in general, that shakes the rattle. At a certain moment
he looks at his hand which holds the chain; then he looks at the chain
from top to bottom.
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 163
That evening, as soon as he hears the sound of the rattle and sees
the chain hanging, he tries to grasp it without looking either at his
hand or at the lower end of the chain (he only looks at the rattle). It
happened exactly as follows; while looking at the rattle, Laurent let
go with his right hand the sheet which he was sucking (he keeps it in
his mouth with his left hand) and searched for the chain, his right hand
open and the thumb opposed; as soon as he made contact with the
chain he grasped and shook it. After a few moments of this, he resumes
sucking his fingers. But when the chain touches him lightly he at once
removes his right hand from his mouth, grasps the chain, pulls it very
slowly while looking at the toys and apparently expecting a noise: after
a few seconds during which he still pulls the chain very gently, he
shakes much harder and succeeds. He then bursts into peals of
laughter, babbles and swings the chain as much as possible.
At 0;3 (14) Laurent looks at the rattle at the moment I hang up
the chain. He remains immobile for a second. Then he tries to grasp
the chain (without looking at it), brushes it with the back of his hand,
grasps it but continues to look at the rattle without moving his arms.
Then he shakes the chain gently while studying the effect. Afterward
he shakes it more and more vigorously. A smile and expression of de-
light. F
But, a moment later, Laurent lets go the chain, unawares. He
then keeps his left hand (which thitherto held the chain) tightly closed
whereas his right hand is open and immobile and he continues to shake
his left arm as though he held the chain, while looking at the rattle.
He continues thus for at least five minutes. This last observation shows
that, although Laurent knows how to coordinate his grasp movements
and the shaking of the rattle, he little understands the mechanism of
these connections.
The following days, Laurent grasps and shakes the chain as soon
as I hang it up and thus shakes the rattle, but he does not look at the
chain before grasping it: he limits himself to searching for it with his
hand (right or left, as the case may be) and to grasping it when he
touches it. At 0;3 (18) on the other hand, he looks first at the rattle,
then at the chain which he grasps after having seen it. The chain has
therefore acquired a visual and no longer only a tactile meaning:
Laurent knows henceforth that this visual obstacle is simultaneously a
thing to be grasped and a means of shaking the rattle. But this tactile-
visual coordination relating to the chain in no way implies that
Laurent has understood the particulars of the mechanism. There is
simply an efficient connection between the grasping of the chain, fol-
lowed by the adaptation of the arm, and the movements of the rattle.
The rest of the observation (see below, Obs. 112) will show us, in effect,
to what extent this schema remains phenomenalistic: the chain is not
conceived as the extension of the rattle, it is simply a thing to be
164 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
grasped and shaken when one desires to see and hear the rattle in
motion.
Observation 99, After having thus discovered the use of the chain
hanging from the toys, Laurent generalizes this behavior pattern by
applying it to everything that hangs from the hood of his bassinet,
For example, at 0;3 (23) he takes hold of the string attaching a
rubber doll to the hood and shakes it immediately. This gesture, simple
assimilation of the perceived string to the habitual schema, has of
course the effect of shaking the hood and the toys attached to it.
Laurent, who did not seem to expect this result, considers it with
growing interest and his vigor increases, this time apparently in order
ta make the spectacle last. After an interruption, I myself shake the
hood (from behind): Laurent then looks for the string, grasps and
shakes it. He then succeeds in grasping and shaking the doll itself.
The following evening: identical reactions. I observe that Laurent,
when he pulls the string, looks at it from top to bottom: he therefore is
expecting the result of his act. He also looks at it before grasping it,
but not in general: he does not need to do so, since he knows the visual
meaning of this object and how to guide his arm by using his kinesthetic
sense.
At 0;4 (3) he pulls at will the chain or the string in order to shake
the rattle and make it sound: the intention is clear. I now attach a
paper knife to the string. The same day I attach a new toy half as
high as the string (instead of the paper knife): Laurent begins by
shaking himself while looking at it, tnen waves his arms in the air and
finally takes hold of the rubber doll which he shakes while looking at
the toy. The coordination is clearly intentional.
At 0;4 (30) Laurent, seeing the doll hang from the rattles at the
hood at once looks at these and then shakes the doll only: it is clearly
in order to shake the rattles that he grasps the doll.
At 0;5 (25) the same reactions on seeing the string. Furthermore,
if I shake the hood (from behind, without being seen) this suffices to
make Laurent pull the string in order to make this movement continue.
Observation 100, At 0;7 (16) Jacqueline reveals a circular reaction
analogous to that in Observation 99, but with the delay explained by
the three-month retardation which separate her from Laurent from
the point of view of prehension of seen objects. She is presented with a
doll suspended from the string which connects the hood to the handle
of the bassinet. In grasping this doll she shakes the bassinet hood; she
immediately notices this effect and begins again at least twenty times in
succession, more and more violently and while watching the shaken
hood laughingly.
At 0;7 (23) Jacqueline looks at the hood of her bassinet which I
shake several times while I remain unseen. A$ soon as 1 have finished
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 165
she grasps and pulls a cord hanging where the doll had been. My
movement of course reminds her of the familiar schema and she pulls
the string at the usual place without having necessarily understood the
mechanism in detail. Same reaction, but entirely spontaneous, at 0;8
(8), 0;8 (9), 0;8 (IS), 0;8 (16), etc.
Observation 100 repeated.-Lucienne, similarly, at 0;6 (5) pulls a doll
hanging from the hood in order to make it move; she even looks at the
hood ahead of time while grasping the doll, thus revealing accurate
foresight. Same observation at 0;6 (10), 0;8 (10), etc.
Observation 101. Finally two other procedures were employed by
Jacqueline, Lucienne, and Laurent in order to shake their bassinet
or the objects hanging from the hood. At 0;7 (20) Lucienne looks at the
hood and the hanging ribbons; her arms are outstretched and slightly
straightened, at an equal distance from her face. She gently opens and
closes her hands, then more and more rapidly with involuntary arm
movements which thus gently shake the hood. Lucienne then repeats
these movements with increasing speed. Same reaction at 0;7 (27), etc.
I again observe the phenomenon at 0;10 (27): she moves her bassinet
while waving her hands.
At 0;8 (5), Lucienne shakes her head from side to side in order to
shake her bassinet, the hood, ribbons, fringes, etc.
Jacqueline, in the same way, shakes her bassinet, at 0;8 (19) while
swinging her arms. She even succeeds in differentiating her movements
in order to conserve certain effects obtained by chance. She waves her
right arm in a certain way (obliquely to her trunk) in order to make
the bassinet grate while shaking it all over. In case of failure she cor-
rects herself and gropes, places her arms perpendicularly to her trunk,
then places them more and more obliquely until she succeeds. At 0;11
(16) she shakes at a distance (at the end of her bassinet) a jack-in-the-box,
while swinging her arms.
At the end of the fourth month Laurent discovered these same two
circular reactions which shows that they are general. Thus at 0;3 (23) I
find him shaking his head spontaneously (a lateral movement) when
confronted by the hanging toys, before grasping the cord which enables
him to shake them. Actually this head movement sufficed to shake the
whole cradle slightly.
With regard to the arm movements, they are partly the result of
the reactions learned in Observations 97 and 98, but partly also of the
movements of the whole body which the child sometimes performs in
order to shake his bassinet. At 0;3 (25), for example, and at 0;4 (6) he
begins by shaking himself all over when confronted by hanging objects,
then he shakes his right arm in space. The reaction becomes general
during the following days.
166 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
Here are some observations concerning secondary circular
reactions relating to objects, usually not hanging, that the child
grasps in order to move, swing, shake, rub them against others,
cause them to make a noise, etc.
Observation 102. The simplest example is doubtless that of the objects
the child simply shakes as soon as he has grasped them. From this ele-
mentary schema, which is almost "primary," the following Is immedi-
ately derived: if the objects brandished produce a sound this is enough
to make the child attempt to reproduce it.
As early as Q;2 (26) Laurent, in whose right hand I have put the
handle of a rattle, shakes it by chance, hears the noise and laughs at the
result. But he does not see the rattle and looks for it in the direction of
the hood, at the place from which such a sound usually comes. When
he finally sees the rattle he does not understand that this is the object
which is making the noise nor that he himself makes it move. He
nevertheless continues his activity.
At 0;3 (6), during the fourth stage of prehension, he grasps the
rattle after having seen his hand in the same visual field, then brings
it to his mouth. But the sound thus produced arouses the schema of the
hanging rattle: Laurent shakes himself all over, especially moving his
arm, and finally only moves the latter, astonished and slightly worried
by the increasing noise.
From 0;S (15) that is to say, the present stage it suffices for Laurent
to grasp an object to make him shake it and that he observe the rattle
with the handle to cause him to grasp and shake it properly. But
subsequently the reaction becomes complicated through the fact that
Laurent tries rather to strike it with one hand while holding it with
the other, to rub it against the edges of the bassinet, etc. We shall re-
turn to this in connection with these latter schemata.
At 0;4 (15) Lucienne grasps the handle of a rattle in the shape of
a celluloid ball. The movements of the hand in grasping the rattle
result in shaking it and producing a sudden and violent noise. Lu-
cienne at once moves her whole body, and especially her feet, to make
the noise last. She has a demented expression of mingled fear and
pleasure, but she continues. Hitherto the reaction is comparable to that
of Observations 94-95 repeated, and the movement of the hands is not
yet maintained for itself, independently of the reaction of the whole
body. This reaction lasts a few days but then Lucienne, when she is in
possession of the rattle, limits herself to shaking it with the hand that
holds it. But a curious thing at 0;S (10) and again at 0;5 (12) she ac-
companies this movement of the hands with shakes of the feet analogous
to those she makes to shake a hanging object (see Obs. 95).
Jacqueline, too, at 0;9 (5) shakes while holding a celluloid rattle
in the form of a parrot which she has just been given. She smiles when
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 167
the noise is slight, is anxious when it is too loud and knows very well
how to gradate the phenomenon. She progressively increases the noise
until she is too frightened and then returns to the soft sounds. Further-
more, when the rattle is stuck at one of the ends, she shakes the parrot
by turning it in another direction and thus knows how to reestablish
the noise.
Observation 103. A second classic schema is that of "striking." At 0;4
(28) Lucienne tries to grasp the rattle in Observation 102 when it is
attached to the bassinet hood and hangs in front of her face. During an
unlucky attempt she strikes it violently: fright, then a vague smile. She
brings her hand back with a doubtless intentional suddenness: a new
blow. The phenomenon then becomes systematic: Lucienne hits the
rattle with regularity a very great number of times.
At 0;5 (0) the same happens to her hanging dolls which she strikes
violently.
At 0;6 (2) she looks at a wooden Pierrot which I have hung before
her and with which she has rarely played. Lucienne at first tries to
grasp it. But the movement she makes in holding out her hand shakes
the Pierrot before she has touched it: Lucienne at once shakes her legs
and feet in a regular and rapid rhythm in order to maintain the swing-
ing of the object (see Obs. 94). Then she grasps and pulls it. 'The
Pierrot again escapes her and swings; Lucienne reacts by shaking her
legs again. Finally she rediscovers the schema of 0;4 (28) and 0;5 (0): she
strikes the toy more and more vigorously, without trying to grasp it,
and bursts out laughing at the Pierrot's antics. Same reactions at 0;6
(3). At 0;6 (10) she begins by striking the puppet that I hang up, and
so makes it swing, then she maintains the movement by shakes of the
legs. At 0;6 (19) she strikes the hanging dolls in order to make them
swing.
Jacqueline in the same way strikes her toys, from 0;7 (15); at 0;7
(28) strikes her duck, at 0;8 (5) a doll, at 0;9 (5) her cushions, from
0;8 (5) to 0;9 (0) her parrot, etc.
With regard to Laurent the schema of striking arose in the follow-
ing way. At 0;4 (7) Laurent looks at a paper knife attached to the
strings of a hanging doll. He tries to grasp the doll or the paper knife,
but, at each attempt, the clumsiness of his movements results in causing
him to knock these objects. He then looks at them with interest and
recommences.
The next day, at 0;4 (8) same reaction. Laurent still does not strike
intentionally but, trying to grasp the paper knife, and noting that he
fails each time, he only outlines the gesture of grasping and thus limits
himself to knocking one of the extremities of the object.
At 0;4 (9), the next day, Laurent tries to grasp the doll hanging in
front of him; but he only succeeds in swinging it without holding it.
He then shakes it altogether, while waving his arms (see Obs. 101). But
168 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
he thus happens to strike the doll: he then begins again intentionally
a series of times. A quarter of an hour later, as soon as he is confronted
by the same doll in the same circumstances he begins to hit it again.
At 0;4 (15), faced by another hanging doll, Laurent tries to grasp it,
then he shakes himself in order to make it swing, happens to knock it
and then tries to strike it. The schema is therefore almost differentiated
from the preceding ones but it does not yet constitute a principal and
independent behavior pattern.
At 0;4 (18) Laurent strikes my hands without trying to grasp them,
but he has begun by simply waving his arms in the air and only "hit"
subsequently.
At 0;4 (19), at last, Laurent directly strikes a hanging doll. The
schema is therefore completely differentiated. At 0;4 (21) he strikes the
hanging toys in the same way and thus swings them as much as possible.
Same reaction on the following days.
From 0,*5 (2) Laurent strikes the objects with one hand while hold-
ing them with the other. Thus he holds a rubber doll in the left hand
and strikes it with his right. At 0;5 (6) he grasps a rattle with a handle
and strikes it immediately. At 0;5 (7) I hand him different objects
which are new to him (a wooden penguin, etc.): he hardly looks at them
but strikes them systematically.
It may thus be seen how the schema of striking hanging objects
became differentiated little by little from simpler schemata and gave
rise to the schema of hitting objects held in the hands. It is noteworthy,
however, that though the 4- to 7-month-old child thus learns to swing
hanging objects by hitting them as hard as possible, he does not attempt
simply to start their swinging to observe it, but often achieves this by
chance. It is only at about 0;8 (10) that I observed the latter behavior
pattern in Lucienne and Jacqueline and about 0;8 (30) in Laurent,
But it definitely differs from, the preceding one both from the point of
view of causality and that of the intellectual mechanism. The child who
strikes in order to swing is, in effect, active himself, whereas he who
limits himself to starting the swinging transfers this activity to the ob-
ject as such. Therefore that is no longer a simple secondary circular
reaction but an exploration and almost a sort of experimentation. For
this reason we shall not speak of this behavior here but shall study it in
connection with the next stage.
Observation 104, A final noteworthy example is the behavior pattern
consisting in rubbing objects against hard surfaces such as the wicker
of the bassinet. Lucienne, from 0;5 (12), and Jacqueline a little later,
about 0;7 (20) used the toys they held in their hands to rub the surfaces
of the bassinet. Laurent discovered this at 0;4 (6) in circumstances which
it is worthwhile to analyze.
At 0;3 (29) Laurent grasps a paper knife which he sees for the first
time; he looks at it a moment and then swings it while holding it in
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 169
his right hand. During these movements the object happens to rub
against the wicker of the bassinet: Laurent then waves his arm vigorously
and obviously tries to reproduce the sound he has heard, but without
understanding the necessity of contact between the paper knife and
the wicker and, consequently, without achieving this contact otherwise
than by chance.
At 0;4 (3) same reactions, but Laurent lookc at the object at the
time when it happens to rub against the wicker of the bassinet. The
same still occurs at 0;4 (5) but there is slight progress toward systemati-
zation.
Finally, at 0;4 (6) the movement becomes intentional: as soon as
the child has the object in his hand he rubs it with regularity against the
wicker of the bassinet. He does the same, subsequently, with his dolls
and rattles (see Obs. 102), etc.
These few examples of secondary circular reactions thus con-
stitute the first behavior patterns involving an action brought to
bear upon things and no longer a utilization, in some way or-
ganic, of reality. Such a question again raises the whole prob-
lem of mental assimilation.
When the nursling takes the breast for the first time and
then immediately begins to suck and swallow or, even earlier,
when he impulsively moves his lips and then continues empty
sucking, one might suppose that this reproductive assimilation
as well as the recognitions and generalizations which prolong it
are themselves dependent for their conditioning upon an earlier
need: the organic need to take nourishment and to suck. So also,
when the child learns to look, listen, or grasp, it could be as-
serted that this functional activity is only assimilatory because it
constitutes first of all a satisfaction of physiological needs. If such
were the case, it would not be possible to understand how the
child's activity can become centered beginning at 4 to 6 months
on results such as those of the secondary circular reactions which
do not correspond, in their externality, to any internal, definite
and particular need.
But, as we have seen (Chapter I, 3) the retention in con-
sciousness of a physiological need is not a simple fact nor an im-
mediate condition, and it is fitting to distinguish two distinct se-
ries in the humblest act of repetition, by which reflex use or ac-
quired association begin: the organic series and the psychic se-
170 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
ries. From the physiological point of view it is certain that need
explains repetition: it is because sucking corresponds to a need
that the nursling does not stop sucking, and it is because of the
connection established between thumb sucking and satisfying
this need that the I- to 2-month-oId child puts his thumb back
into his mouth as soon as he is capable of this coordination. But
it is noteworthy, from this strictly physiological point of view,
that all needs depend, either immediately or remotely, upon a
fundamental need which is that of the organism's development;
that is to say precisely, upon assimilation: it is due to the sub-
ordination of the organs to this chief tendency which defines
life itself that the functioning of each one gives rise to a par-
ticular need. Now, from the psychological point of view, it pro-
ceeds in exactly the same way. The need sets in motion the act
and its functioning, but this functioning itself engenders a greater
need which from the very first goes beyond the pure satisfaction
of the initial need. It is therefore fruitless to ask if it is need that
explains repetition or the reverse: together they form an insepa-
rable unity. Hence the primary fact is neither the need anterior
to the act nor repetition, the source of satisfaction, but it is the
total relation of the need to the satisfaction. From the point of
view of behavior, this relation is none other than the operation
by which an already organized mechanism becomes established
by functioning and functions by utilizing a condition external
to itself: it is therefore functional assimilation. From the point
of view of consciousness, this relation is also of an operative
nature, and this is why one cannot seek the fundamental truth
of psychology either in a state of simple consciousness or in an
isolated tendency. Need and satisfaction are, in effect, vicarious,
and oscillate between the purely organic and the functional;
moreover, they are experienced relatively to one another. Conse-
quently they are both connected to a fundamental operation
of which they are only the influence of variable and approxi-
mative consciousness by which the behavior pattern puts its
own functioning into relationship with the conditions of the en-
vironment. The relation of need and satisfaction thus reveals a
relation anterior to assimilation, according to which the subject
only apprehends the object relatively to his own activity. Conse-
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 171
quently, just as all physiological needs depend on a main ten-
dency that of the organism's development through assimilation
to the environment so also every elementary psychic function,
however subordinated it may seem to be to the satisfaction of a
precise physiological need, involves an activity which will gradu-
ally integrate the whole of the behavior patterns: the assimila-
tion of the object to the subject in general.
When these principles are remembered it is easy to under-
stand how needs which were at first chiefly organic can be subor-
dinated little by little to functional needs and how the latter
can give rise to operations concerning the interrelations of things
and no longer the relations of things to the organs of the body.
For example, how does it happen that the child, instead of merely
grasping the doll hanging from the hood of his bassinet, makes
use of it in order to shake the hood (Obs. 100)? Until then, in
effect, the doll was an object to be looked at, grasped, sucked,
heard, etc., but not at all a thing to produce extrinsic results such
as the shaking of the hood. The transition from the first state to
the second must therefore be explained. With regard to the move-
ments of the hood, either they are perceived for the first time,
and then it must be understood why from the very first they give
rise to an attempt at repetition, or else they have already been
a thing to look at, to hear, etc., and it must be understood how
they are transformed into a result to be maintained by new
means.
The question is simplified as soon as one sees the essential
fact that, among the unknown phenomena observed by the child
only those which are experienced as dependent on the activity
itself give rise to a secondary circular reaction. But let us note
that this is not as natural as it might seern. One might very well
think that the child, confronted by any new spectacle at all, even
one independent of him from the observer's point of view, tries
from the very first to reproduce it or make it continue. This is
exactly what is subsequently revealed when, accustomed to re-
peat everything through circular reaction, the child generalizes
this behavior pattern and tries to discover "procedures to make
interesting sights last" (see Obs. 112-118). But observation shows
that that is derived behavior and that, before practicing the sec-
172 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
ondary circular reaction, the child, in order to assimilate new
sights, limits himself to utilizing the primary reactions. For in-
stance, when he sees the hanging toys move without yet knowing
that it is he who sets them going, or when he sees the rattle with
a handle without yet realizing that he is the cause of the effect
produced, Laurent is already interested in these phenomena;
that is to say, he tries to assimilate them but he tries to conserve
them only by looking at or listening to them without yet at-
tempting to reproduce them by means of hand or arm move-
ments. This, however, does not mean that these phenomena are
conceived by him as "objective" and independent of his activity
in general. It is very possible, on the contrary, that when looking
at ar* object or turning his head to listen to it, etc., the subject
may have the impression of participating in the repetition or
continuation of the sensorial image. But, to be precise, such a
relationship must be experienced in order that the attempt at
repetition which constitutes the secondary circular reaction may
begin.
Hence it cannot be said that the present behavior pattern
consists in repeating everything which happens to appear in the
child's visual field. The secondary circular reaction only begins
when a chance effect of the action itself is understood to be the
result of this activity. Thereafter it is easy to grasp the continuity
which exists between the primary and secondary reactions. Just
as, in the first, the objective is aliment for sucking, vision or pre-
hension, so also, in the second, it becomes aliment for any move-
ment produced by differentiation of prehension and the move-
ments of the forearm. True, the difference is great between the
somewhat centripetal interest of sucking, or even of sight, and
the centrifugal interest of the present level, an interest directed
at the external result of the acts. But this contrast is modified if
it is recalled that a sensorial image is the more objectified and
externalized because it coordinates within itself more schemata
and because all the intermediaries between the primary and sec-
ondary reactions therefore exist. A visual objective, for example,
is much nearer the actual "object" if it is simultaneously a thing
to see, to hear and to touch than if it is only an image to con-
template. Consequently the movement of the hood or the sound
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 173
of a stick against the wicker of the bassinet will give rise to an
externalization all the greater because they are simultaneously
to be seen, heard, and reproduced by means of hand movements.
Through a paradox analogous to that of the development of the
sciences, it happens that reality is objectified in proportion as it
is elaborated by the thinking and working of the subject's sche-
mata, whereas the phenomenalism of immediate perception is
only subjectivism. Furthermore, while incorporating in his ac-
tivity results so remote from himself, the child introduces into
his proceedings a series of intermediaries. For instance, when he
shakes the hood of his bassinet by grasping a hanging doll he is
obliged, even without any understanding of the relations which
exist between the two states, to see in the hood's movement the
prolongation of the act of grasping the doll. The assimilation of
the movements of the hood to the schema of prehension thus pre-
supposes putting these movements into relationship with those
of the doll. Such a process explains why every reproductive as-
similation of a remote spectacle brings with it an active elabora-
tion of relationships. The action ceases to be simple in order to
introduce a beginning of differentiation between means and ends,
and the assimilation of things to the self becomes construction
of relationships between things.
The assimilation characteristic of secondary circular reac-
tion is, in short, only the development of assimilation at work
in the primary reactions. Just as everything, in the child's primi-
tive universe, is for sucking, looking, listening, touching, and
grasping, everything gradually becomes something to be shaken,
swung, rubbed, etc., according to differentiations of the manual
and visual schemata. But before discerning the mechanism ac-
cording to which these progressive accommodations operate, there
remains to be explained how a remote spectacle can thus be con-
ceived as produced by the action itself (which is, as we have just
noted, the condition for the advent of the secondary reaction).
This question can be answered in one word: this discovery is
made through reciprocal assimilation of the present schemata.
We recall, in this connection, how coordination such as that of
vision or hearing is established: by seeking to see that which he
hears and to hear that which he sees, the child perceives little
174 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
by little that a same given object is simultaneously the source of
sounds and visual image. It is in an analogous way that the co-
ordination of vision and prehension subsequently is brought
about. After having looked at his hands and at the objects
grasped, the child tries to move the visual image which he also
sees; in that way he discovers that one may grasp what one sees
as well as look at what one grasps. Now in the case of the begin-
nings of secondary circular reaction a phenomenon of the same
kind ensues. For instance when Laurent unwittingly starts a
movement of the toys by pulling a chain or rubs a paper knife
against the wicker of his bassinet he is looking at, listening to,
etc., the effect thus produced without trying to conserve it by
other means. But, precisely because he is in the act of shaking
the chain or the paper knife while he looks at or listens to the
result of these movements, the two kinds of schemata sooner or
later end by being reciprocally assimilated. The child then ap-
plies himself to moving with his hand the image that he looks
at, just as formerly he was led intentionally to move the visual
image of his own limbs. This does not yet mean that he tries to
reproduce the objective phenomenon as such (which will consti-
tute the secondary circular reaction), but simply that his visual
and manual schemata, being simultaneously active, tend to as-
similate each other according to a general law. But as soon as this
reciprocal assimilation has been formed the child understands
that the external result which he has observed (the movements
of the toys or the sound of the paper knife against the wicker)
depends upon his manual as well as his visual or auditory activ-
ity, and this understanding thereafter gives rise to an immediate
circular reaction; that is to say, to an act of reproductive assimi-
lation. From the point of view of assimilation itself, secondary
circular reaction thus prolongs the primary reaction, and the
child's interest only becomes externalized on the interrelations
of things as a function of the increasing coordination of the pres-
ent schemata (the primary schemata).
2. THE SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS II.
ACCOMMODATION AND ORGANIZATION OF THE
SCHEMATA. Until the present behavior patterns that is, dur-
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 175
ing the entire stage of the pure primary reactions accommoda-
tion remained relatively subordinated to assimilation. Sucking,
looking, grasping, consisted in incorporating observed objects
into corresponding schemata of assimilation, free to accommo-
date these schemata to a variety of things. So it is that the move-
ments and positions of hands, eyes, and mouth vary as a function
of the objectives, in a continuous accommodation concomitant
to assimilation, although of opposite direction. At the other ex-
treme of sensorimotor behavior patterns that is to say, in the
tertiary circular reactions, we shall see on the contrary, that
accommodation precedes assimilation, in a sense. Confronted by
new objects the child intentionally seeks to find out in what way
they are new and so experiments upon them before assimilating
them to a schema constructed on their effect. Hence accommoda-
tion evolves from the simple differentiation of schemata, peculiar
to the primary reactions, to the search for the new, peculiar to
the tertiary reactions. What of the secondary circular reaction?
In its point of departure the latter reveals no accommoda-
tion other than that of the primary reactions: a simple differen-
tiation of schemata as function of the object. So it is that Laurent
discovers the possibility of hitting a hanging doll, simply while
trying to grasp it (Obs. 103), and that Lucienne and Laurent
learn to rub a toy against the side of the bassinet simply while
swinging it (Obs. 104, etc.). But, contrary to that which occurs
in the primary reactions, this initial differentiation of the schema
does not, without adding something, lead to its application to
new objects, precisely since Laurent does not succeed in grasping
the doll nor in moving the rattle as he intends to, but discovers
an unforeseen phenomenon due to this very defeat: the doll
swings when one strikes it and the rattle rubs the wood of the
bassinet. It is then that the specific accommodation of the sec-
ondary circular reaction is produced: the child tries to rediscover
the movements which lead to the result observed. As we have
previously demonstrated, the child begins, in effect, by trying to
assimilate this new result while limiting himself to looking at it,
etc. (primary schemata). Then, as soon as he has discovered,
through reciprocal assimilation of the schemata, that this result
depends on his manual activity, he tries to reproduce it by as-
176 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
similation to this activity. But, as it is just in differentiating the
latter that the subject has by chance obtained the new result,
the question is to establish this differentiation intentionally and
it is in this that the accommodation peculiar to the secondary
reactions consists: rediscovering the movements which have given
rise to the result observed. This accommodation, without pre-
ceding assimilation as is the case in the tertiary reaction, or sim-
ply doubling it, as is the case in the primary reaction, consists,
then, in completing it at the moment when the new schema is
formed. Therefore accommodation is no longer an almost auto-
matic differentiation of the schemata, nor yet an intentional
search for novelty as such, but it is a voluntary and systematic
fixation of the differentiations imposed by new realities which
arise by chance. A concrete example will enable us to under-
stand:
Observation 1 05. Laurent, from 0;4 (19) as has been seen (Obs. 10S)
knows how to strike hanging objects intentionally with his hand. At
0;4 (22) he holds a stick; he does not know what to do with it and
slowly passes it from hand to hand. The stick then happens to strike a
toy hanging from the bassinet hood. Laurent, immediately interested
by this unexpected result, keeps the stick raised in the same position,
then brings it noticeably nearer to the toy. He strikes it a second time.
Then he draws the stick back but moving it as little as possible as
though trying to conserve the favorable position, then he brings it
nearer to the toy, and so on, more and more rapidly.
The dual character of this accommodation may be seen. On the
one hand, the new phenomenon makes its appearance by simple fortui-
tous insertion in an already formed schema and hence differentiates
it. But, on the other hand, the child, intentionally and systematically,
applies himself to rediscovering the conditions which led him to this
unexpected result.
It goes without saying that the use of the stick described in this
example was only episodical: it has nothing to do with the "behavior
pattern of the stick" which we shall describe in connection with the
fifth stage.
This analysis of the accommodation peculiar to the second-
ary circular reactions makes it possible to understand why the
child's activity, which hitherto seemed to us essentially conserva-
tive, henceforth appears to be indefinitely diversified.
That activity should be conservative at the reflex stage is
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 177
only natural. The schemata belonging to the reflexes having al-
ready been hereditarily elaborated, reflex behavior simply con-
sists in assimilating the datum to these schemata and in accom-
modating them to reality by simple use without transforming
them. With regard to the primary circular reactions and the hab-
its which derive from them the same is true fundamentally, de-
spite the obvious acquisitions characteristic of these behavior
patterns. When the child learns to grasp, to look, to listen, to
suck for the sake of sucking (and no longer only in order to eat),
he assimilates to his reflex schemata an increasing number of
realities and, if acquired accommodation to these realities exists,
they remain nevertheless simple aliments for the conservation
of the schemata. With regard to acquisitions through the coor-
dination of schemata, the question is, as we have seen, only one
of reciprocal assimilation, that is to say, again of conservation.
This assimilation, consequently, does not exclude enrichment
and cannot be reduced to identification pure and simple this
goes without saying but it nevertheless remains essentially con-
servative.
How, then, can it be explained that at a given moment the
circle of conservation seems to break and the reproduction of
new results prolongs the primary reaction by thus creating mul-
tiple relations between the things themselves? Is it reality alone
which makes the framework of assimilation crack by confining
the child's activity to a progressive diversification, or can this
diversification be considered as a function of assimilation and as
always depending on conservation?
There is no doubt that both are present. On the one hand,
reality forces the child to make indefinite accommodations. As
soon as the child knows how to grasp that which he sees, the ob-
jects he manipulates put him brutally in the presence of the
most varied experiences. The rattles which swing while produc-
ing disturbing sounds, the bassinet which shakes while producing
the movement of the hanging toys, the boxes which offer oppo-
sition by reason of their weight and shapes, the coverlets or
strings held back or attached in an unpredictable way, every-
thing is an opportunity for new experiments, and the content
178 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
of these experiments cannot give rise to assimilation without a
continuous accommodation which opposes it in a way.
But, on the other hand, this accommodation is never pure,
and secondary circular reaction would not be explainable if the
child's behavior did not remain basically assimilatory and con-
servative. As we have just seen, each of the secondary circular
reactions which appear in the child is derived by differentiation
from a primary circular reaction or a secondary reaction grafted
upon a primary reaction. Everything thus goes back to move-
ments of legs or feet, arms or hands, and it is these "circular"
movements of prehension which become differentiated in move-
ments directed at pulling, shaking, swinging, displacing, rubbing,
etc. When Lucienne, at 3 to 4 months, shakes her bassinet and
her dolls (Obs. 94-95) she limits herself to moving feet and legs,
in conformity to a primary schema. When Laurent at 0;2 (24)-
0;3 (0) shakes a rattle attached to his arm (Observation 97) be-
fore knowing how to grasp, he is only prolonging the spontane-
ous circular movements of that arm. And when at 0;3 (13) he
learns to shake the rattle by means of a chain, this is simply
because he uses his nascent schema of prehension (Obs. 98). The
same applies to all the secondary circular reactions: each is the
prolongation of an already existing schema. With regard to "pro-
cedures to make interesting sights last" of which we shall speak
later on, they in turn prolong these circular reactions. The only
difference between the secondary reactions and the primary re-
actions is, therefore, that henceforth the interest is centered on
the external result and no longer only on the activity as such.
But that is not contradictory to the conservative character of this
function: in effect, the external result, arising suddenly at the
very center of the child's activity, interests him at one and the
same time inasmuch as it is related to his essential schemata and
inasmuch as it is unforeseen and baffling. If it were only new it
would merely deserve momentary attention; but on the contrary,
it appears to the subject as being connected with his most famil-
iar acts or with his schemata in actual use. Moreover this un-
foreseen result leads astray all that of which these schemata ha-
bitually admit. The attention is, therefore, perforce centered on
the exterior and no longer only on the function. In short, the
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 179
secondary circular reactions are essentially conservative and as-
similatory since they prolong without adding anything to the
primary reactions and, if the child's interest Is displaced and
externalized on the material result of the acts, it is simply be-
cause this result is function of an increasingly rich assimilatory
activity.
What do these acquisitions mean now from the point of
view of organization?
Organization, we recall, is the internal aspect of the func-
tioning of the schemata to which assimilation tends to reduce the
external environment. It is therefore, one might say, an internal
adaptation of which accommodation and assimilation combined
form the external expression. Actually each schema, or each en-
semble of schemata, consists in a "totality" independently of
which no assimilation would be possible and which in turn rests
upon a number of interdependent elements (see Introduction,
2). Furthermore, to the extent that these totalities are not en-
tirely realized but are in process of elaboration, they involve a
differentiation between "means" and "ends," between "values"
subordinated to the formation of the whole, this whole not com-
plete for an "ideal* totality. This fundamental mechanism of
organization accompanies internally the external manifestations
of adaptation. How then does it function, during this stage, and
in what form is it made manifest in the child's behavior?
It is not difficult to see, in effect, that the secondary sche-
mata, once they have been elaborated through complementary
assimilation and accommodation, consist in organized schemata:
in the capacity of a practical concept in which the schema thus
constitutes a "totality," whereas the "relations" on which it
rests determine the reciprocal relationships which constitute this
totality.
With regard to the interorganization of the schemata that
is to say, the coordination of the secondary schemata it only
manifests itself during the following stage. We shall therefore
speak of it again in connection with that fourth stage. But it is
apparent that the different schemata of this stage, without inter-
coordination in intentional series conscious of their unity, have
already reached balance among themselves and constitute a sys-
180 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
tern of unconsciously Interdependent relationships. Without this
total subjacent organization it would be impossible to explain
how any object which is presented to a child is immediately class-
ified, that is, assimilated through a simultaneously reproductive
and recognitory act of assimilation suitable to this object and
no other.
The totalities in process of being constituted or reconsti-
tuted remain to be examined. An original totality is constituted,
in effect, every time that a new schema is elaborated by contact
with things, and this contact is reconstituted every time the sub-
ject again finds himself confronted by suitable objects and as-
similates them to the schema in question. The organization of
these totalities marks progress over that of the "primary" sche-
mata in this sense that, for the first time, and to the extent that
the "relations" of which we shall presently speak are formed,
the "means" begin to be distinguished from the "ends": conse-
quently the movements made and the objects used henceforth
assume different "values" subordinated to an "ideal" totality,
that is to say, not yet realized. For instance when, in Observation
98, Laurent discovers that the hanging chain can be used to shake
the rattle to which it is attached, it is certain that the action of
pulling the chain is conceived as a "means" toward the "end" of
reproducing the interesting result, although the means have been
supplied at the same time as the end in the initial action repro-
duced by circular reaction. It is after the event, and when the
subject seeks the result for himself, that he distinguishes between
means and ends. Now, such a distinction is certainly new to the
child's consciousness. It is true that one could in the same way
analyze any primary schema such as that of thumb sucking. The
action of introducing the thumb into the mouth could be con-
ceived as a means at the service of the end which consists in suck-
ing. But it is clear that such a description does not correspond
to anything from the point of view of the subject himself, since
the thumb is not known independently of the act which con-
sists in sucking it; on the contrary, the chain serving to shake
the rattle has been perceived and manipulated before being con-
ceived as a "means" and does not cease to be regarded as distinct
from the rattle. With regard to the coordinations among primary
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 181
schemata (grasping In order to suck, etc.) they make manifest, It
is true, the present distinction between means and ends, pre-
cisely since "secondary circular reaction" is only made possible
by this kind of coordination (that of prehension and vision and,
in the elementary cases, that of foot movements with vision).
But, as we have seen, they consist in simple reciprocal assimila-
tions, resulting in the formation of new global entities in which,
consequently, the difference of which we speak is immediately
obliterated.
But, if the distinction between means and ends is only
established in the course of the elaboration of secondary sche-
mata, we must not allow ourselves to believe that it is thus
achieved and to identify it with that which it will become during
the next stage that is to say, at the time of the coordination of
the same schemata. In effect, we have just seen that, during the
present stage, the secondary schemata are not yet intercoordi-
nated; each one constitutes a more or less self-enclosed totality
instead of arranging itself in series analogous to that which in
reflective thought is reason or the implication of concepts. From
the fourth stage, on the contrary, these schemata will become in-
tercoordinated when it will be a question of adapting themselves
to unforeseen circumstances, thus giving rise to behavior pat-
terns which we shall call the "application of known schemata to
new situations." It is only in this connection that the "means"
will be definitely dissociated from the "ends": the same schema
being capable of serving as "means" to different ends will there-
fore assume an instrumental value which is much clearer than
that which can be offered, during the present stage, by a move-
ment (such as pulling the chain) always connected to the same
end (shaking the rattle) and whose function of "means" has been
discovered fortuitously.
In conclusion, it can be said that the secondary circular re-
actions make intelligent adaptation manifest, without, however,
constituting true acts of intelligence. If compared to primary
circular reactions they reveal intelligence because they elaborate
an ensemble of almost intentional relations between things and
the subject's activity. In effect these relations with the environ-
ment being at the outset complex, they give rise, as we have just
182 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
seen, to a beginning of differentiation between means and ends
and thereby to a rudiment of intention. When the child pulls
the chain in order to shake a rattle, he carries out a much higher
behavior pattern than simply grasping an object which he sees.
But, furthermore, the secondary circular reactions do not yet
constitute complete acts of intelligence for two reasons. The first
is that the relations utilized by the child (shaking himself in
order to move the bassinet, pulling a chain in order to shake
a rattle, etc.) were discovered fortuitously and not for the pur-
pose of resolving a problem or satisfying a need. The need
arises from the discovery and not the discovery from the need.
On the contrary, in the true act of intelligence there is pursuit
of an end and only subsequently discovery of means. The second
reason, closely connected with the first, is that the only need in-
volved, in the secondary circular reactions, is a need of repeti-
tion. For the child, the question is simply to conserve and repro-
duce the beneficial result discovered by chance. It is need that
sets the act in motion at each new turn of the circle of circular
reaction and it can surely be said, in this sense, that need is an-
terior to the act; in any case it is this fact which makes it pos-
sible to speak of intention and of intelligence. But, this need
being only a desire for repetition, the means put to work in or-
der to reproduce the desired result are already found. They are
entirely contained in the fortuitous action which is at the point
of departure of the ensemble of the reaction and which it is sim-
ply a question of repeating. The role of intelligence involved in
such behavior patterns therefore consists simply in rediscovering
the series of movements which have given rise to the beneficial
result and the intention of these behavior patterns merely con-
sists in trying to reproduce this result. Therein, let us repeat, is
an outline of an intelligent act, but not a complete act. In ef-
fect, in a true act of intelligence, the need which serves as motive
power not only consists in repeating, but in adapting, that is
to say, in assimilating a new situation to old schemata and in
accommodating these schemata to new circumstances. It is to
this that secondary circular reaction will lead by extension; but,
in this respect, it is not yet there.
All the more reason why it is impossible to attribute to such
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 183
behavior patterns the capacity to engender or to utilize repre-
sentations. There could be no question, at first, of a representa-
tion of the means employed: the child does not know in advance
that he will perform a certain movement, since he simply tries
to rediscover the motor combination which succeeded and since
he subsequently limits himself to repeating his acts. With regard
to the goal, does the child, for example, keep the memory of the
shaken rattle in the form of visual or auditory images and does
he try to reproduce something which conforms to this represen-
tation? There is no need for so complicated a mechanism to ac-
count for such behavior patterns. It is enough that the sight of
the rattle created a sufficiently powerful interest for this interest
to orient the activity in the direction already followed an in-
stant before. In other words, when the rattle stops moving, there
ensues a vacuum which the child immediately tries to fill and
he does so by utilizing the movements which have just been
performed. When these movements lead to a result which resem-
bles the earlier spectacle, there is certainly recognition, but rec-
ognition does not presuppose the existence of representation.
Recognition simply requires that the new result embrace en-
tirely the structure of the assimilatory schema outlined at the be-
ginning of circular reaction. Of course, if this mechanism re-
peats itself indefinitely, there can be a beginning of representa-
tion but, without being able to determine precisely when this
appears, it can be said that it is not pristine and that it is useless
to the formation of the present behavior patterns.
On the other hand, the secondary schemata constitute the
first outline of what will become "classes" or concepts in reflecr
tive intelligence: perceiving an object as being something "to
shake/' "to rub," etc. This is, in effect, the functional equiva-
lent of the operation of classification peculiar to conceptual
thought. We shall return to this, in connection with the fourth
stage, when the secondary schemata will have become more "mo-
bile," but the observation arises now.
Furthermore, just as the logic of classes is correlative to that
of "relations," so also the secondary schemata involve putting
things into conscious interrelationships. Herein resides, as we
have seen, their chief novelty in relation to the primary sche-
184 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
mata. What are these relationships? It is apparent, since they are
established within the same schema and not due to coordinations
between separate secondary schemata, that they remain essentially
practical and, consequently, global and phenomenalistic, without
yet involving the elaboration of really "objective" substantial,
spatial, or causal structures. When, in the example already com-
mented upon, the child pulls a chain in order to shake a rattle,
the relation he establishes between the chain and the rattle is
not yet a spatial, causal and temporal relation between two
"objects," it is a simple practical relationship between the act
of pulling and the result observed. It is during the fourth stage,
with the coordination of the secondary schemata and the impli-
cations which result, that these relations begin to become ob-
jectified, with the sole disadvantage of not being really objecti-
fied until the fifth stage.
But, however empirical these relations remain, they never-
theless constitute, from the formal point of view, the beginning
of a system separate from that of "classes'* which will later
become increasingly differentiated. Furthermore, this elemen-
tary elaboration of relations, like the "logic of relations" of re-
flective intelligence, leads, at the outset, to the discovery of quan-
titative relations as distinguished from simple qualitative com-
parisons inherent in the classification as such.
We know, in effect, that if the concepts or "classes" only
structure reality as a function of the qualitative resemblances or
differences of the beings so classed, the "relations," on the other
hand, involve quantity and lead to the elaboration of mathemati-
cal series. Even the relations with qualitative content, such as
"darker" or "brother of" constitute, in effect, a "seriation" of a
kind other than the relations of appurtenance or of inherence
and hence presuppose either the concepts of "more* 1 and "less"
which are frankly quantitative, or a discrimination and ordering
of individuals, which relationships envelop number.
Now this is precisely what happens on the sensorimotor
plane as soon as the first relations are elaborated. For instance,
the relations established by the child between the act of pulling
the chain and the movements of the rattle (Obs. 98) at the out-
set leads the subject to the discovery of a quantitative connection
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 185
Immanent in this relation: the more the chain is shaken the more
violently the rattles move.
Observation 106 In the evening of 0;3 (13) Laurent by chance strikes
the chain while sucking his fingers (Obs. 98): he grasps it and slowly
displaces it while looking at the rattles. He then begins to swing it very
gently which produces a slight movement of the hanging rattles and an
as yet faint sound inside them. Laurent then definitely increases by
degrees his own movements: he shakes the chain more and more
vigorously and laughs uproariously at the result obtained. On seeing
the child's expression it is impossible not to deem this gradation in-
tentional.
At 0;4 (21) as well, when he strikes with his hand the toys hanging
from his bassinet hood (Obs. 103) he visibly gradates his movements as
function of the result: at first he strikes gently and then continues
more and more strongly, etc.
These gradations are found in nearly all the preceding observa-
tions as well as in the use of "procedures to make interesting sights
last" (see below, Obs. 112-118).
Thus it may be seen how the secondary schemata constitutes
not only a kind of concept or practical "class" but also a system
of relationships enveloping the quantity itself.
3. RECOGNITORY ASSIMILATION AND THE SYS-
TEM OF MEANINGS. The facts hitherto studied constitute
essentially phenomena of reproductive assimilation: through rep-
etition rediscovering a fortuitous result. Before seeing how this
behavior is extended into generalizing assimilation and thus gives
rise to "procedures to make interesting sights last/' let us once
more emphasize a group of facts, which no longer constitute cir-
cular reactions in themselves but which are derived from second-
ary reactions, in the capacity of recognitory assimilations. What
happens, in effect, is that the child, confronted by objects or
sights which habitually set in motion his secondary circular re-
actions, limits himself to outlining the customary movements in-
stead of actually performing them. Everything takes place as
though the child were satisfied to recognize these objects or sights
and to make a note of this recognition, but could not recognize
them except by working, rather than thinking, the schema help-
ful to recognition. Now this schema is none other than that of
186 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the secondary circular reaction corresponding to the object in
question.
Here are some examples:
Observation 107. At 0;5 (3) Lucienne tries to grasp spools suspended
above her by means of elastic bands. She usually uses them in order to
suck them, but sometimes she swings them while shaking herself when
they are there (see Obs. 94 and 94 repeated). She manages to touch but
not yet to grasp them. Having shaken them fortuitously, she then breaks
off to shake herself a moment while looking at them (shakes of the legs
and trunk), then she resumes her attempts at grasping.
Why has she broken off in order to shake herself a few seconds? It
was not in order to shake the spools because she did not persevere and
was busy with something else at the moment when she made this move-
ment: neither was it in order to facilitate her attempts at grasping. Is
it a question of a purely mechanical movement started by the sight of
their chance swinging? It would seem so, but the rest of the observa-
tion shows that this behavior pattern was renewed too often to be
automatic: it therefore certainly has a meaning. Neither is it a question
of a sort of ritual analogous to those we shall study in connection with
the beginnings of play because the child, far from seeming to amuse
herself, was perfectly serious. Everything transpires as though the sub-
ject, endowed for a moment with reflection and internal language, had
said to himself something like this: "Yes, I see that this object could be
swung, but it is not what I am looking for." But, lacking language, it
is by working the schema that Lucienne would have thought that, be-
fore resuming his attempts to grasp. In this hypothesis, the short inter-
lude of swinging would thus be equivalent to a sort of motor recognition.
Such an interpretation would remain completely hazardous when
confronted by a single fact. But its probability increases along with the
following observations. For instance at 0;5 (10) Lucienne again relapses
into states identical to those vis-&-vis a rattle. So also, at 0;6 (5) she
shakes herself several times in succession, very briefly each time, as soon
as she has caught sight of her hand (which comes out of her mouth or
by chance enters the visual field, etc.). One cannot see what this move-
ment might mean if not that it is the outline of some action suggested
by this sight.
At 0;6 (12) Lucienne perceives from a distance two celluloid parrots
attached to a chandelier and which she had sometimes had in her bas-
sinet. As soon as she sees them, she definitely but briefly shakes her legs
without trying to act upon them from a distance. This can only be a
matter of motor recognition. So too, at 0;6 (19) it suffices that she
catches sight of her dolls from a distance for her to outline the move-
ment of swinging them with her hand.
From 0;7 (27) certain too familiar situations no longer set in motion
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 187
secondary circular reactions, but simply outlines of schemata. Thus
when seeing a doll which she actually swung many times, Lucienne
limits herself to opening and closing her hands or shaking her legs, but
very briefly and without real effort. At 0;10 (28) she is sitting in her
bassinet. With my hand I slightly shake the whole apparatus by touch-
ing the handle. Lucienne laughs and responds by gently shaking her
hand, but this is not an attempt to make me continue; it is only a sort
of acknowledgment.
Observation 107 repeated. Lament, too, at 0;4 (21) has an object in his
hands when, in order to distract him, I shake the hanging rattles which
he is in the habit of striking. He then looks at the rattles without re-
linquishing his toy and outlines with his right hand the movement of
"striking." From 0;5 I often note such outlines of acts when confronted
by familiar objectives; they are similar to Lucienne's.
It may be seen how such behavior patterns constitute a sep-
arate class. It is no longer a question of a simple secondary cir-
cular reaction, since the child reveals no effort to arrive at a re-
sult. It is true that there might be a simple automatization of
earlier reactions. But, on the one hand, the child's expression
does not give the impression that he acts mechanically and, on
the other hand, we do not see at all why an automatic reproduc-
tion of useless acts would last so long (we have only chosen one
or two examples from among innumerable ones). In the second
place, these behavior patterns cannot be identified with the
"procedures to make an interesting spectacle last," of which we
shall speak presently. These "procedures . . ." appear at the mo-
ment when a sight contemplated by the child is interrupted, and
their purpose is to act upon the things themselves, while the
present behavior patterns arise at simple contact with an object,
regardless of whether this is immobile or mobile, and without
an attempt at acting upon it. In the third place, neither is it
possible to reduce these behavior patterns to "explorations" and
"tertiary circular reactions" of which we shall speak subsequently.
The latter relate to new objects whereas the present behavior
patterns are set in motion by familiar objects.
We therefore only see one interpretation for Observations
107-107 (repeated): they are acts of recognitory assimilation. Con-
fronted by a familiar object or event, but whose sudden appear-
ance was not foreseen by the child, the latter needs to adapt him-
188 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
self to the unexpected. This Is what occurs, for example, when
Lucienne sees a spool swing at the moment she wishes to grasp
it, or perceives her hand, the parrots, etc., at a moment and in
a place she did not expect them, etc. To adapt oneself means, in
such cases, simply noting the event, in so far as it is known and
of no use at present: it is then, without adding anything, a mat-
ter of recognizing and classing the thing. The subject will subse-
quently do this in enunciated words or in internal language but,
due to his present lack of such symbolic instruments, the child
is limited to outlining the gestures of the corresponding schema,
used thus in the capacity of a recognitory schema. In other words,
instead of saying: "Oh! the spool is swinging/' or: "There is my
hand. . . . There is the parrot. . , There is the bassinet which is
moving," the child assimilates these facts by means of motor
concepts, not yet verbal, and, by shaking his own legs or hands,
so indicates to himself that he understands what he perceives.
The existence of this recognitory assimilation might seem
doubtful if it had not been prepared by all the reproductive as-
similation of the secondary circular reaction. Two circumstances
show that reproductive assimilation brings with it at the outset
the formation of a sensorimotor recognition. In the first place,
the very fact of rediscovering an interesting result that is, the
definition of secondary circular reaction entails an increasingly
accurate recognition. In the second place, once the schema has
been constituted, it is reactivated by each new contact with the
objects due to which it arose. Each time, for example, the child
sees the doll hanging he is in the habit of swinging by shaking
himself or striking it, etc., of his own accord he resumes shaking
himself, striking, etc. This activation of the schema by immedi-
ate assimilation of the object to its function is simultaneously a
recognitory and reproductive fact of assimilation, these two as-
pects of the assimilatory process being as yet undifferentiated
during this initial phase. It is therefore very natural that simply
recognitory assimilation should dissociate itself at a given mo-
ment from reproductive or purely active assimilation. At first, as
revealed by the beginning of Observation 107, it can happen
that the child finds himself incited by external facts to activate
a schema at the exact moment when his interest is elsewhere and
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 189
is already acting there according to a different schema. In this
case the schema which interferes with the main action will sim-
ply be outlined whereas the activity in progress will be pursued
normally. Then, it can happen, as revealed by the end of the
same Observation 107, that the schema excited by the external
events is too familiar to give rise to a real action and so is again
limited to a short and simple indication of it. In both cases the
outline of activity, replacing real activity, is consequently equiva-
lent to a step which is more contemplative than active; in other
words, to an act of simple recognition or simple classification
rather than to effective action. So it may be seen that recognitory
assimilation, at first involved in reproductive assimilation, de-
taches itself from it little by little, to remain in the half-active,
half-verifying state which is the state nearest to the pure judg-
ment of verification of which the sensorimotor intelligence is
capable.
These remarks lead us to the analysis of "meanings" and to
the study of the signals or signs characteristic of this third stage.
To understand the nature of the following facts it behooves us
first to remind ourselves briefly how the problem of meaning
arises.
To assimilate a sensorial image or an object, whether
through simple assimilation, recognition, or generalizing exten-
sion, is to insert it in a system of schemata, in other words, to give
it a "meaning." Regardless of whether these schemata are global
and vague or, as in the recognition of an individual factor, they
are circumscribed and precise, consciousness does not know any
state except in reference to a more or less organized totality. Ever
since then it is necessary to distinguish, in every mental element,
two indissolubly bound aspects whose relationship constitutes
meaning: the signifier and the signified. With regard to "mean-
ings" of a higher order, which are also collective meanings, the
distinction is clear: the signifier is the verbal expression, that is,
a certain articulated sound to which one has agreed to attribute
a definite meaning, and the signified is the concept in which the
meaning of the verbal sign consists. But with regard to ele-
mentary meanings (significations) such as that of the perceived
object, or even, in the small child and prior to the formation of
190 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
substantial objects, that of the simply "presented" sensory im-
ages, the same applies. The "signified*' of objective perceptions
such as that of the mountain I see from my window or the ink-
well on my table is the objects themselves, definable not only by
a system of sensorimotor and practical schemata (climbing a
mountain, dipping pen in ink) or by a system of general concepts
(an inkwell is a container which . . ., etc.), but also by their in-
dividual characteristics: position in space, dimensions, solidity
and resistance, color in different lights, etc. Now the latter char-
acteristics, although perceived in the object itself, presuppose an
extremely complex intellectual elaboration; for example, in order
to attribute real dimensions to the little spots which I perceive
to be a mountain or an inkwell, I must place them in a substan-
tial and causal universe, in an organized space, etc., and accord-
ingly construct them intellectually. The signified of a perception
that is to say, the object itself is therefore essentially intellec-
tual. No one has ever "seen" a mountain or even an inkwell from
all sides at once in a simultaneous view of their different aspects
from above and below, from East and West, from within and
without, etc. In order to perceive these individual realities as
real objects it is essential to complete what one sees by what one
knows. Concerning the "signifier," it is nothing other than the
few perceptible qualities recorded simultaneously and at the pres-
ent time by my sensory organs, qualities by which I recognize a
mountain and an inkwell. Common sense, which prolongs in each
of us the habits of infantile realism, certainly considers the signi-
fier as being the object itself and as being more "real" than any
intellectual construction. But when one has understood that
every concrete object is the product of geometric, kinematic,
causal, etc., elaborations, in short, the product of a series of acts
of intelligence, there no longer remains any doubt that the true
signified of perception is the object in the capacity of intellectual
reality and that the apprehensible elements considered at a fixed
moment of perception serve only as signs, consequently as "sig-
nifiers."
With regard to the simplest sensory images which are assimi-
lated by the nursling and which are anterior to the permanent
and substantial object, the same distinctions can be made, though
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 191
to a lesser degree. Thus when the baby gets ready to grasp the
rattle which he sees, the visual appearance of this toy is only
a "signifier" in relation to the "signified" which the other quali-
ties of the same object constitute and which are not given simul-
taneously but are collected by the mind in a unique bundle (in
particular its quality of object to be grasped). Here again the
signifier refers to a system of schemata (of vision, prehension,
hearing, sucking, etc.) and only has meaning, even with regard
to the precise image given through perception, in relation to the
whole of the system.
But if we interpret the idea of signification in this way, in-
cluding the complementary ideas of "signifier" and "signified"
it is necessary at once to distinguish between three kinds of sig-
nifiers, which we shall call the "indication," the "symbol" and
the "sign" so as to place in their true perspective the facts of
comprehension of significations that we shall presently describe.
The "symbol" and the "sign" are the signifiers of abstract
meanings, such as those which involve representation. A "sym-
bol" is an image evoked mentally or a material object inten-
tionally chosen to designate a class of actions or objects. So it is
that the mental image of a tree symbolizes in the mind trees in
general, a particular tree which the individual remembers, or a
certain action pertaining to trees, etc. Hence the symbol presup-
poses representation. We shall see it made manifest during the
child's second year at the time of the appearance of the symbolic
game (the game of make-believe) or when the progress, intelli-
gence and use of practical deduction will really evoke absent ob-
jects. The "sign," moreover, is a collective symbol, and conse-
quently "arbitrary." It also makes its appearance in the second
year, with the beginning of language and doubtless in synchro-
nism with the formation of the symbol. Symbol and sign are only
the two poles, individual and social, of the same elaboration of
meanings.
Concerning the "indication," this is the concrete signifier
connected with direct perception and not with representation.
In a general way we shall call indication every sensory impression
or directly perceived quality whose signification (the "signified")
is an object or a sensorimotor schema. In the strict and limited
192 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
sense of the word, an indication is a perceptible fact which an-
nounces the presence of an object or the imminence of an event
(the door which opens and announces a person). But as we have
just seen, the concept of indication could be extended to include
every sensorimotor assimilation. What I see of an inkwell or of a
mountain is an indication of the existence of these objects; the
rattle which the baby looks at is an indication of virtual prehen-
sion; the nipple which the nursling's lips touch is an indication
of possible sucking, etc. The facts belinging to the present stage
thus belong in the class of concrete significations of which the
signifier is "indication."
But, in order to understand the true nature of these facts, it
is fitting first to divide into different types the different varieties
of indications and, to do this, to recapitulate the whole of the
"significations" hitherto under study.
In the first place, we have been able to speak of recognitory
assimilation since the very beginning of the reflex (Chapter I).
When the child is hungry and is not limited to sucking for the
sake of sucking (reproductive assimilation) nor to sucking the first
object that reaches his lips (generalizing assimilation), he well
knows how to seek the nipple and discern it in relation to the
surrounding teguments. What does this mean if not that the
nipple has a meaning for him, in contrast and in relation to
other significations (that of empty sucking, etc.)? This first type of
signification is the simplest possible. In such a case the signifier
is the elementary sensory impression accompanying the play of
the reflex (whence the impression which serves as "excitant" to
sucking) and the signified is the sucking schema. The proof of
such an interpretation has in it nothing artificial; it is that this
schema involves, as we have just recalled, a certain number of
differentiated subschemata: contact with the nipple entails suck-
ing with swallowing, whereas contact with the surrounding
teguments or with an object only entails sucking for the sake of
sucking, the erethism of the buccal apparatus entails empty suck-
ing, etc. Each of these sensory impressions is therefore already
classed and corresponds to a fixed subschema. At the very least,
when a child is hungry and seeks the nipple, it can be said that
the impression peculiar to this contact is subject to recognitory
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 193
assimilation and consequently that it comprises a precise "signi-
fied/"
In the second place come the significations peculiar to the
first habits and to assimilation through acquired schemata
(primary). But, as we have seen, the recognition characteristic of
this level presupposes as "signifiers" in addition, simple sensory
impressions identical to those of the preceding level which it has
been agreed to call "signals." The signal is an as yet elementary
indication; it consists in a sensory impression simply associated
to the reaction and to the perceptual images characteristic of any
schema; thereafter it announces these images and sets in motion
these reactions to the extent that it is assimilated to the schema
under consideration. For example, the consciousness of a certain
attitude in the position for nursing sets the sucking schema in
motion. What does this mean if not that this consciousness is a
signal or a signifier for the signified which the feeding constitutes?
Such a signifier is surely more complex than that of the first type
(direct sensory contact with the nipple or the surrounding tegu-
ments), since it presupposes an acquired extension of the schema
of assimilation, but the signification which it permits remains
elementary. The consciousness of the position for nursing does
not signify anything more, from the subject's point of view, than
the awaiting and the beginning of the sensory images connected
with sucking. It is therefore necessary to avoid comparing, as is
sometimes done, the signal to the "arbitrary" sign. Doubtless any
signal at all can serve to set any reaction in motion: training
operates in this way, in animals, establishing the most varied as-
sociations. But, as we have seen, association only becomes "fixed"
if the signal is incorporated in a schema of assimilation and thus
receives its meaning from the single act connecting the effort
with its result. Thereafter, to the subject's consciousness, the
signal is an indication and not a sign; an indication, that is to
say, a given objective aspect of external reality, as the track of
paws is to the hunter the indication of the passing of the game.
The signal is therefore no more "arbitrary" in the sense that
linguistic scholars give to this word than the association of sound
and sight in perceiving a clock in movement, is arbitrary.
The latter example evokes a particular variety of this second
194 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
type: the signals founded on the coordination of heterogeneous
schemata. As we have established in analyzing the different co-
ordinations of sight and hearing, of sight and sucking, of grasping
with sucking and sight, etc., the objects which give rise to such
coordinations through this very fact acquire a complex significa-
tion: they begin to assume a certain solid and permanent con*
texture. In looking at a feeding bottle or a rattle, the child
understands that it is a thing to suck or a thing to grasp; in
listening to a noise the child understands that the thing heard is
to be looked at, etc. An active search then ensues which comprises
progress in foresight. Upon hearing a certain sound the child
prepares himself to see a certain image, etc. But in such signifi-
cations the signifier is always constituted by sensory impressions
or signals, simply more varied than before, and the signified still
consists in coordinated practical schemata.
Finally there comes the third type of significations which we
shall now emphasize that of the indication belonging to the
secondary circular reactions.
Whether there is a secondary circular reaction such as pull-
ing a chain or a string in order to shake objects hanging from the
hood (Obs. 99 and 100) or a procedure to make interesting spec-
tacles last, such as pulling the same string in order to swing these
objects from a distance (Obs. 113), it is apparent that the signifi-
cations involved in such cases are much more complex than the
preceding ones while being derived from them by differentiation.
In effect, the significations of the second type remain essentially
functional and related to the subject's own activity. That which
the sensory signals announce is that a certain thing is to be seen,
heard, grasped, etc. On the contrary, the significations of this
third type comprise from the beginning an element of foresight
related to the things themselves: the string hanging from the
bassinet hood is not only to be seen, grasped, and pulled, it serves
to swing the objects from a distance, etc. There is, accordingly,
in the signification of the string a content related to the foresight
of events. Without yet understanding, of course, the details of
this connection, the child knows that the gesture of pulling the
string brings with it the movement of other objects. But this
foresight is not always independent of the action. The string is
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 195
still a signal whose signification is the schema of "pulling in
order to shake the hood." The foresight is therefore not yet pure;
it is comprised in a motor schema. But, in relation to the signifi-
cations of the second type, there is certainly progress and, in
addition to the merely active "signal," one already anticipates
the "indication" in the strict sense of the word: the string is
indication of a series of possible movements.
This characteristic of transition between the "signal" belong-
ing to the preceding stages and the "indication" belonging to the
fourth stage which will set free foresight of the context of the
action in progress is found again in a series of signs which are
made manifest between 0;4 and 0;8, independently of the circular
reactions under study hitherto.
Observation 108. From 0;4 (12) to approximately 0;4 (30) Laurent
cried with rage when, after his feedings, a handkerchief or napkin
was placed under his chin: they announced a few spoonsful of a
beverage he disliked.
At 0;7 (10) he cries in the morning as soon as he hears his mother's
bed creak. Until then, although awake, he did not show his hunger.
But, at the slightest creak, he moans and thus demands his bottle.
The same applies, for a stronger reason, to the noises of the door, but
he remains insensible to external sounds (noises in the hall or neighbor-
ing rooms).
From 0;7 (15), also in the morning, when I play with him and
his mother appears he immediately cries with hunger.
The same applies at 0;9 (20) when a maid and not his mother gives
him his morning bottle: at sight of the maid he loses all interest in
what is going on, even when he is in his mother's bed.
Observation 109.At 0;8 (3) Jacqueline smiles and says aa as soon as the
door to her room opens, before seeing the person who enters. She
therefore understands by this sign that someone will appear. At 0;8
(10) she cries from hunger as soon as her mother enters the room; she
does not do this for her father. Same reaction in negative form at 0;9
(9): she moans at sight of her mother (due to lack of appetite 1 ) when
she had been laughing and enjoying herself.
At 0;8 (13) she raises her hand to grasp her mother's face when
the latter whispered in her ear from behind her. Without seeing any-
thing, Jacqueline understands that there is someone behind her. Like-
wise, at 0;9 (27) she laughs and turns when I blow down her neck, even
though she has neither seen me nor heard me arrive.
i At that time she suffered from anorexia.
196 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
At 0;8 (18) she is still not hungry and cries when her bib is put on,
knowing that a meal awaits her. Furthermore, she opens her mouth as
soon as her forehead is touched by her sponge (which she has not seen)
because every day she amuses herself by biting it.
Such recognitions of indications at first appear to be suffi-
ciently detached from the action to give rise to truly objective
foresight as will be the case during the fourth stage. But in
reality the signs in question here are not yet "mobile 5 * in the
sense in which we shall interpret this term in connection with the
fourth stage; that is to say, they do not give rise to foresight re-
lated to the activities of the objects themselves independently to
the subjects. The indications described in Observations 108-109
all make up a part of the global schema: either that of the meal,
in which the child is certainly active, or else that of an "interesting
spectacle" (such as having his neck or hands blown on, etc.)
comparable to those "interesting spectacles" which the child
maintains due to procedures which are still "circular" and which
we shall study in the next paragraph. If such indications already
announce objective foresight, it cannot then be said that they are
entirely detached from secondary circular reaction. They are
simply inserted in the preestablished schemata and only acquire
meaning as a function of the latter. Like the indications and
significations which we have recalled, they merely form a transi-
tion between the primary "signals" and the actual indications
of the fourth stage.
4. GENERALIZING ASSIMILATION AND THE CON-
STITUTION OF "PROCEDURES TO MAKE INTEREST-
ING SPECTACLES LAST." The generalization of secondary
schemata is produced when the child is confronted by new ob-
jects. In such cases the child from the outset makes use of his
usual behavior patterns and assimilates the unfamiliar to their
schemata, without adding anything. It is a remarkable thing that
the younger the child, the less novelties seem new to him. Un-
fortunately, it is impossible to compare in this respect secondary
with primary reactions in the presence of unfamiliar objects for
there is no appreciable common gauge for them. But if the re-
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 197
actions of the present stage are compared to those of the following
one and above all to the "tertiary circular reactions" of the fifth
stage, the difference is all the more striking as the situations be-
come more homogeneous. In the face of a new phenomenon, the
child in the fifth stage is capable of adopting the attitude of ex-
perimentation (this does not mean that he necessarily adopts it,
but he is apt to do so). He seeks novelty and varies the conditions
of the phenomenon in order to examine all of its modalities. The
child in the fourth stage, without reaching these true "experi-
ments to see," is also interested in the new object in itself. But, in
order to "understand" it, he tries to apply to it in turn the whole
of the known schemata in order to find which one in particular
will be most suitable to it. On the other hand, the child at the
present stage, while sometimes feeling surprise in the presence of
an unknown object, nevertheless from the outset treats it as a
familiar object and employs it in the use of his habitual schemata.
Thereafter one has the impression that the child, far from still
being interested in the thing in itself and far from appreciating
its novelty as such, merely tries to use his secondary schemata by
pure functional assimilation, as he did hitherto by means of the
primary schemata. Consequently there exists a simple generaliza-
tion of secondary schemata.
Here are examples of this elementary generalizing assimila-
tion:
Observation 110. At 0;3 (29) for the first time Laurent sees the paper
knife which figured in Observation 104. He grasps and looks at it, but
only for a moment. Afterward he immediately swings it with his right
hand as he does all the objects grasped (see the schema of Obs. 102). He
then rubs it by chance against the wicker of the bassinet and tries to
reproduce the sound heard, as though it were a rattle (see Qbs. 102).
It then suffices that I place the object in his left hand for him to shake it
in the same way. He ends by sucking it. The novelty of the object has
therefore in no way interested the child, except for the brief glance at
the beginning: the paper knife from the outset was used as aliment for
the habitual schemata.
At 0;4 (8) I place a large rubber monkey in front of Laurent; the
mobile limbs and tail as well as its expressive head constitute an abso-
lutely new entity for him. Laurent reveals, in effect, lively astonishment
and even a certain fright. But he at once calms down and applies to the
monkey some of the schemata which he uses to swing hanging objects;
198 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
he shakes himself, strikes with his hands, etc., gradating his effort ac-
cording to the result obtained.
Likewise, at 0;5 (25) and the days following, Laurent looks at an
unfolded newspaper which I place on the hood of his bassinet. He im-
mediately begins to pull the strings hanging from the hood, to shake
himself or his feet and arms. He bursts out laughing on seeing the
movements of the newspaper just as he frequently does when the rattles
shake.
At 0;6 (0) Laurent at once grasps a big box of lozenges which is
unfamiliar to him. He hardly looks at it but immediately uses it to rub
against the sides of the bassinet, then he passes it from one hand to the
other and rubs the object against the opposite side of the bassinet.
At 0;6 (1) he grasps a new rattle made of three parts: the handle,
a middle ball of medium size and the end ball, a large one, Laurent
looks at the object quite a long time while passing it from one hand to
the other and even seems to palpate the surface which foretells the be-
havior patterns of the following stage. But he quickly desists in order
to move the object in the air, at first slowly, then more and more
rapidly, and finally he shakes it, rubs it against the sides of the bassinet,
etc.
At 0;6 (7) I offer him various new objects to see if he will resume
his attempts at spatial exploration which seemed to appear in connec-
tion with the last object. This does not occur; the child utilizes the new
object as aliment for his habitual schemata. So it is that a penguin with
long feet and a wagging head is only looked at briefly: at first Laurent
strikes it, then rubs it against the side of the bassinet, etc., without pay-
ing attention to the end by which he grasped it. Several knick-knacks
receive the same treatment: he grasps them with one hand and strikes
them with the other.
At 0;6 (14) he takes hold of a new doll, looks at it for a moment
without investigating either its shape or clothing: he strikes it, rubs it
against the wicker, shakes it in the air, etc.
At 0;6 (18) a pipe holds his attention more but is subsequently
utilized in the same way. At 0;6 (16) a new swan, encircled by a ring
and with a handle is looked at with curiosity arid immediately struck,
shaken, rubbed, etc. At 0;6 (26) a series of unfamiliar objects (a rattle
with a bell, a bear, a lamb, etc.) are barely examined before being struck,
shaken, etc.
At 0;7 (2) he only looks a little at an unfamiliar bird of complicated
shape mounted on a plank with wheels. He limits himself to shaking
and striking it, and rubbing it against the side of the bassinet.
Observation 111. At 0;5 (3) Lucienne only has one schema at her dispo-
sition which she employs in the course of her circular reactions and at-
tempts to make interesting spectacles last: that of shaking her foot or
entire body to cause swinging (see Obs. 116). Furthermore, of course, she
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 199
knows how to grasp, suck, etc. When a new object is presented to her
there ensues the curious result that she tries in turn the schemata of
prehension and of shaking the feet, but applying the first chiefly to
immobile and near objects and the second mainly to objects in motion
or hanging before her. Here is the series of attempts:
First of all, before a cross of Malta which hangs above her, Lucienne
immediately moves her feet only. Then she slows down her movements
and begins empty sucking while looking at the object; after this she
grasps it and brings it in front of her eyes in order to examine it.
A pipe, motionless: attempts at prehension, sucking at a distance
and foot movements, all simultaneous.
An eraser: surprise, sucking at a distance and prehension. Once the
eraser has been grasped, Lucienne looks at it briefly, in her hand, then
immediately begins to move her feet.
Again the cross of Malta: immediate and sustained foot move-
ments. Then Lucienne's hand having knocked against the object, there
is an attempt at prehension, but this second reaction is obviously due to
a fortuitous cause.
A hanging puppet: she grasps it and pulls but, not succeeding in
drawing it to her, she periodically desists in order to give hard shakes
of the feet. She then resumes, grasping, then moves her legs again: there
is constant alternation between these two activities.
A slide rule: exclusive attempts at prehension. No movement of the
feet.
A strap which I swing slowly: shakes of the feet, then attempts at
prehension.
A stick of sealing wax; only prehension.
A watch placed very near her face: first prehension, then when I
raise it too high, shakes of the feet.
This observation consequently shows us how much the new object
is immediately assimilated to a schema; that is to say, generically recog-
nized as being able to give rise to a familiar behavior pattern, even
when the habitual schemata are very limited in number. In what fol-
lows it goes without saying that the more these schemata are multiplied
the more the new object is subjected to various attempts.
It may be seen in what such behavior patterns consist. When
confronted by new objects the child does not yet try to find out in
what way they are new, he limits himself, at the outset or after a
short pause, to using them as aliments for his habitual behavior
patterns. He therefore generalizes, without adding anything for
their use, the schemata he possesses.
But the generalizing assimilation belonging to this stage is
not limited to this elementary form. It sometimes happens that
200 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
the novelty presented to the child does not consist in a particular
object but in an event, in an actual spectacle on which the subject
has no direct influence. What occurs then? The child, desirous
of seeing the spectacle prolonged, also utilizes his habitual
schemata which he generalizes without adding anything to this
effect. That is what is revealed by Observation 110. When Lau-
rent, at 0;4 (8) and 0;5 (25) cannot grasp the monkey or the
newspaper which he sees from afar, he at once applies to them
the schemata related to hanging objects and thus seeks to act
upon them from a distance. From that to trying to act upon any
phenomenon whatever, independently of any real contact, is only
a step.
This step is taken as a result of the following behavior pat-
tern: It is a transitional behavior pattern which stems from
secondary circular reaction but whose higher forms foretell the
combinations of the fourth stage. It is the activity by means of
which the child tries to make last the interesting spectacles of
which he has just been witness without himself having provoked
their first appearance (for example, prolonging the swinging of
a watch seen from afar, etc.). SLuch behavior patterns still partake
of circular reaction, since it is simply a matter of conserving and
reproducing, but they generalize its principle, since the schemata
hitherto inserted in actual circular reactions are henceforth ap-
plied to entirely new circumstances. Here are some examples of
these behavior patterns:
Observation 112. The first example will make us understand how the
secondary circular reaction is prolonged in procedures to make an in-
teresting spectacle last. Following Observation 98 at 0;3 (20) I make the
following experiment on Laurent. I give him a rubber doll, unfamiliar
to him and attached to the usual rattle by a string sufficiently loose so
that the doll's movements do not shake the rattle. As soon as Laurent
sees the doll, he grasps it in his right hand and sucks it. This prelimi-
nary phase lasts ten minutes during which the rattle has neither moved
nor made a noise. After this Laurent lets his arm drop to the side while
keeping the doll in his hand. I then shake the rattle without shaking
the string or Laurent's hand; moreover, he did not look at the rattle at
this time. Then, as soon as he hears the rattle, he looks at it and stretches
out his right arm, while holding the doll in his hand, then he shakes
this doll in a perfectly adapted way.
But a moment later Laurent's right hand is in contact with the doll,
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS 201
without holding it. I then shake the rattle again. He immediately moves
his right arm, his hand remaining empty and not attempting to grasp
the doll.
Thus it may be seen how, as soon as circumstances are changed,
the schema becomes dissociated and the efficacious gesture (grasping,
and shaking the arm, or simply shaking the arm) is advanced to the
rank of procedure to make the interesting spectacle last, in the very
absence of the usual intermediaries (of the chain).
The rest of the observation well shows, in effect, that this arm move-
ment has become, for Laurent, a constant "procedure" and has not
simply consisted in an episodic effort. At 0;3 (5) for example, Laurent
practices grasping my hand when it is within his direct reach; but,
when I put it at a distance of 50 cm. or more, he looks at it and then
swings his arms rapidly just as he does when confronted by his usual
rattle. At 0;3 (23), I present him (at a distance of 50 cm.) with an un-
familiar doll (in costume) which I swing for a moment. As long as it
moves, he looks at it, motionless, but as soon as it stops, he shakes his
arm. Same reaction with respect to my watch and my wallet. The same
day I saw him behave spontaneously in this way while looking at his
hanging doll.
At 0;3 (29) I shake his arm as soon as I stop swinging a paper knife
100 cm. away from him. At 0;4 (18) he shakes his arm in order to make
me continue when I shake his feet. He laughs and waves his arms more
and more vigorously until I resume. At 0;5 (26) he does the same as
soon as a grating sound stops, a sound which I had made without his
seeing me. He definitely gradates his movement according to the varia-
tions of the waiting time.
At 0;6 (27) again, he shakes his arm when he does not succeed in
grasping a distant object or in order to make an object move at a
distance (a sheet of paper placed on a cupboard, at a distance of 150
cm. from him, etc.). Same observation at 0;7 (5).
At 0;7 (7) he looks at a tin box placed on a cushion in front of
him, too remote to be grasped. I drum on it for a moment in a rhythm
which makes him laugh and then present my hand (at a distance of 2 cm.
from his, in front of him). He looks at it, but only for a moment, then
turns toward the box; then he shakes his arm while staring at the box
(then he draws himself up, strikes his coverlets, shakes his head, etc.;
that is to say, he uses all the "procedures" at his disposition). He obvi-
ously waits for the phenomenon to recur. Same reaction at 0;7 (12),
at 0;7 (13), 0;7 (22), 0;7 (29) and 0;8 (1) in a variety of circumstances
(seeObs. 115).
It therefore seems apparent that the movement of shaking the arm,
at first inserted in a circular schema of the whole, has been removed
from its context to be used, more and more frequently, as a "procedure"
to make any interesting spectacle last.
202 THE INTENTIONAL SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
Observation 112 repeated.-A.nother hand movement of which Laurent
has made use as a "procedure" is the act of "striking"; but in contra-
distinction to the preceding one, this schema was utilized for the first
time as a "procedure," due to a simple association of continuity.
At 0;7 (2), in effect, Laurent is in the process of striking a cushion
when I snap my middle finger against the ball of my thumb. Laurent
then smiles and strikes the cushion but while staring at my hand; as I
no longer move, he strikes harder and harder, with a definite expression
of desire and expectation and, at the moment when I resume snapping
my fingers, he stops as though he had achieved his object.
A moment later, I hid behind a big curtain and reappeared every
few minutes. In the interim, Laurent strikes his covers harder and
harder while looking at the curtain.-Same reaction while looking at an
electric light. At 0;7 (5) he strikes the side of his bassinet while looking
at the hanging rattles and continues for a long time despite failure.
At 0;7 (7) he strikes his coverlets while looking at a tin box on
which I have just drummed (see Obs. 112). Same reactions until about
0;8.
At 0;7 (11) he strikes the wrong end of his bottle in the hope of
seeing the nipple come up (see Vol. II, Obs. 78).
Observation 113. -Jacqueline, likewise, at 0;7 (16), that is to say, after
Observation 100, applies the schema of pulling the strings of the hood to
new circumstances. After having moved the hood by moving a hanging
doll, Jacqueline looks at my watch which I swing at a certain distance.
She begins by trying to grasp my watch, then she happens to graze the
string hanging from the hood; then she grasps it and shakes it violently
while looking at the watch, as though her movement were going to make
the object continue to swing.That evening, same reaction with regard
to a doll which I swing from a distance. At 0;7 (23) after having pulled
the same s 
