Jean Mandler - How to Build a Baby

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Cogn itive De velopme nt, 3, 113-136 (1988)

How to Build a Baby: On the Development

of an Accessible Representational System

Jean M. Mandler

University of Califo rnia, San Dieg o

The notion of a sensorimotor stage in infancy is called into question. First, some of

the recent experimental literature on cognitive developm ent in infancy is exam-ined to determine the kinds of representational capacity that these data require. It

is concluded that most of the recent work o n perceptual developm ent and the

object concept in infancy is comp atible with the notion of a sensorimotor stage

but that other work showing imitation, motor recognition, the acquisition of

ma nua l signs, and recall of absent objects is not, requiring, instead, a conceptual

form of representation. Such a system is apparent early in developm ent. It is

suggested that there is a viable alternative to Piaget’s theory that conceptual

represen tation consists of a transforma tion of sensorimotor schemas into a new ,

more advanced code. It is proposed that an accessible conceptual system devel-

ops simultaneously and in parallel with the sensorimotor system, with neither

system being derivative from the other. It is further proposed that the mechan ism

by which infants enco de inform ation into an accessible system consists of a pro-

cess of percep tual analysis.

If one is interested in the topic of representation, infancy provides a fascinatingtheoretical playground. By the time the new human ages a bit and becomes a

middle-aged child, it seems that much of the adult representational system is inplace or, at any rate, one can discern the outlines of the adult mind. But infantsappear almost to belong to another species. and it is difficult to see manycommonalities between the mind of the infant and that of the adult.

Piaget is largely responsible for our taking such a distant stance. He madesuch a persuasive case for the view of the infant as a purely sensorimotororganism, lacking any sort of accessible or reflective knowledge, that it hasbecome commonplace in our thinking. The assumption underlying the notion of

Preparation of this article was supported in part by NSF research grant BN S-85 1921 8 and the

MacArthur Foun dation research grant on the Transition from Infancy to Early Childh ood. I wish to

thank Ann ette Karm iloff-Smith, Ala n Leslie, and John Morton for stimulating discussion on these

issues and Elizabeth Bates, Rachel Gelma n, and Katherine Nelson for helpfu l comm ents on the

manuscript.

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Jean M. Mand ler. Department of

Psychology C-009, University of California, Sa n Diego. La Jolla, CA 92093 .

Manuscript received August 19, 1987; revision accepted October 15, 1987 113


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114 Jean M. Mandler

a sensorimotor stage is that the infant is born with a single type of representa-tional capacity. Infants are said to represent the world by means of perceptualand motor schemas but lack the capacity to form concepts that are accessible forpurposes of recall or thinking. Only gradually does a qualitative shift in therepresentational system occur, with the new and higher order form of representa-tion that results being necessarily dependent on the development of an earlierexclusively sensorimotor form. This higher order form of representation iscalled, variously, a symbolic or conceptual system. In this view, although thecapacity to symbolize may be considered innate, its realization is dependent on agradual transformation of motor and perceptual schemas into symbolically real-ized concepts.

In spite of a growing literature on infancy in recent years that suggests greatercompetence than Piaget ascribed to the infant, relatively little has been said aboutwhether or not this new evidence might require us to change our views on thefoundations of the representational system. For example, we have learned thatthe perceptual capabilities of infants are much greater than we once assumed, andthat infants know much more about objects than Piaget thought possible. Thereare also growing indications that infants are capable of symbolic activity andrecall much earlier than Piaget thought possible. Which, if any, of these new-found capabilities require us to reformulate the notion of a sensorimotor stage ofdevelopment?

The purposes of this article are two. The first is to examine some experimentalfindings from the recent literature on cognitive development in infancy with thegoal of establishing what these data require in terms of an underlying representa-tional system capable of accounting for them. Following a few definitions ofterms, the current experimental evidence is addressed in two sections. The firstsection covers some recent work in perceptual development; to state briefly theconclusion that will be reached, most of this work can probably be accommo-dated to the notion of an initial sensorimotor stage. The second section coversrecent evidence for early symbolic functioning and recall; it is concluded that thiskind of evidence cannor be accommodated within such a representationalsystem.

The second purpose is to discuss the kind of representational system that wewill need to posit if we must abandon the notion of an initial sensorimotor stage.In particular, I address the issue of when and how an accessible conceptualsystem might be formed. I suggest that there is a viable alternative to Piaget’stheory that conceptual representation consists of a transformation of sen-sorimotor schemas into a new, more advanced code. That alternative is that anaccessible representational system develops simultaneously and in parallel withthe sensorimotor system, with neither system being derivative from the other. Ipropose that the mechanism by which information is encoded into an accessiblesystem is neither through recoding motor activity nor by means of perceptionalone but, instead, involves a process of perceptual analysis.


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How to Buil d a Baby 115

Because the distinction between the two kinds of representation-sensorimotorand conceptual-is fundamental to the notion of a separate stage in infancy, it isimportant to be clear about the meanings of these two terms. I have used the termsprocedural and declarative (J. Mandler, 1983, 1984a) to refer to them, but theseterms are not ideal because they have been used in so many ways in the literature.Although discussions of procedural knowledge (sometimes called implicit knowl-edge) usually include some comment about its inaccessibility, the extent to whichprocedural knowledge can be brought to awareness (i.e., become explicit) hasbeen the subject of considerable debate. For example, motor skills, such as typingor riding a bike, are often used to illustrate procedural knowledge. However, theseskills require extensive conscious processing during the early stages of theiracquisition. Examples of motor “know-how” in infancy, such as sucking on anipple or reaching for an object, are equally good forms of procedural knowledge,but their acquisition does IIO~ equire conscious accompaniments (even thoughconsciousness may attend such activity). Hence, the kind of procedural knowl-edge relevant to the sensorimotor period of infancy is only a subset of proceduralknowledge in general, consisting of motor and perceptual activity that does notrequire that the infomlation being processed is accessible to conscious awareness.1 call these sensorimotor procedures.

It is important to emphasize that, in addition to motor activity, sensorimotorprocedures include perceptual recognition, and that this kind of processing alsodoes not require conscious access of infomlation. As adults we are often aware,of course, that something is familiar; however, such awareness is not a part of therecognition process itself. Consciousness of familiarity may accompany recogni-tion (especially in recognition experiments when we are required to say whetheror not something seems familiar), but it is an optional accompaniment to abasically unconscious process. Recognizing that something is a face, or even afamiliar face, has the same status as motor knowledge; we do it, but can stateonly crudely what it is that we know. Thus, the crucial aspect of sensorimotorprocedures, whether motor or perceptual, is that much, if not most, of theinformation that is being processed is not accessible to consciousness (see Fodor,1983; Marr, 1982: Rock, 1985, on the impenetrability of perceptual processes).

Conceptual knowledge (sometimes called declarative knowledge), on theother hand, is accessible; it has the potential of being brought to consciousawareness. that is, to become explicit. Indeed. it is fair to make at least a partialequation between concepts and consciousness. Concepts are not always in con-sciousness, to be sure, but they were formed from conscious processes and whenwe are conscious we are using the conceptual system to carry out our consciousthoughts. As one example. we use extremely detailed information about thecontours and proportions of the human face to mediate our recognition of indi-vidual faces or categories of faces, such as male and female or infant and adult.Yet, much of this information is not conscious and cannot be considered part ofour ~~nccpr of a face (see Lewicki, 1986). In our characteristic way of describing


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116 Jean M. Mandler

concepts as lists or bundles of features, we describe our concept of a face interms of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, along with some fairly crude spatialrelations and colors. More continuous and complex information becomes part ofour face concept only with instruction (for example, artistic training or analyticobservation).

Thus. concepts are potentially expressible (declarable) knowledge, eventhough before the onset of language the emphasis must be on potenriallv. Ex-pressible knowledge is symbolic knowledge; it has the status of a comment onsomething that has been experienced. Whether or not we use a word, gesture,drawing, or even an image to represent a concept in consciousness, we can onlycomment on (label. describe, sketch) information that has been consciouslyattended to. Such information is encoded in a different form than is the informa-tion used to mediate perceptual recognition. One can recognize a face by theautomatic activation of a low-level perceptual device (of the kind, for example,that is currently being used in connectionist models; see Rumelhart & Mc-Clelland, 1986). But, when one notices that a face is pretty or has big ears one isresponding to sensory infomration in a different way; a subset of the informationis being encoded symbolically into a verbal, gestural, spatial, or imaginal form.

These issues are discussed later in more detail. The important point for themoment is to distinguish between sensorimotor representation, which controlsperceptual recognition and motor activity, and conceptual knowledge, which canbe accessed independently of motor activity or perception. The latter type ofknowledge can be brought to conscious awareness; the former cannot. Concep-tual (declarative) knowledge is typically illustrated in the literature by some kindof symbolic functioning, such as recall of the past, imagining the future, plan-ning, or thinking. But, it is also illustrated by conscious awareness of what it isthat you are currently perceiving. If you are conscious of what you are seeing,you are engaged in conceptual thought.

Perceptual Development in InfancyThere are two broad classes of data on perceptual development that might beused to claim that infants have a conceptual (nonsensorimotor) form of represen-tation available to them. One of these is the work on the development of faceschemas and other perceptual categories; the other is the work on the earlydevelopment of the object concept. I will discuss these briefly in turn.

A number of investigators have shown that infants process and categorizeobjects in ways that seem quite similar to adult perceptual processing (see Cohen& Younger, 1983). Infants form perceptual prototypes (Strauss, 1979), are re-sponsive to correlated attributes of objects (Younger & Cohen, 1983), can ab-stract a property of “twoness” from varied sets of objects (Starkey & Cooper,1980), and have gender-based categories of faces (Fagan & Singer, 1979). It isimportant to note, however, that these findings all come from perceptual recogni-tion experiments. Such data do not tell us that infants have formed accessibleconcepts about faces, number, or gender (see Lewis & Strauss, 1986).


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118 Jean M. Mandler

dogs are. not just the ability to distinguish a dog shape or doglike way of movingfrom that of a cat shape or catlike way of moving. I Objects that adults classify asbasic level may or may not be the first kinds of things for which the infant formsconcepts (Mandler & Bauer, in press), but to say that the infant has formed abasic-level concept is to say at the least that the infant has some small packet ofaccessible knowledge above and beyond what the object looks like. Perhaps itwould be advisable to reject the term lxrsic-level mtrgorization to refer to thekinds of perceptual schemas being formed in infancy. If the term per-c~~pruc11schemas was used instead of perceptual cutrgorics. then, like the notion ofmotor schemas, we would not be inclined to impute conceptual knowledge tothem.

If perceptual schemas do not necessarily implicate other than a sensorimotorform of representation, what about recent data indicating that infants know agreat deal more about objects than has been traditionally ascribed to them’? Wehave learned that infants perceive objects as bounded and unitary (Spelke. 1985),use cross-modal patterns of information to identify objects (Gibson & Spelke,1983), and perceive causal relations among moving objects as well (Leslie &Keeble, 1987). The data are robust and impressive, but their theoretical implica-tions have not been entirely clear. Much of this literature has used the termsperception, apprehension. and conception of objects interchangeably (e.g., Kell-man & Spelke, 1983).” Although early concepts about objects are undoubtedlyderived from perceptual input, the data of Spelke and others do not in and ofthemselves speak to conceptual knowledge as defined here. To say that aninherent conception of the physical world determines infant perception (Spelke,1985) may mean no more than that the system is preset to parse the perceptualarray into objects rather than, say, colored patches. There is nothing antithetic tothe notion of an exclusively sensorimotor form of representation in this view. Tosay that the starting parameters of the perceptual system produce object percep-tion rather than patch perception does deemphasize one type of constructiveactivity that was a focus of Piaget’s theory of sensorimotor development, but thisapproach does not require conscious access to such information on the part of theinfant. Nor does it require a symbolic, or conceptual, form of representation orthe ability to think about objects in their absence.

In sum, the current data on early object perception are not inherently incom-patible with the notion of a sensorimotor stage. On the other hand, there are sometypes of data, having to do with conceptual functioning, that are incompatible

1 Nelson 1974, 1985) has ong argued hat even earlyconceprs re based on knowledge offunction.Morerecently, eslie 1986) andKeil (1987)alsoaffirmed he heory-based ature f earlyconcepts.

2 Recently, ellman 1988) andSpeike 1988)havediscussedhese ssuesn moredetail; el lmanalso concludes that the phen ome na of early object perception can be han dled within a strictly perceptual

theory.


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

Conceptual Development in InfancyOne of the important distinctions Piaget made between sensorimotor and concep-tual representation was that the latter required a symbol system. That is, to accessa concept requires a symbol to refer to it.j Piaget claimed that until such time asinfants can fomi symbols. they are restricted in their mental life to sensorimotorprocedures; they can recognize and act on things but are said to have no capacityto recall, to image, to anticipate the future in any explicit way, or to refer tothings.

It is less clear in this view whether infants can be said to be forming conceptsor not. That is, Piaget was not explicit as to whether symbols are required forforming concepts or only for accessing and manipulating them. In either case,Piaget considered the acquisition of the ability to symbolize to be a long, slowprocess. He did not suggest that symbols appear out of thin air at the end of thesensorimotor stage; rather. they were said to be the culmination of a gradualtransfomlation of sensorimotor information that extends over many months.Protracted acquisition of the ability to symbolize, however, raises a number ofquestions. particularly about the storage of information in a conceptual form. Forexample, what kind of conceptual information is being stored, and /tow is itstored before the process of symbolization is complete‘? This is the same questionas raised above: are symbols required for storing knowledge in an accessibleconceptual system as well as for accessing it? And, if symbols are not requiredfor storage but only for access, what is the information like that is being stored’?That is, while one is developing symbols and has some crude approximation tothem but not yet the real thing, does the knowledge being partially or imperfectlysymbolized get lost. does it get integrated with sensorimotor schemas, or what’?These are crucial issues to consider. If one posits a system with a qualitative shiftfrom one form of representation to another, not only must one trace the develop-ment of the means to access infomlation from the “new” system (as Piaget didwith his discussion of symbols), but one must also characterize the nature of theinformation that has been stored there over time.

The position taken here is that the information stored in an accessible knowl-edge system must be laid down in a symbolic. code in the first place. How thatmight be done in infancy, along with a few comments about the possible natureof that code, are discussed later in the section “The Conditions of ConsciousAccess.” The present section and the next concentrate on the issue of the sym-

3 This is not an indisputab le notion; for examp le. current conncctionist theories do not use

symbol systems (Rumelhart & McC lelland, 1986). On the other hand, connectionist theories have not

yet tackled the prob lem of wha t is required for access of inform ation to consciousness. In gen eral,

this class of mod els seems better able to han dle sensorimotor processing than conceptual thought.


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120 Jean M. Mandler

bols that might be available to infants for purposes of access ing information fromsuch a store. In particular, W C arc looking for signs in infancy of conceptual

functioning. as indexed by any type of sym bolic activity.

It is important to be clear that I am using the term .ry/nbo/ as a vehicle ofthought and not to refer to a mea ns of com mun ication or external referencing,

suc h as found in language or pointing. For purposes of understanding earlyconceptual acc ess . we need to maintain some thing like Piaget’s usage as the m ost

general term to refer to signifiers of meaning. Indeed. Piagct spcculatcd that the

earliest and m ost primitive form o f sym bol or signifier is merely an inlagc.J

Therefore, W C cannot equate early gestures. conventional signs. or words w ith

symb olization in this scn sc. When we obs crvc an infant m aking a conventionalgesture or sign, we arc seeing an already advanced form of signification, oneinfluenced by both com mu nicative needs and cultural transm ission. Thu s, al-

though conventional gestures and words provide convincing cvidenc c for sym -

bolic thought. the fact that they occur relatively late is not in itself evidence that

sym bolic or conceptual activity does not exist at an earlier period.

The first conventional gestures typically begin around 9 mo nths and words

around 10 mo nths; there arc, howev er. two types of observation that sugge stsym bolic or signifying activity at earlier ages. The first of these is wha t Piagetcalled motor recognition. Piagct observed that, from 5 to 6 mo nths of age. his

children would spontaneously ma ke an abbreviated mo tor response to a familiar

object. For exam ple, from across the room Lucienne caught sight of a familiar

toy that used to be in her crib; she then m ade an abbreviated version of thekicking mo vem ent she had typically performed when interacting with the toy.

Piaget considered this phenomenon to be only a precursor of genuine sym bolic

activity because it wa s a partial recreation of an established scnsorim otor ac-tivity. (Of course, we would have no mea ns of observing sym bolic activity if it

were not accomp anied by an external fomi of som e sort.) Nevertheless, he

described mo tor recognition as a case of the child taking note of and classifyingan object, expressing understanding of it to herself by using an associated bodily

mo vem ent to characterize it. Thu s, this type of gesture see ms to refer to a

concep t of a particular object; as Piaget pointed out, it appears to be a com m ent,

such as, “Oh, there’s that toy.” This is the kind of com me nt that we usually

J This usage of the term swbol differs from th at of Peirce (1933 ; see Ba~cs. 197 9a. for discus-

sion). In Peirce’s termin ology , it is the term .Gpt that is used for the broadest category of referen tialfunctions, with symbol being restricted IO signs that have conventional me aning. In Pcirce’s usage. as

in almost all discussions of symbolic developm ent, symbols are inextricably bound up with commu-

nication. Piaget’s terminology and the one followed here is aligne d instead with that of Whitehcad

(1928; see New ell, 1980, for discussion). Whitehead (1928) says, “The hum an min d is functioning

symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs. emotions. and

usages, respecting other com ponen ts of its experience. The former set of com ponen ts are the ‘sym-

bols,’ and the latter set constitute the ‘me anin g’ of the symbols. The organic functioning whereby

there is transition from the symbol to the me aning will be called ‘symbolic reference”’ (p, 9).


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associate with an accessible knowledge system, as opposed to mere perceptualrecognition.

The other type of observation indicating symbolic or signifying activity at anearly age comes from the literature on the early acquisition of manual signs byinfants learning sign language, such as American Sign Language (ASL). It hasbeen noted by a number of authors that such signs begin to appear earlier (oftenfrom 5% to 7 months) than do spoken words in infants learning an aural language(e.g., Bonvillian, Orlansky, & Novack, 1983; Prinz & Prinz, 1979). The statusof these early signs vis-a-vis language acquisition is unclear (see Bates, O’Con-nell, & Shore, 1987), but the issue here is not language but whether or not suchmanual gestures implicate an underlying conceptual system at work.

There has not been much information in the literature on the contexts sur-rounding the first appearance of manual signs (or precursors of signs). This isunfortunate, because it seems worthwhile to try to relate imitative gestures basedon observation of others, which is the origin of ASL signs, to the gestures basedon the child’s own actions toward an object, which is the phenomenon of motorrecognition that Piaget described. However, Elissa Newport (personal commu-nication, 1987) has described in some detail the history of the first sign used byher daughter. Susanna. Susanna is growing up bilingual in English and ASL. Thefirst recognizable sign that she produced was the gesture meaning “finished.” Ithad been used many times by her parents at the end of meals and. between 5 and6 months of age, she began using it herself at the end of a meal. Although clearlyimitative in origin, it might not have had any symbolic or conceptual import atthat point and may have been no different than putting her face up to be wiped(that is, a kind of motor anticipation). But, at 7 months, Susanna began using thisgesture when she didn’t want to eat any more, turning her head away from thelooming spoon while she executed it. It is much harder in the latter case to ignorethe conceptual (nonsensorimotor) implications of the use of a gesture to express adesired state of affairs.”

This and other examples of early manual signing bear a strong resemblance toPiaget’s description of motor recognition. There may be no important distinctionbetween referring to or making a comment about something by means of one’sown typical action or by means of imitating another’s typical action. In eithercase, concepts are being explicitly represented and, apparently, both routes tosuch expression are available to 6-month-old infants.

Such early symbolic or conceptual functioning is the first that has actually

5 The exam ple also strongly suggesls communicarivc inrcnt. Althou gh the latter is beyond the

scope of this discussion, it is of intcrcst that possibly separate strands o f com mun ication and

reference may be coming together at this point in dcvclopmenl. Com municative intent is present in

infants from perhap s as early as2 IO 3 mon ths (c.g.. Trevarihcn. 1977 ). bu t it has gen erally bee n

described as contentlcss (Newson . 1977 ). In the prcscnt exa mp le, the infan t scans to bc com mun icat-

ing content, not just making comm unicative contact with the parents.


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been observed. However, we have no reason to assume that there is no concep-tual functioning before the onset of the ability to express concepts throughgesture. Piaget’s hypothesis that imagery is the earliest form of symbolizationplaces signification where it rightly belongs-in the mental, not gestural orvocal. sphere. He believed, of course, that imagery is a late-blooming process,not present until the second year of life. Before this time, infants were said tohave only contentless expectations of anticipated events. However, Piaget citedno evidence for this position. and 1 think we can discern evidence against it.

The most damaging evidence against the notion of an imageless infant wouldbe the demonstration of the ability to recall. Piaget defined recall as the evocationof absent objects, a definition similar to that most of us would espouse: theability to re-present to our conscious minds something experienced before, in theabsence of any current perceptual support. By this definition. recall requires animage or other type of symbol or signifier to refer to the absent object. Also, bydefinition, if the infant is able to recall absent objects, it must have an accessibleknowledge system. Thus, although we cannot observe conceptual thought di-rectly, if we can observe behavior that could occur only if conceptual thoughtwere possible, we can deduce that underlying conceptual activity is taking place.

It was for this reason, I believe, that Piaget was at some pains to suggest thatbefore Stage VI infants have not yet acquired the capacity for imagery (Piaget,1951). If infants can image something, they have a potential symbol at theirdisposal for use in recall or in other types of thinking that is independent ofongoing sensorimotor routines. In fact, the onset of recall was for Piaget thehallmark of the borderline between the sensorimotor and the conceptual stages.Therefore, Piaget posited that the onset of imagery is a late development. the endpoint of a long period during which only imageless anticipation is possible.Because imagery is so difficult to study directly (even in adults), the best way totackle the problem would seem to be to study recall. Demonstrating recall inpreverbal infants is also not easy but, if successful, it would demonstrate anaccessible conceptual system. as well as imagery or some other symbolic form ofrepresentation.

Recall in InfancyWhat evidence is there for a capacity to recall in the first year of life? Theexisting evidence comes mostly from the second 6 months, some of it fromPiaget’s own observations. For example, he noted that from 6 months onward ifone of his children placed an object behind her. a little later she might reacharound to retrieve it. He called this a deferred circular reaction, and classified itas a sensorimotor schema (Piaget, 1952). It seems unlikely, however. that suchbehavior could be explained as the operation of a simple motor procedure,whether delayed or not, or by the notion that an object is conceived as anextension of a reaching movement. What set the procedure off’? Why did it occuronly when an object had been deposited at a given place’? Gratch (1975) has


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pointed out that infants do not search in the A-not-B paradigm when no objecthas been hidden, thus making the hypothesis that they frequently reach out fornonexistent objects unlikely.h Thus, something has to set the reaching procedurein operation and, because of the variable, even unique, aspects of this kind ofsituation, it cannot be the motor anticipation found in practiced routines. It seemsfar more like ly that what sets the procedure off is recall-the infant rememberswhere the object is (see Sophian, 1980, for a similar argument). The infant mayor may not explicitly conceptualize the abandoned object itself-she mightmerely recall that something was there or that she had put something there. Ineither case, the infant would be recalling a fact (which might be glossed as “Mydoll is behind me” or “1 put something behind me”). Such a fact must havebeen recovered from an accessible store of facts, that is, from a nonsensorimotorstore of information.

An explicit conceptualization seems even more likely to be required in someof the examples of recall of location reported by Ashmead and Perlmutter (1979,1980) in children as young as 7 months (the earliest age they studied). Further-more, these examples often concern unique occurrences. In one, a 9-month-oldgirl was described as being accustomed to play with ribbons kept in the bottomdrawer of a dresser. One day the girl crawled to the dresser and opened thebottom drawer but found no ribbons. She then opened all the drawers until shefound the ribbons, which had been moved to the top drawer. The next day shecrawled to the dresser and immediately opened the top drawer and took out theribbons. It would be difficult to explain this performance in terms of contentlessexpectation followed by recognition. It seems to require an explicit concep-tualization of the new location of the ribbons. Even if one could couch thisbehavior in terms of a familiar routine, one would be left with the necessity ofexplaining how the infant updated her usual procedure so easily. This would notbe easy within the Piagetian theory of a still incomplete concept of the object atthis point in development and the likelihood of an A-not-B error in establishedreaching routines. Note that this example and the example of deferred circularreactions just described probably illustrate reminding rather than a deliberatesearch of memory. However, reminding is a respectable form of recall (see J.Mandler, 1984a) and, whether incidental or deliberate, recall by definition re-quires an accessible knowledge representation.

Another type of evidence for recall during this period comes from recent workon deferred imitation (Meltzoff, 1988). It has been widely assumed that deferredimitation does not occur until approximately 18 months. However. in a carefullycontrolled experiment, Meltzoff found that 9-month-olds could imitate threedifferent actions that they had seen perfomled 24 hours earlier. The infants hadnot been given the opportunity to perform the actions themselves, so they must

h The A-not-B error is said to occur when an infant, having watched an object hidde n at location

A and successfully finding it, reaches aga in to A after watching the object hidde n at location B.


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124 Jean M. Mandler

have recalled what they had seen the day before rather than merely reproducing apreviously learned action schema. It is of particular interest that the infantsperformed just as well after 24 hours as they did after a delay of a few minutes.Although the relevant experiments have not yet been carried out, it seems likelythat if 9-month-olds can recall several new actions after 24 hours. youngerinfants could recall similar actions over shorter delays.

There are a few other pieces of experimental work suggesting recall at evenearlier ages, although the delays that have been used are quite short. An experi-ment by Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985) was designed to show that5-month-olds know something about the permanence of objects, but it alsocontains data re evant to the ability to recall. Infants were shown an opaquescreen that rested on a table in front of them. The screen slowly rotated awayfrom the child through 180” until it again rested flat on the table; then it rotatedback to its original position. After the infant habituated to this rotating display, abox was moved behind the screen while the infant watched. Then the screenstarted rotating again. It either made the exact rotation as before or else movedbackward through 120”. stopping at the point where it would have hit the box.then moved forward again. Even though the latter display was different fromamything seen during habituation, the infants dishabituated only a little, whereasthey dishabituated much more to the 180” movement that was exactly the SCIIHC sthey had seen before. This is one of those rare cases in which it, is legitimate touse dishabituation or surprise to infer something more than recognition. If onlyrecognitory processes were at work, the infant should have continued to habitu-ate to the test display. Thus, the most likely explanation for this finding is thatthe infant remembered the box was there-hidden behind the screen-and wassurprised to see the screen move through the space where the box should be.Recently, Baillargeon (1987) has shown that 4-month-olds also pass these tests,although only some 3-month-olds do.

Similar experiments have shown that infants not only remember that some-thing is hidden behind the screen but also where it is located. Baillargeon (1986)habituated 6- and 8-month-olds to a car running down a track. Then a box wasplaced either on the track or behind it. Next. a screen was lowered, hiding theportion of the track where the block had been placed, and the car was again sentdown the track. Even though they could not see the block, infants dishabituatedto the display in the situation in which the block was on the track. but not in thesituation in which the block was behind the track. These data indicate quiteaccurate memory for where the block had been placed. Although involving ashorter time span, this work provides an experimental verification of the type ofobservational evidence provided by Ashmead and Perlmutter (1979. 1980).

The delays in these experiments were short. For example, in the Baillargeonbox and screen experiments, on each of the “impossible” trials the Uox was onlyout of view for 8 s. Perhaps one could explain this kind of performance in ternIsof some type of perceptual inference, but a delay of even 8 s seems too long for


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How to Build a Baby 125

such an explanation. The infant must remember that something out of sight isstill there. Thus, even with short delays, the data suggest a re-presentationalresponse rather than a sensorimotor response to a presentation. In addition,Leslie (1988) has pointed out that perceptual input systems are impervious to thecontradiction these experiments present to an observer. and so some kind ofcentral thought must be involved. Therefore, recall seems a more appropriateterm than perceptual inference, although some might prefer the language ofrunning a mental model of past events, a model that conflicts with the presentperception. Either interpretation, however, requires an accessible representa-tional system.

Actually, the length of the period of holding something in mind for the 4- and5-month-olds in the Baillargeon experiments is longer than one might predict onthe basis of recent data on the A-not-B search task (Diamond, 1985). Thisparadigm has been treated as a kind of recall task because of the persistentsearching for an absent object that it evokes (Sophian, 1980). Diamond (1985)charted the delays that infants can tolerate in finding a hidden object from about 6months of age. At first, a delay of 2 or 3 s is sufficient to cause an error, with thelength of tolerable delay increasing slowly by about 2 s a month. For whateverdelay a given infant can handle, increasing it increases the likelihood of error andlessening it eliminates the error. It looks as if the error occurs whenever the delayis greater than the short-term memory span of the infant. However, as Diamondpointed out, infants who know where the object is (because the covers of thehiding places are transparent) or who can accurately remember where it is hiddenmay still reach incorrectly because of a failure to inhibit the previously trained,successful motor response. Not only did the infants typically correct their wrongchoices, sometimes when they uncovered the wrong well, they didn’t evenbother to look in it but immediately reached to the correct spot. They alsosometimes looked intently at the correct hiding spot even as their hand reached tothe wrong place.

We see such discrepancies even in adults when conditioned expectations ormotor responses have been set up. A nice demonstration of this is an experimentby Chromiak and Weisberg (1981). who adapted a technique used by Bower,Broughton, and Moore (197 1) and Nelson (197 1) with infants. In these experi-ments, infants watched a train running along a track, entering a tunnel, and thenreappearing at the other end. Over a period of trials, the infants learned toanticipate the train coming out the end of the tunnel, and their eyes would moveahead in preparation for the sight. If the train stopped in full view before enteringthe tunnel, the infants still moved their eyes to the end of the tunnel. Does thisfinding mean that the infants thought the train could be in two places at once’?Not necessarily. Chromiak and Weisberg (1981) found that adults did the samething. Once the conditioned expectation was set up, their eyes also moved to theend of the track when the train stopped in full view.

For purposes of the present discussion, the point is that if we want to assess


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concepts available to be elaborated. The infant must rely on perceptual analysisto begin the creation of such concepts.

Perceptual analysis, which makes up a sizeable part of our conscious ideationin adulthood, might be quite primitive in the newborn. And, due to the imma-turity of the central nervous system in the first few months of life, the results ofsuch comparison processes might not make it into long-term storage and thuswould not bc accessible later. Nevertheless, 1 suggest that there are signs of suchanalysis occurring from an early age and, by the second 6 months of life,perceptual analysis constitutes an important part of the child’s mental activity.

The second part of this formulation states that the results of perceptual analy-sis (and, in the preverbal child, only the results of such analysis) are stored in anaccessible representational system. In this view, it is not possible even for adultsto access the information that, say, apples are red, unless they have been told thatthis is the case. or they have had occasion to have noticed and thought about thecolor of apples. The latter means that some comparison has taken place, such asnoting that apples look like oranges except for their color, or that apples look liketomatoes, and so forth.7 Under many circumstances, we do not make suchcomparisons. That is why we cannot recall surprisingly many details of ourexperiences (the color of the clothes your dinner companion wore last night,whether or not a newly met acquaintance wears glasses, and countless otherexamples). We negotiate the world without storing many of its aspects in ouraccessible conceptual store, because our sensorimotor procedures carry us alongso effectively, and because our conscious attention is reserved for less mundanematters. The newborn presumably finds lit tle that is mundane.

In the newborn, the conceptual primitives that are available with which tomake any such comparisons seem likely to be both few in number and global incharacter. How might the sight and feel of a nipple be conceptualized’? We knowfrom the work of Meltzoff and Borton ( 1979) that the perceptual system iscapable of fairly complex intermodal recognition of the roughness or smoothnessof a nipple. But, even as adults, we tend to be reduced in our conceptunlizationof such differences to fairly global notions of bumps and glides. How much moreprimitive an infant’s early conceptualization of nipples might be is difficult tosay. And, given the language-saturated character of adult concepts, it is apt to beextremely difficult for the theorist to begin to characterize the conceptual primi-tives of the newborn.* The point to be emphasized here, however, is that the

’ One cannot arrive at this information de noro merely by scanning an imag e of an apple, because

the ima ge itself is constructed from processes of percep tual analysis. If you have never notice d that

Gemran Shepherds have cars that stand up in a certain way, you can not answer Kosslyn’s (1980)

famous question. except by guessing. Typically. of course. we do not remember whether or not we

ever noticed such ears; we inspect our image and either do or do not find the answer.

s This is a difficulty that cann ot be escaped by any theory because the earliest concepts, when ever

and however formed. will present fomridab le problems of description. Such problems will exist

wheth er the description is couched in low-lev el symb olic terms (e.g., L eslie, in press) or, as

suggested here, in terms more appropriate to conscious thought.


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128 lean M. Mandler

sensory information used to make the perceptual discrimination must not only bereduced but also must be encoded into a different representational format if aconcqt of nipple is to be formed.

The notion of perceptual analysis can be related to Werner and Kaplan’s(1963)concept of a “contemplative attitude” toward objects. Werner and Ka-plan discerned the beginnings of this differentiation between acting on objectsand regarding or contemplating them as early as 3 to 5 months of age. However,because they defined contemplation as being opposed to action, they assumedthat a true attitude of contemplation could not emerge as long as the infant wasspending time reaching for and manipulating objects. To my knowledge, there isno evidence that motor activity and contemplation are antithetical; on the con-trary, when infants examine objects, they often combine intense looking withmanual manipulation (Ruff, 1986; Uzgiris, 1967).

Beyond observing intense concentration, it is difficult to know how to mea-sure perceptual analysis (as opposed to mere seeing) in a preverbal person. Piagetused a detailed observational analysis of complex imitative behavior in infants atstage IV and beyond to document such analysis. There are also a few examples inthe experimental literature that suggest such analysis is going on. For example,Fox, Kagan, and Weiskopf (1979) report that before 6 to 7 months, infantsmerely look at a new toy when a pair of toys-one old and one new-ispresented to them. After that time, they increasingly look back and forth betweenthe two. In the behaviorist period of psychology, this was called vicarious trialand error, or VTE behavior. a term that comfortably externalized a mentalcomparison process.

A good example of such behavior in infants is provided by Janowsky (1985).She presented to infants a pair of line drawings of faces for six trials; one of thesewas a canonically arranged face, the other was scrambled. Following thesepresentations, the infants were habituated to the normal face. Then they weregiven six more trials of the paired comparison between the normal and scrambledface. A longitudinal design was used, with the infants being tested first at 4months and then at 8 months. On most measures, there were no significantdifferences between the two ages. At both ages, the children preferred the normalface in the initial paired comparison, took about the same amount of time tohabituate, and looked at the stimuli about the same amount of time during thecomparison trials. However, there was a large difference between the two ages inthe number of times the infants looked back and forth between the two stimuli onthe first trial of the paired-comparison tests. 9 At 4 months, the infants switchedtheir looking back and forth between the two stimuli on average 1.7 and I.8times, respectively, on the first trial of the pre- and posttests. Thus, they didsome comparing of the two stimuli but did not increase the amount of com-

9 The data eponed here are irsI-trial ooking imes.extractedrom the overall ooking imes ornormal nfants eponed n Janowsky 1985).Each rial lasted for 8 s.


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How to Build a Baby 129

parison after familiarization with one of the stimuli. At 8 months, on the otherhand, they switched back and forth between the two stimuli on average 2.8 and4.5 times, respectively. on the pre- and posttests. Thus, when they were older,infants compared the faces init ially more than they did at the younger age;furthermore, when they became accustomed to one stimulus and then were givena new opportunity to compare it to another, they did so at a rate two and a halftimes greater than they did when they were younger. I0

The kind of comparison process that these data indicate is different from thesimpler process of recognition. As discussed earlier, habituation to an old stim-ulus and dishabituation to a new one happen from birth, but a change in arecognitory procedure does not itself imply the accessing of information from anaccessible knowledge store, nor does it imply awareness or consciousness offamiliarity or novelty. Although awareness of familiarity r?rnybe present from ayoung age, infant recognition data can be explained equally well without it.”Active comparison of two objects, on the other hand, seems likely to requireconscious awareness; it represents the kind of mental activity that consciousnessis ideally suited for (G. Mandler, 1985). Whether or not the act of analysis itselfis conscious, however, the findings described by Fox et al. (1979) and byJanowsky ( 1985) seem to be good examples of the kind of active analysis ofobjects and events that Piaget thought was required for image formation. Heinsisted that such analysis occurred only at a later age, but his own observationsof earlier imitation seem equally amenable to explanation in terms of perceptualanalysis.

I think it likely that Piaget and lnhelder (197 I) were correct in assuming thatimages are not formed through repeated perception alone (although the hypoth-esis remains untested). However, they provided no evidence that the perceptualanalysis required for image formation is such a late-blooming process. Piaget’scareful descriptions of his children, between the ages of 8 months and 1 year,learning to imitate blinking their eyes and sticking out tongues, are replete withobservations suggesting that the infants were actively trying to analyze what themodel was doing. However, the analysis involved in understanding such com-plex activities is just as apparent in his descriptions of imitation of simpleractivities at earlier ages. In addition, the examining schema, in which objects are

lo 1 assume that a similar kind of perceptual comparison is also responsible for the onset of

stranger anxiety at around 6 to 7 months. II appears that the stranger ’s appearance is being compared(unfavorably) with an accessible represen tation of the absen t moth er or other fam iliar caretaker (see

Kagan, 1979).

I’ This is one of the reasons why infant habitua tion studies cannot easily b e compared to adu lt

recog nition tests. Adu lts are required to scry that they hav e seen a stimulus before; that is. the adu lt

form of the recog nition test requires conscious awareness of fam iliarity. When the adults are am-

nesic, they often cannot attest to the familiarily of a stimulus, and some sort of priming test must be

used to show that the stimulus is familiar (e.g., Shim amu ra. 1986): such a test is similar in spirit to

the habituation-disha bituation studies conducted with infants.


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130 Jean M. Mandler

intensively explored from many angles, is already well established by 7 months(Ruff. 1986).

For perceptual analysis to be said to have taken place. Piaget required thatsomething ,teup be imitated, and preferably something seen that the infant couldnot observe herself doing. However, even imitating something familiar requiresperceptual analysis. For example, Piaget’s children could imitate clapping handsin the 4th month. Piaget (195 I) accounted for this phenomenon by noting that,when the infant “becomes capable of co-ordinating the movements of his handswith his vision, he acquires simultaneously the power of imitating certain move-ments of other hands, by assimilating them to his own” (p. 14). But the assimila-tion required is not so simple. Some analysis must be required to make theconnection between large hands seen from in front and small hands seen fromabove (see Meltzoff. 1981).

Piaget used the language of deliberate attention to describe his infants’ at-tempts at imitation as early as Stage II. He spoke of them watching him carefullyor attentively and of studying their own actions, of engaging in intentionalreproduction. He was not using this language in any technical sense, of course.But it is suggestive that the tenor of his descriptions does not vary in this regardfrom the imitative phenomena he described at 3 months to that occurring at Iyear or beyond.

Careful examination of Piaget’s account of the imitation occurring even in theearly months shows many examples indicating the process 1 have called percep-tual analysis. It involves close attention to. and examination of. one or morestimuli. It does not seem to differ in kind whether the behavior to be imitated isold or new to the infant. although, in the latter case, the process is more drawnout and therefore somewhat more obvious. Indeed, infant imitation of the inten-tional, voluntary type that Piaget described (as opposed to what may be morereflexive “imitative” responding in the neonate) seems to be an example parexcellence of the early sources of an accessible knowledge system.

In the view of the mind being propounded here, sensorimotor representation isnever consciously accessible as such (G. Mandler. 1985; J. Mandler. 1984a.1984b: Marcel, 1983). When we introspect about our sensorimotor procedures,we do not actually observe the procedures themselves, only their products. Whenwe try to observe the mechanisms at work, the best we can do is to engage inperceptual analysis to try to isolate some of the parts. But, even with practice, theresulting observations are always filtered through consciousness and the conceptsit uses to make sense of the world. For example, as you watch yourself tie ashoelace, you note that you make a loop and then pull the other lace around it.(Even watching carefully. however. you may not be able to conceptualize whathappens in the middle of this procedure). But, think of those concepts: tie, lace,and loop. These are not the terms of a sensorimotor system-they are theconcepts of a conscious observing mind, using a system of previously developedand accessible categories of thought. These concepts are also heavily verbally


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saturated, but, as we have seen, that is not a requirement for an accessiblerepresentational system. At the same time, it should be noted that verbal infor-mation is already prepackaged (by virtue of its symbolic fomrat) to be stored insuch a system. and much of our accessible knowledge arrives in the declarativestore by that route.

What 1 am proposing, then, is that verbal information and the results ofperceptual analysis or comparison are stored in a conceptual knowledge system,and that this is the only kind of information that is accessible for purposes ofrecall or conscious thought. I further assume that the availability of such a systemis a prerequisite for conscious awareness. I7 Sensorimotor procedures, as well asthe procedures involved in retrieval, semantic activation, lexical access, and thelike, are not accessible, although we can and do observe various way stations inprocessing and make theories from them about how our minds work (G. Man-dler, 1985). We typically assume that the taking of such a theoretical stance is anadult activity; however, even the simple conceptual attributions of the infant areformed out of the same sort of activity: conscious constructions that are funda-mentally different from sensory registration.

It is obvious that I have been arguing for a dual representational system. I dothis even though the extent to which we must distinguish between procedural anddeclarative knowledge is still under debate. and the new connectionist movementhopes to model all cognition with a single type of nonsymbolic process (e.g.,Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). In spite of the controversies, however, mysense is that most psychologists believe there must be more than one representa-tional format to the human mind. Reaching for an object is fundamentally differ-ent from having an image of that object, just as the perception of a face isfundamentally different from the concept of justice. One does not need theevidence of dissociations between procedural/implicit and declarative/explicitknowledge in amnesia that has been adduced to support the distinction I havebeen discussing (e.g., Cohen & Squire, 1980). The distinction is present in mostof the psychological phenomena we study (and in any theory that emphasizes theimpenetrability of various processes, e.g., Fodor, 1983).

Perceptual learning does not require awareness (e.g., Lewicki, Czyzewska, &Hoffman, 1987) and conscious a:tempts to influence such learning often distortor impede it (e.g., Berry & Broadbent, in press; Reber, Kassin, Lewis, &Cantor, 1980). Recall requires different processes from recognition, andawareness that something has been presented requires different processes from

I2 The availability of such a system may also accnunt for the superiority of observational learning

in human s compared with nonhum an-especially nonprimate-species (see Bates, 1979 b3. In this

regard. it may be noted thar Premack’s work on chimpanzees stronglysuggests that the basic

capacities ascribed IO infants in this article also characterize that species (e.g., Premack. 1983 ). That

there arc differences. as well. is not in doubt. bur they do not stem to be due lo a lack of a capacity IO

imag e. conceptualize, or be conscious.


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132 Jean M. Mandler

priming (Graf & Mandler, 1984; Mandler, Nakamura, & Van Zandt, 1987).Schema formation depends on accurate processing of frequency information, butour conscious judgments about frequency are biased by the rare or unusual eventsthat have caught our attention, often leading to gross errors of judgment (e.g.,Hamilton & Gifford, 1976: J. Mandler, 1984b. p. 35). Our motor proceduresfaithfully reflect the laws of physics, but our theories of physical movement areoften fundamentally opposed to them (disessa, 1982; McCloskey & Kohl,1983). The examples are everywhere and do not need to be as dramatic as thedouble dissociations of amnesia or the misrepresentation of the number of fingerson the hand in cultures that do not emphasize counting (Pontius. 1983).

We pay lip service to the principle, espoused by Nisbett and Wilson (1977),that people tell (both themselves and others) more about their mental processesthan they really know, but I think we do not take the principle seriously enough.There is much in our mental life that we cann ot in principle observe; it is simplyinaccessible. All procedural knowledge is of this sort, and that includes sen-sorimotor procedures as well as activation of semantic networks, priming, re-trieval. and the like. Only some kinds of perceptions and memories are accessi-ble. and these must be organized differently from sensorimotor knowledge. If weare to take the concepts of accessibility and inaccessibility seriously. there mustbe more than one form of representation. None of this means that sensorimotorand conceptual knowledge are not interconnected or that they do not influenceeach other; they obviously do. The perceptual system provides the informationthat gets interpreted conceptually. and’ the conceptual system often detemlineswhat gets perceptually processed. So, it is just as reasonable to speak of a single,multifaceted representational system. The temlinology doesn’t matter, but howone acquires and stores the two kinds of knowledge does.

Is it possible that conceptual knowledge grows out of sensorimotor knowl-edge. that by practicing and integrating perceptual and motor schemas longenough they are finally rendered directly accessible’? This is the essence of theproposal for a sensorimotor stage as the foundation of later conceptual knowl-edge, as well as for many proposals as to why metacognitive knowledge growswith development. I am dubious that things work in this way. It seems muchmore likely that we gradually foml theories about the way our sensorimotorprocedures work and, with increasingly detailed perceptual analysis. these tendto become more elaborate and systematic, not that we have the possibility ofaccess that was not there before.i3

I3 Karm iloff-Smith (1986) proposed that during the syskmarization of complex cognitive sys-

tems, procedural knowledg e undergoes several levels of symbolic redescription. She also claims that

there is no direct access lo procedural knowledg e itself: relationships within these systems become

accessible to consciousness only after connections have been formed a mon g previously isolated

procedural parts and these conneclions have been described. Karm iloff-Smith has notappliedhertheory to the que stion of access to the muc h simp ler concepts of infancy. It is poss ible to translate the

notio n of perce ptual analysis, as described in the present article. as a type of redescription of

infom labon delivered by the perceptual input systems.


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Thus, the main issue is whether or not we must start infants off with thecapacity to form concepts and to store them in a potentially accessible format. Itis for this reason that I have stressed the issue of recall in infancy. If it is the casethat infants can store information accessibly, then we should see some signs of it,at least by the time that the central nervous system has reached a certain level ofmaturity. 1 have presented evidence that there are such signs by 6 months or evenearlier. Such knowledge may be quite context bound, but that does not mean thatit is solely sensorimotor in nature. In fact, when I think about how to build ababy, I find no way to proceed without the possibility of access o some kinds ofinformation from the beginning. It is difficult to imagine a purely sensorimotororganism, which stores information only by modifying procedures, suddenlybegin to make those procedures accessible to consciousness. There must be asystem that does the accessing, and so we have posited the system whose cre-ation we are trying to explain.

We need a mechanism to accomplish the storage of information in accessibleform. 1 have suggested that the earliest mechanism is perceptual analysis orcomparison. When we just see we are unconscious-it is only when we analyzeor compare that we become fully aware human beings. It seems more reasonable(and consonant with the available data) to say that we are born with the capacityto engage in perceptual analysis and to store its results in an accessible form thanto say that this capacity depends on a prior history of sensorimotor functioning.

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