Mental Imaginery in the Child

Selected Works vol 6

Jean Piaget

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136221958
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1997. Volume 6 in the series titled Jean Piaget: Selected Works. The authors of this title, having studied all aspects of the development of intellectual operations, and having attempted to analyse some of the characteristics of perceptual development, felt it was necessary to tackle the question of the evolution of mental images. These ten chapters provide digestible commentary and discussion on the classification, reproduction, and transformation of mental images - with focus on kinetic images, anticipatory images and the spatial image.

Chapter One

Classification of Images and Statement of the Problems

In fields where a particularly clear evolution related to age exists – for instance, in the operations of the intelligence – and where such a development expresses itself as a gradual formation whose workings are relatively accessible, there is, of course, no need for preliminary classification. The description of stages and sub-stages will in itself provide the basis of a natural classification in the form of a hierarchical table. The problem of images, however, is much less straightforward, and their stages of development, if there are any, much less obvious. So in order that we may present our results, an initial classifying of the different types of image is indispensable, even if this serves only to define our terms. But such a classification will yield more than a mere system of definitions. In sorting out different categories, its main purpose will be to clarify the problems with which we are faced – in particular, the problems of filiation.

1. Outline for a classification

Images may be classified in terms of their content (i.e. they are visual, auditory, etc.), or according to their structure. This second viewpoint is the only all-inclusive one, and the only one which will concern us here. The normal adult is able to imagine static objects (a hexagon, a table, etc.), movement (e.g. the swinging of a pendulum, the accelerated downward motion of a moving body on an inclined plane), and known transformations (e.g. the dividing of a square into two rectangles). He is able, too, to anticipate in images transformations which are new to him – to anticipate, for instance, that when a square sheet of paper is twice folded into two equal parts and the point of intersection of the folds cut off, a single hole will be seen, whereas if it is folded three times into two, two holes will be seen.¹ But it is clear that these imaginal representations are not formed with the same facility in each case, and that there is therefore a hierarchy of image levels, which may correspond to stages of development, but which certainly corresponds to degrees of increasing complexity. It is these degrees of complexity which we shall attempt to sort out into a structural classification, in order to make easier the task of genetic analysis.

A basic division into two large groups emerges if images are distinguished as reproductive images (R), which evoke objects or events already known, and anticipatory images (A), which, by figural imagination, represent events – be they movements, transformations or their culmination or results – that have previously not been perceived. Simple as this basic distinction is in theory, it is not, however, so easy to apply in practice. First, one can never be certain what the subject has already perceived, and second – and most important – it may be the case that any reproduction of a transformation, of a movement, and even perhaps of a static configuration involves a certain amount of anticipation, at least when it is executed. We shall, for example, be led to conclude that even a drawing reproducing a single line presupposes the coming-into-play of some kind of anticipatory scheme.² This complicates our classification at the outset. However, this complication in itself is instructive. The purpose of our classification is, of course, to enable us to state the genetic problems properly, and the problem that comes up here is precisely that of establishing whether the image is merely the direct prolongation of perception, or whether it is a process of active internal imitation. If it is the latter, execution schemes would naturally be necessary at the start of each new image.

We shall distinguish, therefore, between two types of anticipation: ‘executional anticipation’ – when, in order to reproduce an object X that is already known or even at that moment being perceived, it is necessary to anticipate the gesture X (external or internalized), by means of which the object will be reproduced; and ‘evocational anticipation’ – when X is not already known and has itself to be anticipated. Thus we shall use the term anticipatory image (A) exclusively for those images which involve ‘evocational anticipation’, without questioning the possibility of ‘executional anticipation’ being brought into play in the case of reproductive images (R).

Having said this, we may now classify reproductive images (R) according to two aspects: their content, and their degree of internalization. As far as their content is concerned, we shall distinguish three types: static reproductive images (RS), where such images refer to a motionless object or configuration (e.g. the image of a straight line); kinetic reproductive images (RK), where they evoke a movement figurally (e.g. the reproduction of two motions of the same constant speed crossing one another); and finally reproductive images of transformations (RT), where they represent in a figural manner transformations already known to the subject (e.g. the transformation of an arc into a straight line, when the subject has already verified this in his own perceptual experience with a piece of wire whose form is modified gradually). Between the types RK and RT, there are, of course, all the intermediary types, but here we shall speak of transformation only if the moving body is changing its form, and not if it merely changes its position.

As for the types of the reproductive image varying from the point of view of internalization, we are faced with a double problem – one both of method and of theoretical interpretation. As far as method is concerned, the difficulty of getting at the mental image being what it is, there seemed to us to be only four possible procedures: a verbal description by the subject based on introspection; a drawing by the subject; a choice made by the subject from several drawings prepared by the experimenter of the one best corresponding to his mental image; and reproduction by gesture. As the verbal method cannot be used with children unless it is combined with the others, we shall rely mainly on the last three methods. Now all three raise a problem of practical interpretation, since they get at the mental image only indirectly. But they also raise a problem of theoretical interpretation, since they themselves relate directly to other forms of image (graphic, gestural, and thus non-mental or not exclusively mental images). The relationship of such images to the mental image proper needs to be established.

If the mental image is interpreted as a mere product of perception, the drawing or the gesture demanded of the subject has no relationship to that image as such, and constitutes only an approximately equivalent symbolic translation. But in the view that we shall adopt, according to which the mental image is an active and internalized imitation, there is a more or less close relationship between the mental image, the imitative gesture, and the graphic image. The mental image is the only internalized one. The imitative gesture is also an act of reproduction and thus an image, though not an internalized one. The graphic image is likewise a non-internalized image, but differs from straightforward imitation in that it is separate from the subject’s body by virtue of a process of concretization involving a particular technique (the motor factors in the pencil-stroke), though it is still in character an imitative image. It follows from this, that when we ask subjects to translate their mental image R into terms of a gesture or drawing (G or D) we are in fact asking them to express an image R in terms of other images (RG or RD). These latter are related to the first, and include certain motor factors (m) which were present already in R, but which, when they become specific, as in RG or RD, may be reflected in R or refine it, by prolonging the formative mechanism which was already in play in R. While the drawing RD is more complex than the mental image R and may therefore remain on an inferior level, the gesture RG is without doubt simpler than the mental image R itself and constitutes a kind of return to its origins.

It is easy to see, therefore, why it is necessary to classify the reproductive images R not only according to their content (static, kinetic, or transformation), but also according to their degree of internalization. The degree of internalization itself depends on two things: firstly on the more or less immediate (I), or deferred (II) character of the reproductive behaviour (R, RG or RD), and secondly on the internalization of the movements which this presupposes. That is, on the internalization which is apparent in the case of the mental image itself (R), on the possibly zero internalization in the imitative gesture (RG), although here a mental image might also be present, and on the internalization which necessarily occurs in drawing, since drawing consists in externalizing a previously internalized mental image. Even in the immediate (I) graphic copy of an external model, there occurs in varying degrees what Luquet has called an ‘internal model’.

In each of these cases it is possible to distinguish what we shall call immediate reproductive images (R I) and deferred reproductive images (R II, RG II, RD II). These last may be said to be ‘consecutional’ (i.e. occurring immediately on the disappearance of the object), or deferred for greater intervals of time. This takes us back to the problem we raised earlier concerning the distinction between reproductive images R, and anticipatory images A. It takes us back also to the allied problem of the existence of an ‘executional anticipation’ that is quite distinct from ‘evocational anticipation’. It is easy to understand what is meant by immediate gestural copies or reproductions (RG I or RD I), since they consist of the reproduction of a model which remains before the subject, and which thus makes demands of perception and not of evocation. On the other hand, is it not misleading to speak of an immediate mental image R I, since the mental image is defined as the evocation of a model without direct perception of it? But if, in a gestural or drawn copy (RG I and RD I), or merely in a drawn copy, some element of ‘executional anticipation’ is involved, and if, furthermore, the image is in fact the result of the internalization of imitative gestures, then this anticipatory execution scheme is just that – an immediate mental image R I. We shall therefore keep this term in our classification, but we must make two essential specifications regarding it. Firstly, it never exists in a pure state, but only as an integral part of a gestural reproduction (RG I or II), or of a graphic reproduction (RD I or II). Secondly, we are not dealing with an image proper, but with what we shall call a ‘fore-image’, because for one thing it cannot be isolated, and for another it precedes internalization. It will be none the less indispensable to study it (see Chapter Two), for it is the existence of this the ‘fore-image’ which seems to us best to justify the hypothesis according to which the mental image is not just a prolongation of perception, but involves an external element of active imitation which is also capable of being internalized.

Let us now turn to the anticipatory images A. We shall not distinguish static anticipatory images, but only kinetic (AK) and transformation images (AT). The reason for this is that in order to anticipate by means of an image a static position unknown to him, the child will have to take into account the movements or the transformation that lead to this position. This would be so, for example, for the final static position of a length of tube turned round in midair through 180° so that the position of its red and blue ends is reversed – in other words, so that the red end, say, would be on the child’s right before the rotation, and on his left after it. But we shall distinguish – and this is an essential distinction too from the genetic point of view – two types of transformation image. First, the transformation image – whether anticipatory AT or reproductive RT – that bears only on the result or product P of the transformation, giving either ATP or RTP; and second, the transformation image that bears on the process of modification itself M, and not merely on its result, giving RTM or ATM.³ Although the child must take this modification (M) into account in order to anticipate its result (ATP), this does not imply his being able to imagine it in detail. The image ATP may therefore be superior to the image ATM. We cannot strictly speak of the former as an anticipation of static position – though the child does of course have a tendency to impart static characteristics to his first images concerning transformation and even movement (AK), by omitting for instance the factor of continuity, etc.

There is, however, no point in trying to distinguish immediate (I) or deferred (II) varieties amongst anticipatory images, since they are all deferred. We must not forget, though, that the distinction between kinetic and transformation images is based on the fact that the former are concerned with changes of position only, the latter with changes of form only. Such a distinction is not always easy to make. It is as hard to make in fact as the distinction between reproductive transformation images (RT) and anticipatory images (AT), because any RT image probably presupposes an anticipatory execution scheme which is difficult to dissociate in this case from evocational anticipation.

Taking all this into account we arrive at the following outline for a classification:

Images	Immediate (I =fore-images) or deferred (II)	Bearing on product (P) or on modification (M)
A. reproductive (R):
static^4 (RS)	RS I or RS II
kinetic (RK)	RK I or RK II	RKP or RKM
transformation (RT)	RT I or RT II	RTP or RTM
B. anticipation (A):
kinetic (AK)		AKP or AKM
transformation (AT)		ATP or ATM

Each of the images thus classified may be in itself either gestural (imitation), mental or graphic.

2. Statement of the problems

The main purpose of the classification we have suggested is to provide a guide in our analysis of the facts, and to help us to present the problems which we shall have to discuss in relation to such an analysis. Let us be more specific, therefore, concerning the general questions which we shall meet in relation to virtually every set of facts.

(1) The first problem, which will naturally come up again and again, is that of the order in which mental images follow one another. For each particular test it will be easy to establish stages of reaction. These stages will be seen to be relatively well differentiated – more so, it goes without saying, than in the case of primary perceptual effects where no distinct stages are to be observed at all, and even more so than in the case of the various perceptual activities themselves. But is it possible, by a process of gradual comparison, to infer from these particular stages the existence of more general stages of the mental image, fulfilling all the stage criteria as verifiable in the sphere of operational development?⁵ This will be the problem. For instance, does the formation of anticipatory images A always come later than that of simple reproductive images R? And if so, will we find a constant lag between transformation images AT and the kinetic anticipatory images AK? Further, is this lag present already at the level of reproductive images (between...