Origin of Intelligence in the Child

Selected Works vol 3

Jean Piaget, Margaret Cook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415168922
• eBook ISBN: 9781136221675
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1997. This is Volume III of selected works of Jean Piaget which explores his concepts on the origins of intelligence in children. The theses developed in this volume, concern in particular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the mechanism of mental assimilation.

Part I

Elementary Sensorimotor Adaptations

Intelligence does not by any means appear at once derived from mental development, like a higher mechanism, and radically 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 elementary habits.

Chapter I

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 different types of reflexes involving the medulla, the bulb, the optic commissures, the ectoderm itself; moreover, from reflex to instinct 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 demonstrated 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 (l’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 elementary behavior and the need to differentiate between the successive stages of concurrent physiological systems than Wallon’s scholarly study of their genesis in which a wealth of pathologic 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 behavior. That is why, although in complete sympathy with Wallon’s attempt to identify psychic mechanisms with those of life itself, we believe we should limit ourselves to emphasizing functional identity, from the point of view of simple external behavior.

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 equipment of the newborn child, prepare him to adapt himself to his external environment and to acquire subsequent behavior distinguished 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 subjected 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 movements 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 “behavior” 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 manifestations of a reflex such as sucking are not comparable to the periodic starting up of a motor used intermittently, but constitute an historical development so that each episode depends on preceding 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 1.—From birth sucking-like movements may be observed: impulsive movement and protrusion of the lips accompanied by displacements 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, contact of the lips and probably the tongue with the nipple suffices to produce sucking and swallowing. Other children, such as Jacqueline, have slower coördination: 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 movements of the first day: His lips open and close as if to receive a real nippleful, but without having an object. This behavior subsequently 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 intelligence). 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 his adjustment 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 relinquish 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 woolens, but the hand itself escapes him through lack of coördination; he 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 cm. 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 and he does not recognize it. But, when his search subsequently leads him accidentally to touch the nipple with the mucosa 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 cm. away; he keeps this up until he discovers the nipple.

Observation 6.—The same day I hold out my crooked index finger to Laurent, who is crying from hunger (but intermittently and without 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 retract 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 coordinate the movement of the arms with that of the mouth and his hands draw back even when his lips are seeking them.

At 0;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 coördination.

Observation 8.—At 0;0 (21): Several times I place the back of my 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 happens 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 the breast, he oscillates in space guided only by light, haphazard contacts with the breast. It takes a short time for these increasingly localized attempts to be successful. This last phase of groping has been noteworthy for the speed with which each approach to it has been followed by an attempt at insertion of the nipple, while the lips open and close with maximum vigor; and noteworthy also for the progressive 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 become more rapid and precise (less extensive). Finally, it seems that he is henceforth capable not only of lateral movements but also of raising 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 adaptation 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 1 cm. from his lips does he turn and grasp it.

On reading this description it would seem as though all the practice of the last weeks were in vain. It would seem, above all, that the excitation 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;0 (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 psychological behavior, as early as the systematization of their functioning. Let us try to analyze this process in its progressive adaptational and organization aspects.

§2. The Use of Reflexes.—Concerning its adaptation, it is interesting to note that the reflex, no matter how well endowed 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 accommodation to external reality.

Let us first stress this element of accommodation. The sucking 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 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 functioning. 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 function normally, due to the lack of a suitable environment.³ Moreover, contact with the environment not only results in developing the reflexes, but also in coördinating them in some way. Observations 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 increasingly 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 associations, in the limited sense of the term, or of “conditioned reflexes,” both of which imply systematic training. On the contrary, the examining of these behavior patterns reveals at once the respects in which they differ from acquired associations: Whereas with regard to the latter, including conditioned reflexes, association is established between a certain perception, 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 m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Biological Problem of Intelligence
• Part I ELEMENTARY SENSORIMOTOR ADAPTATIONS
• I. The First Stage The Use of Reflexes
• II. The Second Stage The First Acquired Adaptations and the Primary Circular Reaction
• Part II The Intentional Sensorimotor Adaptations
• III. The Third Stage The “Secondary Circular Reactions” and the Procedures Destined to Make Interesting Sights Last
• IV. The Fourth Stage The Coördination of the Secondary Schemata and Their Application to New Situations
• V. The Fifth Stage The “Tertiary Circular Reaction” and the “Discovery of New Means Through Active Experimentation”
• VI. The Sixth Stage The Invention of New Means Through Mental Combinations
• Conclusions
• “Sensorimotor” or “Practical” Intelligence and the Theories of Intelligence
• Index