ABSTRACT
The recent controversies dealing with conceptual and semantic development of young children are briefly summarized and conceptually evaluated. The bipolar dimensions generally employed to describe these developments, ranging from a “perceptual” to a “functional” pole or from a “static” to a “dynamic” one are shown as being conceptually deficient in that those terms denote sets and subsets of experience and not diametrically opposed conceptualizations. Additionally, the question concerning the primacy versus secondary nature of specific experiences is reopened and factually explored. Neurological findings, nonverbal behavior, and early vocabulary development are utilized to describe the early course of perceptual/conceptual development. The neurological evidence suggests three sequential systems, beginning with the so-called “secondary visual system,” progressing to the “primary visual system” and finally involving also the intrinsic areas of the brain. Non-communicative evidence from human and non-human realms indicates again a triple division into an early distinction of merely “good” and “bad” aspects, later finer differentiation of perceptual details, and finally the exploration and memory storage of utilitarian relationships between objects or actions and objects. Parallel phenomena in the microgenetic formation of percepts and concepts are briefly noted. In surveying communicative and verbal evidence, nonverbal, eonnotative, and denotative aspects are considered. A basic and early evaluative/eonnotative aspect is found universally. Whereas some controversy exists as to clearly difterentiable stages of verbal development, a preponderance of nouns before the common appearance of verbs and expressions of relationships is found quite generally. A selection of early-employed nouns, as found in a wide variety of diary studies, is analyzed. It persuasively indicates that stable visual features provided 144the basis for the generalization of these words. This general triple sequence of first affective, then objective, and last utilitarian categorizations is related to ecological principles.
