ABSTRACT
Conceptualization and representational abilities were shown to exist long before the emergence of language and the symbolic function that were presumed by Jean Piaget to index the emergence of such competencies. The genetic epistemology emerging in the post-Piaget boom of infancy research is an epistemology that puts much more emphasis on the initial biological readiness of children, hence the evolutionary roots of what might define the starting state of cognitive development. As Piaget was ending his life, baby research took the field of developmental psychology like a storm. The behavioral orientation of newborns and their detection of invariant features in the environment all point to an experiential awareness at birth that is organized within a stable spatial and temporal structure. The post-Piagetian wave of infancy research indicates that cognitive development would start with an experience of the world that is much more unified and organized, less disjointed and blind than what Piaget portrays.
