ABSTRACT
In our earlier causality experiments involving the impact of balls, the subjects were asked to predict and explain what happens in situations that were selected and directed by the interviewer. The experiment reported here is, however, far simpler, with the child merely being given a target at which to aim. The idea behind this is to analyze his actions and, above all, to try to determine the level of his cognizance and the conceptualization on which it is based. In fact, despite a necessary final convergence, it was not at all certain that the results of the two experiments, each undertaken from a dif ferent point of view, would be identical. Conditions in the causality experiment were determined beforehand and the subject was asked to deduce their consequences, thus imme diately to seek out the functions (such as impact) and the inferential coordinations (explanations). By starting off in this new experiment with the child's spontaneous actions, the
aim is to establish what he observes about his own actions (cognizance) and regarding the objects (that is, the effects of these actions on them) and to find out how the conceptualiza tion-in other words, the product of the relationships es tablished between these two sets of observations-results in coordinations. Should the success in actions be found to be of a higher level than that of the conceptualization, then the interesting problem would become that of the sources of the causal coordination. Does it proceed directly from specific ac tions, of which all in fact already contain causal links, or does it rest solely on the coordination of the actions-or is it derived from both these sources, but with results of different values in the two cases?
