ABSTRACT
Department of Psychology and School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
The significance of Jean Piaget’s contribution to the study of cognitive development has gained the status of a truism. Even today, some of his original ideas such as object permanence spawn significant theoretical debates (e.g. Baillargeon, 2000; Bogartz et al., 2000), generating contributions from connectionist and other computational approaches as well (see Mareschal, 2000, for a review). However, Piaget’s heuristic value is not limited to the identification of several robust empirical regularities, however useful these may be to benchmark developmental theories.
