ABSTRACT
Flammer (1995) rises the question of how a personal agency or causal schema emerges in relation to a perceptual causal schema in development. The personal causal schema is assumed to facilitate the control of one’s own action, i.e. the production of causal events. The perceptual causal schema is described as related to events in the environment which are observed but not affected by a child’s action. Flammer (1995) asks if those schemata emerge in a certain sequence or if one is accommodated into the other. In the following we will argue for the interwoven development of the perceptual and the personal agency schema from birth. Results from research in early event perception and action will illustrate our point of view. Data from object-centered mother-child interaction will be used to show how mothers focus on both the perceptual schema and the personal agency schema in order to facilitate action with objects and interaction. Consequences of the chosen viewpoint for clinical intervention, as well as for toy design, will be discussed.
