ABSTRACT
The assumption of sensorimotor intelligence in infancy, inherent in the maturational view expressed by Gesell (1925) and continued in the more recent tests of infant development, has resulted in an emphasis on gross and fine motor actions either directly or indirectly to assess infant cognitive growth. Along with the recent theoretical and methodological advances in the study of infant cognition, there is a beginning effort to assess systematically the development of attention and information processing during the first year of life. Both the child's motor facility and compliance are confounded with attempts to assess the child's cognitive ability. Cognitive prerequisites for speech are acknowledged, but it may be that the emerging capacity to generate specific associations represents a more precise and testable hypothesis about the nature of the cognitive change that appears to occur to facilitate the onset of speech.
