ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a general framework for thinking about infant social–conceptual development. The framework presented is a modified structuralist view of the development of infants’ understanding of animism, and, in particular, of people. Like other genetic epistemologists, I view the human organism as a complex, self-organizing, open system. It is complex because it has heterogeneous constituents in continuous interaction; it is self-organizing because new structures are formed from the interaction of lower order structures and it is open because the formation of new structures rely on continuous interaction with the external environment. The theory is modified, in that it proposes that infant understanding of people and things is facilitated by domain-specific predispositions that identify and define social and nonsocial domains, rather than by sensory reflexes and the three domain-general processes of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. These domain-specific structures are assembled independently within each domain.
