ABSTRACT
Foundational formal differences in organization, sequence, and direction of cognitive development are at the heart of the minimal intellectual ontogeny of nonhuman as compared with human primates. Fundamental to human infants constructing second-order operations is their forming elements comprising minimal compositions of compositions. The aim is to analyze the major similarities and differences between the cognitive development of nonhuman primates and human infants. Comparative differences in direction, organization, and sequencing thus determine the relative progress of human over nonhuman cognitive development. Human infants, cebus, and macaques construct increasingly larger sets of objects as they grow older. The main difference is that human infants continue to construct ever larger sets. In short, the ratio of producing causal relations by human infants first increases and then decreases with age. The rate of production by cebus hovers between one-fourth and one-third of their set constructions.
