ABSTRACT
Throughout our analysis we have considered the various forms of representative thought—imitation, symbolic play and cognitive representation—as being interrelated, and their evolution as being dependent on the gradual establishment of equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation. At an earlier stage, the development of sensory-motor intelligence is also determined by the equilibrium between these two functions—the two poles of any adaptation—but it is then only present assimilation and accommodation that are in question, as we showed in an earlier work. Representation, on the contrary, is characterised by the fact that it goes beyond the present, extending the field of adaptation both in space and time. In other words, it evokes what lies Oiitside the immediate perceptual and active field. Representation is thus the union of a “signifier” that allows of recall, with a “signified” supplied by thought. In this respect, the collective institution of language is the main factor in both the formation and socialisation of representations, but the child’s ability to use verbal signs is dependent on the progress of his own thought. Thus in addition to words, the beginnings of representation require the support of a system of usable “signifiers” at the disposal of the individual, and for this reason the child’s thought is much more symbolic than that of the adult (in the sense in which the symbol is opposed to the sign). Now in our view—and this is the hypothesis underlying our whole study—this “signifier,” common to all representation, is the product of an accommodation that is continued as imitation, and hence as images or interiorised imitations. Conversely, the “signified” is the product of assimilation, which, by integrating the object in earlier schemas, thereby provides it with a meaning. It follows that representation involves a double interplay of assimilations and accommodations, present and past, tending towards equilibrium. This process is of necessity a slow one, and occupies, in fact, the whole of early childhood—hence the evolution we have constantly pointed out. As long as equilibrium has not been achieved, either there is primacy of accommodation, resulting in representative imitation, or there is primacy of assimilation, resulting in symbolic play. When equilibrium is first achieved, there is cognitive representation, but thought only reaches the level of preconcepts or intuition, since both the assimilation and the accommodation are still incomplete, the 274former being direct, without hierarchies of nestings, and the latter still linked with particular images. When, however, with further development, the equilibrium becomes permanent, imitation and play are integrated in intelligence, the former becoming deliberate and the latter constructive, and cognitive representation then reaches the operational level, having acquired the reversibility characteristic of the equilibrium between generalised assimilation and accommodation.
