UNDERSTANDING CAUSALITY IN INFANCY - A REASSESSMENT OF PIAGETS THEORY

The development of the Piagetian stages of sensorimotor causality was investigated in a longitudinal study of 25 infants aged 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months, using a new scale adapted from Goulet (1972/1974), Mehr abian and Williams (1971), and Uzgiris and Hunt (1975). The results sh owed 1) a sequential order of acquisition of the different stages or c ognitive structures of sensorimotor causality corresponding to the one observed by Piaget (1937/1954), and 2) the importance of creating new tasks in order to evaluate the representational ability of stage VI c ausality. This study supports the view of a notion of causality that d evelops gradually during infancy. The legitimacy of this constructivis t perspective is largely discussed throughout the paper in light of re cent findings obtained with the habituation-dishabituation paradigm.