S. Desrochers et al., UNDERSTANDING CAUSALITY IN INFANCY - A REASSESSMENT OF PIAGETS THEORY, Cahiers de psychologie cognitive, 14(3), 1995, pp. 255-268
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.