The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 1)

Jean Piaget (1955)

In our first study of the beginnings of mental life we analysed the origins of intelligence in children and tried to show how the forms of intellectual activity are constructed on the sensori motor level. In the current work we have tried, on the other hand, to understand how the real categories of sensorimotor intelligence are organised, that is, how the world is constructed by means of this instrument. In conclusion, the time has come to show the unity of these various processes and their relations with those of the child’s thought, envisaged in their most general aspect.

§ I. Assimilation and Accommodation

The successive study of concepts of object, space, causality, and time has led us to the same conclusions: the elaboration of the universe by sensorimotor intelligence constitutes the transition from a state in which objects are centred about a self which believes it directs them, although completely unaware of itself as subject, to a state in which the self is placed, at least practically, in a stable world conceived as independent of personal activity. How is this evolution possible?

It can be explained only by the development of intelligence. Intelligence progresses from a state in which accommodation to the environment is undifferentiated from the assimilation of things to the subject’s schemata to a state in which the accommodation of multiple schemata is distinguished from their respective and reciprocal assimilation. To understand this process, which sums up the whole evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, let us recall its steps, starting with the development of assimilation itself.

In its beginnings, assimilation is essentially the utilisation of the external environment by the subject to nourish his hereditary or acquired schemata. It goes without saying that schemata such as those of sucking, sight, prehension, etc., constantly need to be accommodated to things, and that the necessities of this accommodation often thwart the assimilatory effort. But this accommodation remains so undifferentiated from the assimilatory processes that it does not give rise to any special active behaviour pattern but merely consists in an adjustment of the pattern to the details of the things assimilated. Hence it is natural that at this developmental level the external world does nor seem formed by permanent objects, that neither space nor time is yet organised in groups and objective series, and that causality is not spatialised or located in things. In other words, at first the universe consists in mobile and plastic perceptual images centred about personal activity. But it is self-evident that to the extent that this activity is undifferentiated from the things it constantly assimilates to itself it remains unaware of its own subjectivity; the external world therefore begins by being confused with the sensations of a self unaware of itself, before the two factors become detached from one another and are organised correlatively.

On the other hand, in proportion as the schemata are multiplied and differentiated by their reciprocal assimilations as well as their progressive accommodation to the diversities of reality, the accommodation is dissociated from assimilation little by little and at the same time ensures a gradual delimitation of the external environment and of the subject. Hence assimilation ceases merely to incorporate things in personal activity and establishes, through the progress of that activity, an increasingly tight web of coordinations among the schemata which define it and consequently among the objects to which these schemata are applied. In terms of reflective intelligence this would mean that deduction is organised and applied to an experience conceived as external. From this time on, the universe is built up into an aggregate of permanent objects connected by causal relations that are independent of the subject and are placed in objective space and time. Such a universe, instead of depending on personal activity, is on the contrary imposed upon the self to the extent that it comprises the organism as a part in a whole. The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects.

In exact proportion to the progress of intelligence in the direction of differentiation of schemata and their reciprocal assimilation, the universe proceeds from the integral and unconscious egocentrism of the beginnings to an increasing solidification and objectification. During the earliest stages the child perceives things like a solipsist who is unaware of himself as subject and is familiar only with his own actions. But step by step with the coordination of his intellectual instruments he discovers himself in placing himself as an active object among the other active objects in a universe external to himself.

These global transformations of the objects of perception, and of the very intelligence which makes them, gradually denote the existence of a sort of law of evolution which can be phrased as follows: assimilation and accommodation proceed from a state of chaotic undifferentiation to a state of differentiation with correlative coordination.

In their initial directions, assimilation and accommodation are obviously opposed to one another, since assimilation is conservative and tends to subordinate the environment to the organism as it is, whereas accommodation is the source of changes and bends the organism to the successive constraints of the environment. But if in their rudiment these two functions are antagonistic, it is precisely the role of mental life in general and of intelligence in particular to intercoordinate them.

First let us remember that this coordination presupposes no special force of organisation, since from the beginning assimilation and accommodation are indissociable from each other. Accommodation of mental structures to reality implies the existence of assimilatory schemata apart from which any structure would be impossible. Inversely, the formation of schemata through assimilation entails the utilisation of external realities to which the former must accommodate, however crudely. Assimilation and accommodation are therefore the two poles of an interaction between the organism and the environment, which is the condition for all biological and intellectual operation, and such an interaction presupposes from the point of departure an equilibrium between the two tendencies of opposite poles. The question is to ascertain what forms are successively taken by this equilibrium which is being constituted.

If the assimilation of reality to the subject’s schemata involves their continuous accommodation, assimilation is no less opposed to any new accommodation, that is, to any differentiation of schemata by environmental conditions not encountered up to then. On the other hand, if accommodation prevails, that is, if the schema is differentiated, it marks the start of new assimilations. Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations. It is this situation which explains the diversity of form of equilibrium between the two processes, according to whether one envisages the point of departure or the destiny of their development.

At their point of departure they are relatively undifferentiated in relation to each other, since they are both included in the interaction which unites the organism to the environment and which, in its initial form, is so close and direct that it does not comprise any specialised operation of accommodation, such as the tertiary circular reactions, behaviour patterns of active experimentation, etc., will subsequently be. But they are none the less antagonistic, since, though each assimilatory schema is accommodated to the usual circumstances, it resists every new accommodation, precisely through lack of specialised accommodative technique. It is therefore possible to speak of chaotic undifferentiation. It is at this level that the external world and the self remain undissociated to such a point that neither objects nor spatial, temporal, or causal objectifications are possible.

To the extent that new accommodations multiply because of the demands of the environment on the one hand and of the coordinations between schemata on the other, accommodation is differentiated from assimilation and by virtue of that very fact becomes complementary to it. It is differentiated, because, in addition to the accommodation necessary for the usual circumstances, the subject becomes interested in novelty and pursues it for its own sake. The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching. Thereafter and to the same extent, assimilation and accommodation enter into relations of mutual dependence. On the one hand, the reciprocal assimilation of the schemata and the multiple accommodations which stem from them favour their differentiation and consequently their accommodation; on the other hand, the accommodation to novelties is extended sooner or later into assimilation, because, interest in the new being simultaneously the function of resemblances and of differences in relation to the familiar, it is a matter of conserving new acquisitions and of reconciling their. with the old ones. An increasingly close interconnection thus tends to be established between the two functions which are constantly being better differentiated, and by extending the lines this interaction ends, as we have seen, on the plane of reflective thought, in the mutual dependency of assimilatory deduction and experimental techniques.

Thus it may be seen that intellectual activity begins with confusion of experience and of awareness of the self, by virtue of the chaotic undifferentiation of accommodation and assimilation. In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact. Hence there is simply interaction between the most superficial zone of external reality and the wholly corporal periphery of the self. On the contrary, gradually as the differentiation and coordination of assimilation and accommodation occur, experimental and accommodative activity penetrates to the interior of things, while assimilatory activity becomes enriched and organised. Hence there is a progressive formation of relationships between zones that are increasingly deep and removed from really and the increasingly intimate operations of personal activity. intelligence thus begins neither with knowledge of the self nor of things as such but with knowledge of their interaction, and it Is by orienting itself simultaneously toward the two poles of that interaction that intelligence organises the world by organising itself.

A diagram will make the thing comprehensible. Let the organism be represented by a small circle inscribed in a large circle which corresponds to the surrounding universe. The meeting between the organism and the environment takes place at point A and at all analogous points, which are simultaneously the most external to the organism and to the environment itself. In other words, the first knowledge of the universe or of himself that the subject can acquire is knowledge relating to the most immediate appearance of things or to the most external and material aspect of his being. From the point of view of consciousness, this primitive relation between subject and object is a relation of undifferentiation, corresponding to the protoplasmic consciousness of the first weeks of life when no distinction is made between the self and the non-self. From the point of view of behaviour this relation constitutes the morphologic-reflex organisation, in so far as it is a necessary condition of primitive consciousness. But from this point of junction and undifferentiation A, knowledge proceeds along two complementary roads. By virtue of the very fact that all knowledge is simultaneously accommodation to the object and assimilation to the subject, the progress of intelligence works in the dual direction of externalisation and internalisation, and its two poles will be the acquisition of physical experience ( ->Y) and the acquisition of consciousness of the intellectual operation itself ( -> X). That is why every great experimental discovery in the realm of exact sciences is accompanied by a reflexive progress of reason on itself (of logico-mathematical deduction), that is, by progress in the formation of reason in so far as it is internal activity, and it is impossible to decide once for all whether the progress of the experiment is due to that of reason or the inverse. From this point of view the morphologic-reflex organisation, that is, the physiological and anatomic aspect of the organism, gradually appears to the mind as external to it, and the intellectual activity which extends it by internalising it presents itself as the essential of our existence as living beings.

In the last analysis, it is this process of forming relationships between a universe constantly becoming more external to the self and an intellectual activity progressing internally which explains the evolution of the real categories, that is, of the concepts of object, space, causality, and time. So long as the interaction between subject and object is revealed in the form of exchanges of slight amplitude in a zone of undifferentiation, the universe has the appearance of depending on the subject’s personal activity, although the latter is not known in its subjective aspect. To the extent, on the contrary, that the interaction increases, the progress of knowledge in the two complementary directions of object and subject enables the subject to place himself among objects as a part in a coherent and permanent whole. Consequently, to the extent that assimilation and accommodation transcend the initial state of "false equilibrium" between the subject’s needs and the resistance of things to attain a true equilibrium, that is, a harmony between internal organisation and external experience, the subject’s perspective of the universe is radically transformed; from integral egocentrism to objectivity is the law of that evolution. The relations of assimilation and accommodation thus constitute, from the time of the sensorimotor !level, a formative process analogous to that which, on the plane of verbal and reflective intelligence, is represented by the relations of individual thought and socialisation. Just as accommodation to the point of view of others enables individual thought to be located in a totality of perspectives that insures its objectivity and reduces its egocentrism, so also the coordination of sensorimotor assimilation and accommodation leads the subject to go outside himself to solidify and objectify his universe to the point where he is able to include himself in it while continuing to assimilate it to himself. ***