Learning and the Development of Cognition: B. Inhelder, H. Sinclair, and M. Bovet,  Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974

This book is a recent addition to the series of studies attempting to expand and refine aspects of Jean Piaget's system of Genetic Epistimology. Written by three of Piaget's associates at Geneva, it covers ten years of experimentation and is concerned with the way children acquire specific concepts. The authors assume that the reader is familiar with Piaget's system and so a fairly thorough knowledge of the Geneva theory of cognitive development is a pre-requisite. In addition, parts of the book are aimed at answering criticisms of the American psychologist, Jerome Bruner, so that a reading of Bruner's Studies in Cognitive Growth (especially chapters 8 through 11) will help the reader place the current book in its historical and intellectual context.

The specific problems attacked by the experiments described center on whether experience actually affects the attainment of certain cognitive constructs and, if so, how this experience is utilized by the child. Therefore the title: Learning and the Development of Cognition. The book is in part a rebuttal to the criticism that Piaget's system is predominantly maturationist, that is, that learning plays an insignificant role in the sequential elaboration of higher order constructs through ontogenesis. The authors have chosen the cognitive construct (schema in Piaget's terminology) of conservation for study. This schema is one of the underlying characteristics of the “operational” phase of cognition and marks the child's passage from the preoperational “intuitive” phase, these being two major epochs of development in Piaget's system. During the preoperational, intuitive phase, the child's thought is directed by the most conspicuous perceptual aspects of the environment, thinking is concerned with the appearance of objects. Similarly during this phase, the child can appreciate only one aspect of a problem or concept at a time, his thought is “centered” on one dimension. Therefore, if a clay ball is rolled into the shape of a