A discussion of the importance of the relation between psychology and philosophy for the understanding of child development. The positive contribution of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological approach to developmental psychology are examined in the areas of perception, language acquisition, and the child's relations with others. (JMB)

Clarifies distinction between figurative and operative knowing and its relationship to symbolic functioning. Outlines how the concepts of symbol, language and signification fit within the Piagetian Theory of Knowing. (Author/NH)

From a symposium on Cross-Cultural Studies of Mother-Infant Interaction at the Biennial Meeting for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minn., April 2, 1971. (MB)

Notes that Charles Darwin's observations on babies are not examples of data collected to test hypotheses. Draws from Bakhtin to argue that they extend and vary existing modes of discourse, primarily debates about the place of instinct in language acquisition, traceable to his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Concludes that the significance of Darwin's…

Moral competence is more difficult to attain than scientific competence. Since language comprehension plays a central role in conceptual development, and moral language is difficult to learn, there is a common deficiency in moral conceptual development. This suggests a theory of non-spontaneous solutions to moral problems. (Author/MS)