Representation, Memory, and Development Pretense and Representation Revisited

I was lucky enough throughout the 1980s and early 1990s to have Jean Mandler as my colleague for about half of each year. Everyone at the erstwhile Cognitive Development Unit in London looked forward annually to Jean, along with spring, resuming her residence among us. Jean has a way of deploying her intellectual commitment, erudition, creativity, and skill in debate so that even if she is skewering your latest proposal it is done constructively and with great charm. I had particular reason to anticipate Jean's return each year because I share with Jean a concern for the nature of early representation in infancy and the belief that infants are capable of representing abstract properties. Although our numbers are growing a bit (or so I hope), there are still not many people in the world who share that belief. What most people believe is that infants can represent sensory properties and only sensory properties (for a contemporary expression of this dogma, see the entertaining article by Haith, 1998). According to this view, abstract propere world presents ontogenesis. Furroperties requires tness, and there-