From Gesture and the Body to Intelligence, in the "Short" Time of Ontogenesis

Over a shorter temporality, that of the evolution of the individual – ontogenesis –, the use of the body, and in particular that of the hand, also takes part in the establishment of intelligence, within a brain – and beyond it – prestructured to receive it. This can be observed, for example, when we see an infant gradually developing links with the world through constant experimentation that mobilizes its whole body: first the mouth and the tongue (while the eyes still perceive only patches of light), then the hands, which gradually become dominant in exploration. This process was studied by Jean Piaget (1896-1980)¹, who postulates that “verbal or reflective intelligence rests on a practical or sensorimotor intelligence²,” which presupposes a form of continuity between intelligence and the “purely biological processes of morphogenesis and adaptation to the milieu³” that precede the emergence of symbolic functioning in the very young child. The transfer of skills from the sensorimotor plane (use of the body, in particular of the hand) to the symbolic plane (intellectual capacity, development of language) remains at work at later stages of the child’s individual evolution.

Piaget’s observations have been supported by recent studies, which have found a correlation, in children, between the use of the hands – in particular fine motor skills – and the development of intellectual capacities – notably that of calculation – and of language⁴.

According to Piaget, the development of intelligence in the child proceeds from the sensorimotor level, where different forms of abstraction develop on the basis of the body. Reflective abstraction, in particular, produces schemas by synthesizing the bodily actions or manual operations of the individual⁵. These schemas are consolidated when experience confirms their effectiveness, or are transformed where necessary⁶. This kind of schematization of gestures and actions, grounded in bodily experience, is transposed to the symbolic level by a process that Piaget designates as “reflecting⁷.” The birth of the capacity for calculation in the child is described precisely by Piaget on the basis of manual operations, through what he calls “pre-empirical abstractions,” constructions that will become deductive but that, at the sensorimotor stage, depend on observable results, perceptible in a material configuration. This is notably the case with the use of the abacus, the earliest form of numerical operations, based on “observed properties⁸” – perceptible in physical arrangements – but which depend on the operations carried out by the subject⁹.

1. A Swiss biologist by training, developmental psychologist and epistemologist, best known for having founded genetic epistemology and for his work on the stages of the development of intelligence in children.↩︎

2. Jean Piaget, La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant. Lausanne Paris : Delachaux et Niestlé, 1998, p.8.↩︎

3. Ibid.↩︎

4. See in this regard Nathalie Bonneton-Botté Fanny Ollivier Hélène Hili et al., «Étude de l’usage des doigts en mathématiques chez des élèves présentant un trouble du développement intellectuel ». Éducation et didactique [en ligne]. 2024, vol. 18, n° 3, p. 9–21, and Fanny Ollivier, Des doigts au calcul : une analyse implicative des relations entre habiletés manuelles, mémoire de travail et calcul additif simple [en ligne]. Thèse de doctorat en psychologie. [s. l.] : Université Rennes 2, 2021. disponible à l'adresse : https://theses.hal.science/tel-03620221.↩︎

5. Jean Piaget, Recherches sur l’abstraction réfléchissante. Tome 1 : L’abstraction des relations logico-arithmétiques. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1977, p.5.↩︎

6. Ibid., p.72.↩︎

7. Ibid., p.6.↩︎

8. Ibid.↩︎

9. Ibid.↩︎