Piaget’s sense of this term) scheme #2 to cognitively and emotionally catego-
rize it as expressing presence of the person in question.
Scheme #2: motherper: The mother-ob scheme #1 usually is released
by a proximal perceptual object, that is, the perceptual scheme motherper,
which gives a perceptual representation of the mother’s perceivable charac-
teristics (her face, movements, hand, voice, etc.), marking the mother’s actual
presence here-and-now available. We name this scheme motherper, with a
star prefixed to it to index it as a figurative scheme. We use elementary opera-
tor–predicate logic to indicate, in Formula #1 following, that scheme #1 ap-
plies to (i.e., assimilates, which variously means categorizes, interprets, or
transforms) scheme #2 to yield its significance (“Mother is here!”). Here the
operator applies on the objects (schemes) located to its immediate right and
enclosed by parentheses, so as to demarcate them. Thus we shall write
“motherOB(motherper)” to indicate that #1 applies on #2 to endow the
latter with the meaning of #1.
Scheme #3:self1: The baby’s own primary self-consciousness personal
(affective and cognitive) scheme, previously discussed.
Scheme #4: *context: A global, low-cognitive (perceptual) and affective,
representation of thecontextor situation in which the baby finds himself or
herself; together with the possible negative emotions elicited by it.
Scheme #5: BE-WITH: This is an emotion scheme, the NEED to BE
WITH, or be protected by, a personal protector–companion (i.e., the
mother). The scheme is written in capitals to signify that it is anoperative
scheme(apro). In this case, it is an emotion operative: an affective-and-
cognitive impulse orconation.
With these five schemes, and the notational conventions explained, we can
model within a single mental-modeling formula, the mental operation (M-
operation) that allows the baby to achieve themotive scheme of attachment:
BE-WITH (*context,self1, motherOB(*motherper)) (F#1)The expressions in F#1 summarize a model of the sort of mental operation
that the baby might undertake to construct a motive scheme of attachment—
and thus understand with basic (sensorimotor) executive consciousness that
he or she needs to be with (close to) mom in emotionally stressing (context)
situations. Notice that for many children, the scheme motherOB will have
previously applied to the perceptual scheme motherperoften enough to al-
ready have structured the two schemes into a single scheme complex or
chunk. If this is so, the coordination of four distinct schemes will suffice to
achieve this practical (self1-conscious) scheme of attachment. Further, notice
that all schemes in F#1 are being boosted directly by affect—the conative ef-
fects of the innate (primary-affect) attachment scheme (Pascual-Leone,
- AFFECT, SELF-MOTIVATION, AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 217