The basic adaptive processes interact with the infant's environment; this interaction leads to the infant's attainment of advanced capabilities of sensori-motor control expressed in the "precursors to languaging"-listening and looking (information reception) and uttering and marking (information production) (Stage 2 of Figure 1). The distinctions between hearing and listening, and between seeing and looking, are fundamental to the model. The present analysis emphasizes that the parallel BAPs of hearing and seeing are separated from listening and looking on a functional basis. Hearing and seeing are considered to function as mechanical or automatic outcomes of the operations of the auditory or visual anatomical structures, while listening and looking are considered to be information-processing activities that depend upon and nurture sensory-perceptual-cognitive-motor development and integration, and that are used by the person in actively selecting information from the environment.

This conception of looking and listening activities is not unlike that of Hochberg (1970a). He considers these activities as information- processing activities involving an "intention," that is, purpose on the part of the person. The Gibsons (J. Gibson, 1966; E. Gibson, 1969) also regard listening and looking as active information- processing activities which the person uses to seek out stimulation for constructing internal representations of the environment.

It should be noted that although the information resulting from binaural hearing may be used by the neonate to bring about reflexive visumotor orientations to acoustic stimuli (Wertheimer, 1961), and hence, form a rudimentary type of "looking" and "listening" (J. Gibson discusses this type of "listening," 1966, p. 83), we exclude such reflexive activities from our definitions of these processes.

An essential characteristic, then, of listening and looking is that they are active processes under the control of the individual. These activities are used by the individual to pick up information from the environment relevant to current, conscious, mental construings. In this regard, following Atkinson and Shiffrin (1971), it is conjectured that, in fact, it is the active process of seeking information and manipulating it in short-term memory that is our experience of consciousness or self-being in the world.