As the function of intelligence is to structure the universe, so the organism structures the immediate medium, and the baby, when s/he reads, s/he accelerates his/her development. In the mastering of the read word, s/he performs a more advanced mental adaptation than that of the baby who is not reading; and this internal action of constructing schemes referring to the words read, the progressive increase in the distance traveled in time and space by the baby in the direction of objects (words) to which s/he ends up adapting defines the degree of intelligence necessary to accomplish the act. And the baby constructs his/her intelligence and learns to be more intelligent the more s/he knows. It becomes more and more difficult to deny what’s been said above because at the basis of all functioning of intelligence is action: external action, in practice or sensory-motor; internal action and/or operation, in reflexive and/or verbal intelligence.

Babies reading practice shows that, at all times, there’s evidence of the appearance of intelligence. When the baby is in the mother’s lap playing the game of reading, s/he demonstrates mental combinations of the operation to be realized: s/he thrusts the body forward to be closer to the written word as if s/he wanted to show that wants to “play” to read. This mental combination of throwing oneself to be able to do what is already known how it will be done, no matter how simple it may seem, is a demonstration of intelligence which distinguishes presentation from representation. Piaget explains this. His view is fundamentally structural: everything the thought process constructs today is due to the coordination of all that was already built. Each and every new scheme includes the one preceding it, integrates and surpasses it in a progressive structuring of increasingly balanced forms, in a gradual evening out increasingly flexible structures. To throw him/herself in the direction of the flashcard containing the word to be read is an act that succeeds the one constructed previously. It can be said that in all phases of development, the baby is the agent, whether it is by his/her initial practical action or by the posterior symbolic and mental action.