The period of life that ranges from 2 1/2 to 6 years is not a homogeneous whole, because, Once, it can be subdivided into two sub-stages: one that ends at the end of the fourth year and another that includes the 5-6 years. It is called like this -preoperative- because Piaget considered this period to be the preparation and prelude to the period of mental operations.
Around the age of two and a half, the child, without abandoning the world of action, accesses the world of symbols, representation, and reference. We call symbolic or semiotic function to the meeting of the different forms of symbols.
The affective-cognitive roots of symbolism.
The study of symbolic activity allows integrate the ideas of Freud and Piaget. The first contributes the motivational component and the second the cognitive one.
Our species brought a novelty without precedent from the evolutionary point of view: the energy of the sexual drive became independent of its
We have to group the signifiers into two large groups:
- those that are private, not arbitrary, that is, they bear some relation to the meaning to which they refer. For example, dream symbols, internal images
- those that are of social origin and arbitrary in nature. For example, the signs of natural language or sign language in the case of deaf-mutes.
The first signifiers to appear are, precisely, private symbols, of a non-verbal nature. This means that it is the symbolic function that makes possible the acquisition of symbols, first, and linguistic signs, later.
Characteristics of pre-operative thinking.
One of the most striking features of preoperative thinking is self-centeredness. Piaget calls egocentricity to the infant's difficulty to contemplate her own point of view as one of the possible ones. Similarly he cannot think about his own thinking either.
The child considers things to be what they appear to be in immediate, self-centered perception. It is what is known as realism. Piaget and Inhelder point out that realism is due to the undifferentiation of the psychic and the physical. Preoperative reasoning produces or uses preconceptions, it is transductive and syncretic.
The reasoning does not go from the general to the particular (deduction) or from the particular to the general (induction). It goes from the particular to the particular (transductive). It operates through the mere juxtaposition of parts without achieving an authentic articulation between them (syncretic). All these limitations make children, for example, attribute the properties of biological and psychological entities to physical objects and facts.
It is what is known by the name of animism. Likewise, they consider physical phenomena as products of human creation. It is called artificialism to that cognitive behavior. > Next: Natural language and the neurophysiology of symbolic function
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