2 - THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION OR THOUGHT PREOPERATIVE
At the end of the sensorimotor period, about 1 to 2 years, the child has acquired sufficient experience (gestures, movements, walking, and words) for his imitations become a generalized deferred imitation.
It is able to represent situations playing pretend ... He plays a cat to be putting himself on all fours and imitating the cry of the animal even when the cat is no longer present. The child builds a mental representation and imitation is not only delayed but internalized.
At this stage, the child uses symbols to play, talk (he learns to speak by imitating and repeating the adults around him) and to build its own representation of the real world. It is still too small to fit the social world of older people whose interests and rules remain outside it, and a physical world that is poorly understood. Also to satisfy his emotional and intellectual needs, he has the game that transforms reality by assimilation to the needs of the self (himself) and imitation accommodation which is more or less pure external models.
2 to 7 years, the child continues his intellectual development and understanding of the world through symbolic play, imitation, language, drawing (by drawing his mental images) and later learning to write ( read / write).
Symbolic play
It is the culmination of childish game between 2-3 and 5-6 years. The child, to understand and assimilate the reality that surrounds it, needs to relive some events instead of just a mental evocation (simple recall).
For example, a girl on vacation with his parents several questions on the mechanism of seeing an old bell tower of the village. Later, she stands motionless and standing by the table of his father by making a deafening noise. "You bother me a bit, you know, you know I work" said his dad. "Me not speak, meets the girl, I'm a church". The memory and understanding of what she saw, the church lies in an interpretation of the whole body.
But it is mainly the emotional conflicts which appear in symbolic play. For example, if there is a little banal scene at lunch, you can be sure that one or two hours later, the drama will be played in a doll play and above led to a better solution, or that the child applies to her doll pedagogy smarter than parents, he is joined in the game that his pride prevented him from accepting the table (like finishing the plate of soup deemed hateful, especially if c ' is the doll that absorbs symbolically).
In general, symbolic play and can be used to resolve conflicts, but also to the Clearing unrequited needs, to role reversals (obedience / authority), the release and extension of me.
It tells us much about the representations of the child and the outside world. Until about 8-9 years, the design is essentially realistic intent: the child begins to draw what he knows of a character or object before to express graphically what he sees. There is a correspondence between the drawing and the mental image which is also before reaching conceptualization of perceptual good copies.
Called "fortuitous realism" stage scribbling with meaning discovery along the way.
Then comes the "realism failed" when the design elements are juxtaposed rather than being coordinated in a while: hat well over his head or buttons next to the body. The man, who is one of the most dominant designs initially passes through a stage also very interesting: the "snowmen-tadpole" is depicted where a head equipped with spindly legs, or provided with arms and legs but no torso.
Then comes the crucial period of "intellectual realism" where the drawing is pretty good conceptual model attributes without worries of visual perspective. And a face in profile will have a second look because a man has two eyes and a rider will have a leg seen through the horse over the leg visible.
To 8-9 years by cons, this "intellectual realism" follows a "visual realism" that has two novelties. The prospect is now respected (and we will not see the top of a tree behind a house and not the entire tree) and the design reflects the arrangement of objects according to a comprehensive plan (and axis coordinates) and their metric proportions.
From 9-10 years, the average child becomes able to draw in advance the horizontal level that will take water in a jar which is given various inclinations or vertical line of the mast of a boat resting on the water.
The language
It begins with a phase of spontaneous lallation (common to children of all cultures from 6 to 10-11 months) and a differentiation phase of phonemes by imitation (from 11-12 months), for a stadium at the end the sensorimotor period and is described as "word-sentences". These unique words can express in turn desires, emotions or findings.
By the end of the second year, appear two-word phrases, short sentences and then complete without conjugation or declension, and then a gradual acquisition of grammatical structures. The vocabulary is going faster if the environment is involved in the description of the environment and if it stimulates the child to express themselves. Again, the child proceeds much by imitation.
Language plays a particularly important role because it is the vehicle of thought and allows us to realize representations of child learning.
In conclusion, at the end of the pre-operative period (7-8 years) imitation, symbolic play, drawing, mental imagery, language were valuable tools for expressing thought, and to prepare child to a better representation of the real world, however, they do not develop nor organize themselves without the constant help of structuring specific intelligence.