Symbolic thinking is what allows humans to talk about past events, as well as hypothesize about what may happen in the future. It allows you to get out of a current situation in order to evoke another reality, be it past or future. Today’s article will discuss the characteristics of this type of thinking and give you examples of its various manifestations
What’s symbolic thought?
One could define symbolic thinking as the ability to think about the present situation
- In other words, it’s a type of thinking that allows you to visualize the reality of a given environment, according to personal experiences
- Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget defined it as the use of signifiers to refer to meanings
Language
One of the main manifestations of symbolic thought, as it is based on symbolization
- People use language to represent reality through symbols, words in this case, and the same occurs with symbolic thought
- Thus, you’re representing something from outside your mind but this process passes through a previous filter: the mind itself
The symbolic game
During childhood, when the child’s development is in full expansion, symbolic games are important for development, especially for the first social relations and also to acquire the proper habits of a given society.
- Through symbolic play, children represent offices, characters, uses of objects, and roles by means of their own play
Piaget’s preoperative thinking
Symbolic thinking: a broader concept that would go through three stages during its development
- Egocentrism: the child can’t dissociate from their own point of view
- Pre-conceptual prelogical thinking: the preoperative subperiod from ages two to six
Drawing and Painting
Children and adults graphically represent one (or multiple) realities through drawing
- You shape what you want to evoke through symbols
- In a certain way, both drawing and painting allow humans to represent something from outside but also the ideas inside their minds
Manifestations of symbolic thought
A series of manifestations occur in the development of the child that makes this process possible during the stage of formation and consolidation of symbolic thinking
- Deferred imitation
- Symbolic play
- Symbolistic play: a verbal evocation of non-present events
- Drawings
