Abstract
In psychology, there are few researches on the origin and development of the symbolic function. Instead, under influence of linguistics there are more researches only on language development which is studied in the frame of the fictitious interaction between the child as an interlocutor (speaker, listener) and the language system. Our concept of the nature of childhood is rather different. First of all, human infant is practical being. Human infant completely depends on the social environment. For his part, infant is prepared for such destiny: he is gifted with primary sociality. In the process of the child care, there is intensive communication by practical actions: adult do some actions and the infant understands meaning of these actions and responds adequately to them. In this way, it is established real cooperation as a specifically human social relationship. In this process of mutual understanding, adult regularly introduces semiotic means (attributing symbolic meanings to the infant's practical actions, using appropriate speech). This situation gives the possibility of translation from situational-practical communication to symbolic one (decoding language). Based on affective attachment, diverse forms of pre-semiotic communication are developed as prerequisite for the emergence of a symbolic function. The first semiotic behaviors are described as a result of that complex interaction of biological, affective, social and cognitive early development: the first as pretending gestures and the second as clearly semiotic behaviors.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Namely, with the vocal appearance that a listener hears in everyday speech.
- 2.
Lenneberg (1967) tried to determine the moment in the process of organic and neural maturation in which the readiness to learn speech appears, but he failed to discover any specific organic and neural correlates of this readiness, but only established a series of correlations (for example, between the appearance of speech and some general indicators such as calendar age and general physical development, or between the appearance of speech and some general indicators of maturity of the nervous system such as brain weight or the ratio of brain weight to total body weight, the development of the dominance of one hemisphere, the density of cells in the brain layers, etc.). Lenneberg himself therefore concludes: “The specific neurophysiological correlates of speech and language remain completely unknown” (p. 179).
- 3.
This complex reaction of activation (in Russian: “kompleks ozivlenija” = livelihood complex) has been described by Denisov and Figurina in 1926.
- 4.
“Man’s ability to use speech and other symbols, his ability to plan and build models, his ability for durable cooperation with others and constant competition—that is what makes man as he is. All these processes emerge during the first year of life and, even more, from the earliest days all they act as a part of the behavioral structure that we call attachment.” (Bowlby, 1969, p. 423).
- 5.
Vigotsky (1956) has acknowledged the principal meaning of such form of communication in the best possible way.
- 6.
For example, no communication about colors is possible among persons blind from birth, because between them and persons with normal sight the same common experience about that aspect of matter does not exist.
- 7.
Of course, communication is also made possible by the fact that there is an identical perceptual apparatus of a child and an adult and a certain kinship of the cognitive apparatus that enables both children and adults to get a similar idea of reality.
- 8.
It is necessary to note here that practical-situational communication is not the same as joint practical activity as a whole; it is only an informative part of that activity. Practical-situational communication, conceived like that, is purely investigated. That’s why only a general scheme of its development and transformation into semiotic function is possible.
- 9.
Another name is also used: practical intelligence (Piaget, A. Rey)); perceptive-practical intelligence (Soviet psychology), situational intelligence (Wallon: intelligence des situations vs. representation).
- 10.
Sensorimotor intelligence precisely because it is sensorimotor and has no semiotic means at its disposal (speech, etc.) operates with systems of actions (practical actions, actions with objects), i.e. consists in the interconnection and coordination of practical actions such as, for example, gras** objects, reaching objects, removing obstacles, rejecting, knocking or throwing objects, fixing the gaze of objects, pulling the surface in order to reach the object, finding an intermediary between the child and distant targets, colliding two objects, pulling a string to make a sound, etc., etc. In fact, for the functioning of sensorimotor intelligence, not only the action with a single object is important, but the form or structure or, to use the expression used by Piaget, the schema of the action (Piaget: “We will call the schema of the action that in an action that can be transmitted, generalized and differentiate from one situation to another or, in other words, what is common in different repetitions and applications of an action”). Therefore, sensorimotor intelligence uses schemes of practical actions as basic means. In order to avoid complexities, we will use the term practices for what is general in actions (that is, not how one action is performed with one specific object in one situation, but for the form of that action), so we will say: sensorimotor intelligence uses a system of practices.
- 11.
In Serbian, the word “izum” is combined of two parts: “iz” = out of, “um” = mind.
- 12.
In his later work, Piaget himself used the term “symbolic gestures” instead of “mental combinations” for these behaviors.
- 13.
Observations of chimpanzees (for example, Lavik-Goodall) show that chimpanzee cubs, who develop an affective attachment to their mothers, can show signs of depression long after the mother's disappearance, which would possibly indicate that there is a phenomenon that rests here on different mechanisms than those that lead to the creation of physical objects.
- 14.
Clark (in Moore, 1973) showed relationships between prior knowledge of space and time and the acquisition of linguistic spatial and temporal categories. Although he pays more attention to perceptual knowledge, he still says: “The premise (proved by Clark I.I.) is that the child knows a lot about space and time before he begins to learn English terms for space and time, and that his acquisition those terms are based on his previous cognitive development.” (p. 28).
- 15.
The age is marked so that the first figure represents the number of years, the second the number of month and the third the number of days. If there are only two figures with the dot after the second one, these represent only years and months.
- 16.
The Latin term for this behavior simulacrum means: pictorial (figurative) representation, simulation; French expressions say the same simulacre, “comme-ci” (as if), faire semblant (to act as if); the English expression pretending has a similar meaning: what is performed pretends to be something else and make believe in the literal meaning: let's act as if we believe (that it is so).
- 17.
As far as we know, there is only one report of a chimpanzee playing with an imaginary object. According to the Hayes couple (about whom, unfortunately, we only know second-hand, based on Buytendijke (1952), their chimpanzee Vicki, after a long-term game of pulling various objects attached to a string, one day began to “pull” an imaginary object using an imaginary string. This behavior was repeated over several days (even pretending that the “object” had caught on an obstacle). One day Hayes himself “pulled” the imaginary object and Vicki rushed to get it where it was supposed to be in an extension of the non-existent string. The next day, when re-examined, Vicki did not exhibit such behavior, but became frightened, and from then on, the game disappeared forever. In any case, that single behavior was different from similar behavior in children—there was no so characteristic laughter that accompanies all “as if” activities in children.
- 18.
Due to the obvious intention and presence of consciousness of the imaginary, these behaviors could not be considered as deforming assimilation of reality, as Piaget does.
- 19.
Wrong pronunciation of the word in Serbian, “rukavica” = glove.
- 20.
As far as we know, there are very few experiments in which it has been proven (Davenport and Rogers) that in anthropoid monkeys (chimpanzee and orangutan) there is a possibility of forming a “metamodal notion of equality of attraction that rests on mediating processes, independent of speech”. In fact, the aforementioned authors proved that anthropoid monkeys can, after the necessary training, find the object they have visually recognized based on haptic familiarization. There is, therefore, an intermodal transfer. We think that intermodal translation, present in semiotic behaviors, is a phenomenon different and more complex than the phenomenon of intermodal transfer of stimuli.
- 21.
When it comes to ontogenesis, however, the primacy of the linguistic symbolic system in further development does not depend on random conditions of development, because there are strong hereditary determinants of the development of vocal speech as a basic means of communication, and only in cases of damage (for example, congenital deafness) do alternative ones develop means (speech using gestures). The existence of this hereditary predisposition for the development of vocal speech is sufficiently proven by the existence of a specific morphology of the vocal tract in humans, which in evolution was built specifically for the needs of producing vocal speech, while such a vocal tract does not exist in other currently existing primates or in human newborns, and in some extinct predecessors of the current biological type of man (for example, in Neanderthals) it is only in formation (Liberman, 1972).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ivić, I.D. (2024). The Beginnings of the Symbolic Functions in Children. In: The Human as Animal Symbolicum. Social Interaction in Learning and Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49757-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49757-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-49756-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-49757-5
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)