Organizing Early Experience

Imagination and Cognition in Childhood

Delmont C Morrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351842402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Santé mentale en psychologie

Focusing on developmental psychology, this work features 12 essays exploring contemporary views and developments in research and theory in the relationship between imagination and cognition in childhood.

PART I

Overview

CHAPTER 1

The Child’s First Ways of Knowing

DELMONT MORRISON

This chapter describes the developmental process resulting in the differentiation and integration of two major sources of information in human experience: subjective and objective. The major theme in this effort is the differentiation in the child of the subjective and objective perspective and the rich but constantly changing information and awareness that evolves from the interaction of these two different ways of knowing. The subjective perspective in its earliest form is similar to what has been described as primary process thinking by Freud and sensorimotor intelligence and preoperational thought as described by Piaget. The development and change occurring in the subjective interpretation of experience has been explained by Freud and Freudian theorists in terms of instincts and conflicts between id, ego, and superego [1]. The objective awareness of reality grows as the ego modifies instinctual expression and satisfaction. Pathological cognitive states seen in neurosis are due to anxiety and the influence of the unconscious process on conscious thought. Cognitive development occurs in an affective context. The differentiation of subjective and objective awareness is the basic issue in the study of intelligence according to Piaget. However, in contrast to Freudian theory, this awareness occurs through inborn mechanisms developing largely in the context of the process of maturation and adaptive orientation to the external world. Affect may contribute or interfere with this process to some degree but is not a major factor in the sequence of cognitive development [2].

Recent research and theory indicate that both Freudian and Piagetian theory are inadequate explanations of how children evolve an understanding of the contribution of their inner states in the interpretation of experience and subsequently acquire a more objective view of experience. In this chapter, the cognitive aspects of this process are examined in the context of the development of self-nonself differentiation [3] as the child experiences those early interpersonal relationships that contribute to attachment [4]. This approach differs significantly from both Freudian and Piagetian theory in that the most important modifications in the subjective and objective perspective are seen as due to an inseparable interaction between the child’s cognitive organization and his/her first emotional personal relationships.

COGNITIVE STATES

As a working definition, the subjective perspective contributes to a child’s interpretation of events through information, unconscious or conscious, that has an internal source. The most important cognitive source of this information is the child’s affects, memory, wishes, and fantasies that contribute to his/her interpretation of early experience. The objective perspective, in contrast, is influenced by information that is external to the child. Like the subjective perspective, the objective is influenced by the child’s unconscious and conscious information. The differentiation of the subjective and objective state is the complex reasoning children evolve to understand themselves, other people, social relations, social groups and institutions [5]. The child structures early experience with a perpetual confusion between inner and outer sources of information and it is only when the child is able cognitively to recognize consciously the contribution of his/her own internal states to the interpretation of experience that objective thought is acquired [6]. This objectification of experience is gradual and is acquired in the process of an expanding awareness of self that is by its nature affectively charged. As the child’s awareness of events is more complex, there is a gradual recognition of a world that operates independent of self. With reflective thought the child becomes aware of self as thinker and the center of a will. With experience the child becomes aware that this will must be modulated in terms of objects and people that are not always influenced by the child’s will as the child wishes or anticipates. This process is hypothesized to begin at about age two with the development of preoperational thought [3], but there is evidence that major interpersonal events occur before age two that probably greatly influence the differentiation of self-nonself [7].

When thought occurs under conditions where subjective sources of information are dominant and a limited capacity for reflective thought exists, as is true during the first years of life, children live within their presently occurring experience and assume that their actions bring events into existence, and that when their attention moves elsewhere the event ceases to exist. This narcissistic state of sensorimotor intelligence is transformed by the growing cognitive capacity to discriminate between internal and external sources of information and the consequent discovery of self and will. Events do not change but the child’s experience of the event is changed by the cognitive capacity for objectification. This new understanding of a familiar experience is reorganized by preoperational systems of thought that structure the child’s interpretation of the event, as well as the memory of the event and the anticipation of future events. Preoperational thought is egocentric and action oriented. Assimilative functions are dominant and a major modality of representation is the metaphor. Through the metaphor unfamiliar events are transformed into relatively familiar ones, thereby reducing the cognitive aspect of novelty and the affective reaction to the unknown and strange. These representational systems are dominant between the ages of two and eight and are gradually modified by the development of the various forms of operational thought [8].

INTERPERSONAL EVENTS

A major transition occurs in the infant-parent interaction during the second half of the first year of life. Prior to this the infant has been engaged in a variety of sensorimotor explorations, such as the circular reactions, that contribute to the objectification of experience. However, at about six months, major motor milestones occur and the child’s exploration of environmental novelty becomes more elaborate. The child now will subordinate and order his/her motor responses to obtain a goal: one of the first cognitive signs of the child’s recognition of external information and an indication of intention. Prior to six months of age the infant has been engaged in an interpersonal relationship characterized by the management of the infant’s tension by the caregiver. After six months the infant is more cognitively aware of the caregiver and behavioral interactions with this person are characterized by separation protests, retreating to the caregiver when too distressed by novelty, and positive greetings when the caregiver appears after an absence [7]. These exchanges are indicative of a major modification in subjective states reflected in a growing sense of self and will fused with anxiety and reduction of anxiety in an interpersonal context. The initial anxiety is intense and generalized and is reduced if the caregiver is reliable and consistent in mitigating stressful situations. This exchange results in the reduction of gross anxiety into more manageable signal anxiety which serves to indicate that under stressful situations the child can anticipate that the stress will be mitigated and anxiety reduced [9]. This mutual exchange between child and caregiver results in the child experiencing his/her pleasurable and negative subjective states as generally ending satisfactorily with a result that there is a continuity to the experience of self and increased self-esteem. The growing self-awareness of will is closely associated with the child’s increasing awareness and eventual understanding of both love and aggression. In these continuing interpersonal exchanges the child becomes conscious that components of self are accepted and encouraged in the interpersonal events with the parent. However, these exchanges are also concluded at times with the child experiencing the parent in the context of frustration and rage. These images and feelings of anger are initially experienced cognitively as independent of the feelings of love and pleasure that are also directed at the same parent [10]. The repeated experience of receiving love and reducing anger satisfactorily with the same person results in the integration of these two feelings into a synthesized rather than fragmented cognitive-affective system [9].

With the development of crawling and walking during the interval of six to sixteen months the child’s capacity to explore the environment is greatly increased. Cognitively, children demonstrate an awareness that an object continues to exist even when the child is not acting on it or cannot see it. Major modifications in subjective information occurs at this time when the child is able to decenter, process, and conserve two or more sources of perceptual information regarding objects and events at the same time. These cognitive shifts in the objective-subjective perspective are dependent on interpersonal experience. Although the child is curious and has an increased capacity to assimilate and accommodate more sources of information in an event, there is considerable evidence that there are limits to how much novelty a child can process comfortably. Too abrupt a shift in complexity, such as a stranger and/or a strange situation, arouses anxiety [11]. In the context of change and novelty the child must experience the parent as a familiar and anxiety reducing figure or there is a major disruption in the exploration of novelty [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. The parent must become a constant reliable source of security for the child to apply his/her increasing cognitive skills to transform complex events into cognitive systems that further differentiate the subjective-objective perspective. As symbolic thought and language develop, the child and caregiver can remain in psychological contact, even when at a physical distance.

INITIAL WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING: COGNITION AND AFFECT

Probably the most important aspect of these earliest attachments is that they occur when the child interprets events with sensorimotor schema and preoperational thought. These cognitive systems are greatly influenced by the subjective perspective with its idiosyncratic-egocentric images. The integrating effect of secure attachment eventually enables the child to elaborate on the various dimensions of self explored through events by the less subjective systems of operational thought. As a consequence, the probability is increased that a balance between subjective and objective perspective will develop. However, the chronic exposure to the unfamiliar without adequate attachment increases the chance that the growing cognitive capacity to attend to self becomes evaluative and negative. This inner conclusion regarding self is demonstrated in preschoolers who were known to have histories of anxious or avoidant attachment. When rated by their teachers on a measure of self-esteem, these children were rated as having lower self-esteem than children with earlier histories of secure attachment [13]. The pleasure the two year old has in exploring novelty with the familiar parent, and the growing awareness and assertion of will, can tax the parent’s capacity to assert control, use discipline and set limits. At times the child may wish to explore in a situation that the caregiver perceives as inappropriate. The new process of self-assertion occurs in the child who is emotionally narcissistic and cognitively omnipotent. This combination sets the stage for the negativistic behavior observed during this time and the child’s use of temper trantrums to negotiate in situations where caregivers must assert their will [14]. By its nature, this process of self-assertion is charged with emotional overtones and the temper tantrum, which is the prototype for future aggressive reactions to ego denial, becomes a major event for definition and evaluation of self. In the normal course of events the unbridled urge for pleasure and immediate gratification of will becomes modified by the need for parental approval. If parental methods for controlling negativism involve the overuse of verbal or nonverbal negative evaluations of the child, then low self-esteem can develop in the context of a preoperational understanding of self-assertion and anger.

Two major affects, anxiety and anger, experienced in the interpersonal exchanges basic to attachment and later interpersonal events such as the Oedipal triangle, contribute significantly to the child’s objectification of experience. Affects do not emerge fully formed but must undergo their own extensive period of development. Initially, affective states may involve elements that are highly differentiated, such as the eight month old infant’s greeting of the mother in the strange situation, without these elements being integrated or organized into a hierarchical structure [15]. The object of the affect is not differentiated from the affective event and the representation of self and others is fused with the affect. Because the preoperational child centers on the predominant isolated experience in an event, the dominant affective component may capture the child’s attention and determine his or her total conception of the interpersonal interaction. Preoperational thought is unstable, discontinuous and irreversible. The latter means that the child cannot carry out transformations in thought that are necessary to solve perceptual problems such as the conservation of volume and number. This irreversibility is observed in the preoperational child who in one affective state cannot conceptualize having other contrasting affective states or evaluations of the same person. As objectification of self and affect occurs, the object of the affect and the affect itself are differentiated from each other. A further cognitive advancement occurs when the child recognizes that he/she may have mixed or contradictory feelings toward the same person and that some feelings ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I: OVERVIEW
• PART II: DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS
• PART III: THE CONTRIBUTION OF EXPERIENCE
• PART IV: THE USES OF IMAGINATION