Cognitive structure stage four (9-18 Months onward.)

Order from chaos. 

The fourth stage in Greenspan and Shanker's theory, as depicted in their book "The First Idea", concerns the creative process; the gaining of greater understanding of the existence of a self and the possibility of control over that self, and thus some control over the external world. This is accomplished by means of an increasingly developing ability to distinguish different types of patterns. These patterns are mini maps of two different but interconnected types. They are patterns of the toddler's actions and emotions and parallel patterns of the actions and emotions of caregivers. This site refers to these patterns as reality patterns. Discrimination between reality patterns and recognition of those patterns enable the toddler to adapt those patterns to new circumstances. In order to deal with unforeseen events the child finds that his/her randomly discovered usable responses do not work well in satisfying his/her wants and feels the need to alter, change or adapt those responses to the new situations. Thus the infant has problems which it tries to solve by means of reducing its own emotions, suppressing actions and varying existing known patterns of action.

Complex actions. 

At this stage actions become quite complex. Some action patterns are added together to create a continuous flow of movement with complex outcomes. Other action patterns are added together to create incredibly long chains of emotional signaling between the infant and its caregivers. Greenspan and Shanker explain this as follows:

"...she learns to engage in a continuous flow of emotional signaling and can use this ability to solve problems. For example, she may take her mother by the hand, gesture with her eyes and hands so that her mother will open the door to the yard, and then point to the swing; or she takes her dad to the car and shows him that she wants a ride." 

The suppression of automatic emotions and actions. 

These long chains of communication and interaction enable mutual intentions to become clear without the need of verbal communication, and are themselves achieved by the infant primarily by means of terminating or postponing reflex (catastrophic) emotions and action templates. By not performing certain actions and suppressing their emotions infants more easily and increasingly satisfy their needs and wants. Greenspan and Shanker explain further:

"...a child learns how to predict patterns of adult behavior and act accordingly. She learns, for example, that when her father comes home and looks grumpy, it's best to stay out of his way. Hide behind the couch or he will snap at you. The child learns that before her mother has had her morning coffee she'd better walk and talk softly." 

"In daily loving exchanges and struggles with caregivers, the toddler learns to tame such catastrophic emotions as fear and rage ... with the more regulated and interactive use of emotions. Therefore, she learns to modulate and finely regulate her behavior and moods and cope with intense feeling states. Anger is explosive in the very young infant, and sadness seems to last forever and ever. Certain necessary experiences turn these extreme emotional reactions into feelings and behavior that are finely regulated and responsive to the situation at hand."     

This dialog of action and repressed action, emotional expression and suppressed emotion in turn is dependent on caregivers giving immediate feedback indicating their approval or disapproval of the infant's actions. These long chains are of two basic types and various combinations of those types. One type consists of infant actions, parent expressions of approval or disapproval, action terminated or continued, approval or disapproval, action modified approval or disapproval and so on in a long chain. All the while the infant has to reduce the intensity of emotional expression and terminate or delay reflex actions. The other type consists of infant expressions of their wants and parent's guesses and interpretations of what might be meant by the infant and decisions to give the infant what it wants or deprive the infant of those wants. These alterations of existing activity programs create adaptions of old activity programs which are in fact new activity programs. 

Adaptions and the recognition of patterns. 

These adaptions necessitate the ability to recognize structure in existing activity programs, structure in emotions, and structure in the external circumstances in which they occur, and related structure of outcomes. In other words they require the toddler to recognize patterns among conjectures. Greenspan and Shanker say:  

These savvy adaptions are based on and facilitate, an ability to recognize patterns. Pattern recognition, which is ideally learned through social interactions, can then be applied to solve problems in the physical world as well. The child that doesn't interact, however, won't experience or fully learn to recognize a broad range of patterns." 

Patterns are essentially groups of conjectures that fit together in a particular way. They might be conjectures about the child's vocal intonation, or the fathers attention, the child's own emotional state, or about the negotiations involved in working together with parents to communicate, but the pattern is how all these pieces fit together. Greenspan and Shanker continue:

"In other words, pattern recognition involves seeing how the pieces fit together rather than just being involved in piecemeal behavior. Elaborate negotiations or play with others make it possible to experience the world in larger integrated patterns. Recognizing patterns helps a toddler predict the behavior of others and adjust her own."

Problem solving. 

Simple intention for something to happen is no longer enough the child begins to work methodically through or try various alternative patterns to find solutions to these problems. This motivation necessitates the distinguishing between or differentiating between reality patterns to predict the actions of others and to actively attempt to influence external reality. In this manner the infant forms patterns of expectation or anticipates the outcomes of these various created conjectures. At this stage although the toddler is by now an intentional creature he/she does not intentionally test these conjectures but rather simply notes the confirmation or disconformation of such conjectures in his/her continuing experience. Thus although the conjectures are tested it is accomplished randomly and without intention. Greenspan and Shanker explain how increasingly finer control over their emotions enables toddlers to solve problems and vastly improves their earlier solutions:

"With a fine-tuned reaction rather than one that is global or extreme, the child doesn't have to throw a tantrum to register her annoyance; she can do it with just a glance and an annoyed look. This ability comes gradually. Even if a toddler does escalate to a real tantrum, she will not go from 0 to 60 in one second. Different feelings from joy and happiness to sadness to anger to assertiveness can become part of fine-tuned exchanges with patient caring adults."

This testing is not, however, entirely random. At this stage the child has the beginnings of what will eventually see him/her becoming a little scientist. He/she starts trying out various action patterns and degrees of emotion, which have produced a required result in one circumstance, now in a different circumstance. This can be seen as taking already formed hypotheses and testing them in different circumstances much as a scientist would. This is not testing in the sense of trying to prove the conjecture wrong, but rather an adaptive process where the solution to one problem can be adapted to another problem. 

Complex solutions. 

Greenspan and Shanker explain how this problem solving leads to increasingly complex solutions to increasingly complex questions:

"The child also begins to use this new ability in increasingly complicated situations. Is her mother's tense face a signal that she is angry with her daughter? The child starts to use this awareness to respond to people according to their emotional tones, for example, and to pull away from a situation that seems undermining. The intuitive ability to decipher human exchanges and pick up emotional cues before any words have been exchanged becomes a 'super sense' that often operates faster than our more conscious awareness. In fact it is the foundation of our social life."  

Iteration and theory theory. 

Although at this stage the child has developed very little in the way of language many theorists of child development consider that the child by this time has developed theories about the world and how it works. Such theories would have to be coded in something other than language such as an iconic or motor code. This site prefers to call such structures 'conjectures' because at this stage the child is still not actively testing such conjectures. However, as this stage develops children do begin a process that is very like testing. This process is a seemingly repetitive cycle where actions appear to be performed over and over again. However, this is not true repetition or true testing but more like variations on a theme. The child performs an action and notes the outcomes of the action and then performs another action that is similar but not completely the same and notes the outcomes and then performs another variation and so on. In this way the child will cycle through many iterations of the original action, building up a much more comprehensive conjecture defined by limits within which the conjecture works and limited by conditions within which the conjecture does not work. In her book "The Scientist in the Crib" Alison Gropnik points out the systematic way infants examine objects to discover their properties and gives an example of this early iterative behavior as follows:

"By a year or so, they will systematically vary the actions they perform on an object: they might tap a new toy car gently against the floor, listening to the sound it makes, then try banging it loudly, and then try banging it against the soft sofa. By eighteen months, if you show a them an object with some unexpected property, like a can that makes a mooing noise, they will systematically test to see if it will do other unexpected things."

"Babies also spontaneously undertake solo investigations of the mysterious Case of the Disappearing Object. Alison once recorded a baby putting the same ring under a cloth and finding it seventeen times in succession, saying 'All gone' each time. In our experiments babies often begin by protesting when we take a toy and hide it. But after one or two turns, they often start hiding the toy themselves or give the cloth and toy to us with instructions to hide it again. Eighteen-months-olds, who are not renounced for their long attention span, will play this game for half an hour."

"By the time babies are one or two years old, they will systematically explore the way one object can influence another object. The babies in our rake experiments forget all about getting the toy after a trial or two. They often deliberately put the toy back far out of reach and experiment with using the rake to draw it toward them. The toy itself isn't nearly as interesting as the fact that the rake moves it closer.

Situational complexities. 

These more defined conjectures (theories?) enable the infant to deal with increasingly complex situations. Greenspan and Shanker explain:

Forming the earliest sense of self. 

Although this stage is still presymbolic, for the first time the elements of self previously alluded to previously now come together to form a whole self entity. Greenspan and Shanker continue:

"She also learns to regulate her moods and behavior and perceive and or organize patterns to form a more complete self."

"A sense of self begins forming when a baby organizes her emotions and behavior, such as a few vocalizations or one or two hand wavings or a few smiles, to a whole pattern of dozens of exchanges, which she uses to solve problems, she is learning that she and others can operate in larger chunks or patterns. This enables her to be even more intentional and to negotiate, rather than take piecemeal, episodic action. This process happens step-by-step. When an adult responds reciprocally, the baby makes a discovery; 'I can make something happen.' This teaches a baby to take initiative (do something and something happens in return, smiling gets a smile from mom or dad). ...from this process the infant is beginning to gain a sense of purpose and will and, very importantly, a sense of 'self' (it's 'me' making something happen 'me' getting that smile or getting that little red rattle by reaching out 'my' hand). As a toddler's repertoire of emotional signaling grows richer and she begins to discern patterns in her own and others behavior, she adds these observations to the map delineating herself as a person."

Planning. 

At this stage the beginnings of planning become possible by means of connecting conjectures together. Greenspan and Shanker continue: 

"Similarly, the ability to plan and sequence actions - conducting a five-step maneuver with a new truck (loading and unloading it, moving it to one side of the room and then the other) - is also rapidly learned because of the innovative play where emotional goals are used to guide actions. As discussed earlier, the toddler is also learning to regulate her mood and behaviors better because of interactive emotional signaling and, in this way, is also learning to modulate sensations. She is no longer likely to become sensory overloaded or underaroused because she is now able to participate actively in the sensations modulating her. For example, she can seek out just a bit more sound or touch. She can slow down an interaction through her expressions, hand gestures, or body posture if it's becoming overloading."

Multi Tasking. 

Also at this stage, being able to plan and hold more than one action plan in their mind enables the toddler to engage in more than one action or thought process at a time. Greenspan and Shanker continue:

"New social skills are also developing at this stage. Social signaling enables the toddler to handle multiple relationships at the same time, signaling a mischievous grin to her father and an annoyed look at her mother. Reading these emotional signals is also part of this process and it helps the toddler inhibit aggression, cooperate, and altruistic behaviors."

Imitation. 

Although the ability to imitate seems to be part if an infant's abilities from the moment they are born at this stage the ability to imitate kicks into high gear as the toddler becomes able to mobilize actions to imitate others far more easily and his/her ability to recognize patterns becomes translated into copying those patterns. Greenspan and Shanker continue:

"The ability to imitate also advances significantly. Now the toddler can copy large patterns, such as putting on her father's hat, lifting his briefcase, and imitating him as he walks about the house with a confident stride. As can be readily imagined, these abilities of social negotiation, multiple relationships, and rapid learning of whole patterns through imitation are the foundations for participating in groups. We have observed toddlers forming friendships by copying each other, following each other, enjoying some rough-and-tumble play together, and eventually, by eighteen months of age or so, hamming it up together and laughing at and with each other."

Correlation. 

This site has labeled this developmental stage as correlations. In psychology correlation is the interdependence or reciprocal relations of organs or functions. In statistics it means the degree to which two or more attributes or measurements on the same group of elements show a tendency to vary together. It is essentially the mutual relation between two things and this stage is all about relating conjectures together. These are not the unconscious patterns created at the previous stage but consciously created patterns that can be recognized and be made use of to solve problems. This is the simplest form of intensional creation. This is where toddlers first show some indication of intentional creativity, just a matter of correlating conjectures into patterns. These correlations are not at all random, and are actually based on the fluidity of continuous movement and similarity of circumstance. In other words 'obvious correlations' not the later more creative correlations produced by analogy for unconnected items or that occur serendipitously.