Cognitive structure stage five (18 -30 Months and onward.)

Emergence of symbols. 

Symbols emerge because because actions and emotions have to be postponed and the blocked or delayed emotion/action can only exist as an interal simulation.  Thus the inhibition of actions and emotions both makes possible and necessary the existence of free standing entities unhooked from the actions and emotions they represent. Because they represent the actions and emotions that do not occur they are in a sense the first symbols that emerge in infant minds. They are not just symbols, however, but rather the first concepts mapped to symbols. In their book "The First Idea" Greenspan and Shanker explain as follows:

"The emergence of formal symbols, of words and ideas, involves a momentous transformation. By this time, if there have have been many opportunities for emotioal exchanges, the child the can now more easily separate action from perception and hold onto free standing images and invest them with emotions."

Actions and emotions thus have already become concepts at the earlier stage that has been designated correlations. At this new symbolic stage the toddler begins to not only be able to represent actions and emotions in their minds without expressing them but also start to desire to be able to represent objects in a similar way after they have passed from perception. Thus a full range of concepts begin to emerge.

Symbols and emotion. 

Previous to this stage symbols have been the very vague entities. For instance very young infants are able to represent actions by means of brief partial or incomplete actions. Also they have begun representing objects by means of a brief image of the object and the emotions associated or invested in those actions and objects. Other concepts may also have beginings of being represented by mixtures of emotions, partial actions and visual imagery. Greenspan and Shanker are convinced that the important part of meanings lies in their emotional content they say:

Language is a means of connecting concepts together to become communication.

This stage is about the beginings of language and the more preciise communication that comes with it. Language would be imposible if toddlers weren't already communicating. Toddlers learn language because they are already able to use their previously learned chains of emotional signaling to communicate. These chains are quite sufficient to indicate that the toddler's personal concepts are very different from the concepts of their caregivers. Personal concepts are how the toddler makes sense of objects, actions and emotions to him/herself. Such concepts as exist at this stage are personal and can only be used very vaguely to communicate using these chains of emotional signaling. Greenspan and Shanker refer to these concepts as meaningful images and continue as follows:

"When children haven't learned to create emotionally meaningful images but are neurologically capable of speaking, the effect is very different. A child may see a picture of the table and say the word 'table.' She can lable and perform rote memory tasks. But she won't be able to say 'Mommy, play with me!' or 'I don't like that!' Such a child won't have meaningful language later on. She won't fully comprehend written language, either. The child might learn to read and parrot back 'red ball, green ball, blue ball,' but won't be able to tell you the meaning of a story or the motives of the characters.

It is though emotional interactions that images acquire meaning. The child is learning what an apple is, what love is. She can use words or pictures to convey the feeling of giving mom a big hug and by saying, 'Love you.' She can symbolize hitting and screaming by saying, 'Me mad!' She can also use pretend play to symbolize real and imagined events, such as tea parties monster attacks and the like. In addition, a child can now use symbols to manipulate ideas in her mind without actually having to carry out actions. This allows her tremendous flexibility in resolving and thinking because she can now solve problems in her own mind."

The emergence of consciousness.

It is difficult to imagine what concsiousness pre language might be like but undoubtedly consciousness wthout language must exist for infants. However, to be consciousness as we understand it must emerge as concepts emerge. Infants by manipulating these emotionally invested meaningful images as a code are performing their first attempts at thinking and thus being conscious. 

The mapping of words to concepts. 

At this stage the toddler becomes aware of the imprecisness and long windedness in his/her communication and develops the desire for more precise and fast communication. This leads them to take more and more notice of the sounds and gestures caregivers make when communicating. Although initial imitation of these sounds takes the vague form of music like babble the toddler soon becomes able to pick out individual words and imitate them. Of course the toddler is imediatly rewarded in various ways for speaking words which leads them to speak those words over and over. Although we tend to treat a toddler speaking words as if he/she understood what he/she was saying this is infact impossible.  

Words are symbols that can stand insted of concepts. 

The toddler needs to first associate the words it is speaking with actual objects and other concepts. At this stage the toddler begins to correlate words and concepts. Words, toddlers discover have very precise meanings and if they can figure out what the meanings of each word their communication can become clearer faster and more exact. These new word symbols become so powerful that the absorb and make unnecessary any existing symbols and incidently make obsolete the emotional back and forth signaling that was previously necessary for any comunication. 

The toddlers first attemps to associate words with concepts will of course be trying to match those words with the personal concepts it has already created. These however will be very wrong and the toddler will find by trial and error that they are wrong and need to be adjusted. For instance daddy will likely be pronounced dada by the toddler and his/her concept first matched to this word will likely be "large human that often interacts with me". Many elements will have to be pared away from this concept until it is reduced to the more mutually understandable concept of a daddy. Greenspan and Shanker hold that the meanings of concepts is primarily found in their emotional content so that toddlers are confroned at this stage by words for which they cannot percieve a meaning and meanings for which they cannot find words. They say:

"To the degree that they refer to lived emotional experiences, the new words a child acquires become meaningful. The twelve or eighteen months of exchanges the child has already experienced with caregivers and the available world provide a foundation for the emergence of meaningful language. Continuous emotional interaction with others and the world maintains progress throughout life."

Word symbols. 

The new word symbols also become an efective means of further connecting the islands of conjecture thus creating stronger and more complex conjectures or ideas. To use the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle we can imagine the puzzle pieces as being islands of conjecture. Then instead of simply noticing similar elements contained within the toddled begins to notice that the conjectural pieces are often a continuation of another conjecture that can be joined with it to make a larger pattern. Greenspan and Shanker continue: 

"This stage of developing ideas and language, which grow rapidly between 18 and 30 months and continues thereafter, also moves through several levels based on the complexity of the ideas used and how the ideas are used to express wishes or actions or feelings."

Action words become part of action concepts. 

The toddler's first use of the new word symbols is not so much to communicate as to solidify the associations between the word and the concept. It does not rely on those symbols. The toddler understands the meanings to some extent but still feels compelled to act out the meanings to make sure and use other emotional signaling as well. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Ideas or words and actions are used together (ideas are acted out, but words are also used to signify the actions). Ideas or words are not yet used insted of actions."

Action words replace actions. 

Eventually the toddler does manage to use action words instead of the actions. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Action words are used instead of actions, and these action words convey intention ('Hit you')."

Emotion words become part emotional concepts. 

At first as toddlers learn words that indicate emotion they use them to associate with the conceptions of emotion sort of as an aditional indicator rather than to convey the emotion. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Feelings are conveyed through words, but are treated as as real rather than as signals ('I'm mad,' or 'I'm hungry,' or 'I need a hug' as compared with 'I feel mad' or 'I feel hungry' or 'I feel I need a hug'). In the first instance, the feeling state demands action and is very close to action; in the second one, the words are more a signal for something going on inside that makes possible a consideration of many possibe thoughts and/or actions."

Emotion words instead of Emotions. 

As with actions eventually the toddler is able to use emotion words instead of overt expression of those emotions. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Words are used to convey bodily feeling states ('My musscles are exploding,' My head is aching')."

Meanings become more and more specific. 

As the meanings of words become clearer to the toddler the toddler revises his/her concepts  to be in line with the words. This gives the words increasingly specific meanings which the toddler can use to be more specific when communicating. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Words convey feelings, but they are mostly global feeling states ('I feel awful,' "My head is aching'). The feeling states are generally polarized (all good or all bad). These polarized uses of the words can also characterize the next stage when logical bridges are created to link ideas together; if they persist, however, they often indicate a constriction or limitation in the full mastery of using words and connecting ideas together logically."

Personal meanings become social meanings. 

This process of adjusing personal meaings to be consonant with word meanings continues until peronal meanings are the same as the general consensus of word meanings. At that pont toddlers can convey very specific and differentiated feelings, actions and other ideas. Also words for actions an emotions can be used without the action being performed or the emotion being felt. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"Words begin to convey more differentiated feelings ('I feel sad' or 'I feel angry') and, therefore, are begining to represent more fully a specific feeling that is not tied to action. The most differentiated use of words characterizes the relative mastery of this stage and the next one."

Intelligence. 

Greenspan and Shanker say: 

Intelligence has now reached the reached the symbolic level. This is when we ordinarily think of inteligence as truely begining. As we have shown, however inteligence has already been on a long developmental journey and is now reaching a new level. Although we emphasized the acquisition of verbal symbals, which is a cornerstone of many intellectual endevors, the ability to construct symbols actually occurrs in many domains and gives rise higher levels of intelligence in all of them. This development includes the formation of visual-spatial symbols (the preschooler can build a house and elaborate about what goes on in each part of it) as well as planned actions, which serve symbolic goals (taking the toy bus from the house to the school to pick up some children).  

Recognition of symbolic sounds. 

The preperation for the coming of language is quite extensive. which as previously explained has involved imitation of speach sound, then the discrimination and recognition of individual words and finally the imitation of speaking those words. After some time speaking the toddler begins to make the connection or correlation between between words and concepts. The toddler experiences a gradual dawning that words have meanings and that those meanings are often similar to to those of the toddler's personal concepts. As the toddler begins to use these words to communicate he/she soon realizes that this form of communication is far superior to the long involved chains of emotional signaling that he/she used previously. As soon as the toddler makes this leap he/she begins to make a concerted effort to map words on to concepts and vice versa.

"The ability to construct symbols also enables individuals to share meanings. This includes the common use of words and emerging concepts - not only what's 'nice' and 'not nice' 'fair' and 'unfair' but a sense of justice and other concepts that can unite groups socially. Symbols also enable new levels of social negotiation. Basic needs, such as dependency, curiosity, assertivness, and agression, can be dealt with by larger and larger groups. Preschoolers are still usually better at sharing meanings and symbols with one other person than with large groups of people. At big birthday parties, preschoolers tend either organize into smaller groups or play on their own in a more parallel way. Over time, however, the ability to use symbols in larger and larger groups emerges." 

The symbolic Self.

With the coming of symbols the self for the first time can be represented by a few symbols like I, me and my making the distiction between I and not I, me and not me far more evident. Greenspan and Shanker say:

"The sense of self is also reaching a higher level. A sense of 'me' and 'not me' is forming, now  at the level of internal images rather than simply integrated patterns of behavior, as was true at the prior stage. In other words, there is now a 'symbolic sense of self' begining to form. Consciousness is, therefore, reaching an important new level as a symbolic awarness of the world is begining to complement the presymbolic one, which had been materializing for some time. This symbolic awareness of the world builds on and incorporates the awareness of the world that had already existed. In other words, language does not create consciousness. It builds on a sense of the self and the outer world that is already well established. It now becomes possible to create new realities and new levels of consciousness through manipulating and creating symbols. Fantasies and imagination blossom."

Thought code and structural template. 

Not only do words provide a new superior code for communication but but they also provide a new superior way for the toddler to order and organize his/her personal map of reality. Language also serves to enable an internal  monologue or dialogue where through the manipulation of these new symbols further correlations may occur and problem solving can become faster and far more efficient.

"Now the child is able to solve problems in her mind. She can explore creative and nove possibilities through the manipulation of symbols (i.e., ideas). This new foundation for intelligence, like its antecedents, will be further developed throughout life."