Thinking

Infancy and the Origins of Thinking

The Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget believed that infants were incapable of engaging in thought until 18–24 months of age. Piaget defined thinking as the ability to deliberately create images in the absence of the events signified by those images: A 2-year-old who imitates another child’s temper tantrum days after having witnessed it must have the ability to imagine an event that is no longer present and use that image to guide the child’s own tantrum. Symbolic thinking of this sort indeed arises during the second year of life.

Although debated, younger infants often seem to engage in what might be called thought. In one study, 3½-month-olds watched a solid screen rotate in a 180° arc upward and away from them like a drawbridge. Infants watched the display until they lost interest and looked away. A box was then placed in the path of the screen. In the possible condition, although the screen rotated upward and toward the box, causing the box to disappear, it stopped moving when it reached the location of the box. The impossible condition was the same, except instead of stopping when it reached the hidden box’s location, the screen appeared to pass right through it. Infants looked longer at the impossible than the possible condition, suggesting that they understood not only that the box existed when no longer in sight but also that it was impossible for the screen to rotate through the box.

Numerous studies like the one just described suggest that infants are able to make inferences about events in the absence of direct sensory experience with them. However, as such studies tend to occur in contexts that provide rich perceptual support for the assessed abilities, the question of whether infants are thinking remains controversial. Nonetheless, even if infants do not enter the world not as symbolic thinkers, they demonstrate remarkable abilities to manipulate meanings beyond the information directly given in the here and now.

Thinking Through Childhood

Thinking develops through a series of levels over childhood. The development of symbolic thinking is strongly tied to particular conceptual domains and contexts, and it develops in a series of levels over childhood. Although all thinking develops through the same levels, the capacity to think in the areas of mathematics, science, social relationships, and sports develops along separate pathways and at different paces both between and within children.

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