The Way to Complex Creative Thinking
In the first year of your baby’s life, his thoughts are concrete – connected to his senses and the objects he sees and feels. Cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget described this as “sensory-motor thinking.” Your baby grasps an object in his hands and explores it through his senses . He looks at it, listens to it, touches it, tastes and smells it. Later on, he conducts other “experiments;” he jumbles materials together, tosses them, throws them, etc. Towards the end of the first year, the first sparks, or hints, of his imagination appear. When imagination first kicks in, it paves the way for imitation. At first, your baby’s attempts at imitation are simple. He imitates concrete actions which he sees around him, such as speaking on the phone, combing his hair and more. The game then becomes symbolic – a rattle turns into a telephone, and a wooden spoon is his comb. Gradually, he is able to dissociate himself from the concrete reality and create more complex situations – which he may not have ever seen or experienced in reality. Eventually, he will begin to involve other children in these games. They become longer, more complex and less tightly connected to reality.