Excerpts: Syncretic Thought Process - Jean Piaget

Reasoning ignorant of the logic of relations, of logical classes (juxtaposition being constantly chosen in preference to hierarchical arrangement). Thought proceeds neither by amplifying induction nor by an appeal to general proposition, but that it moves from particular to particular by means of a reasoning process which never bears the character of logical necessity.

Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical. The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions, and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination, the second alone is properly logical. Demonstration, search for truth, is therefore the true function of logic. "Ludistic" [fantasy, play] tendencies, the inability to distinguish between fabulation and truth and immediate belief in his own ideas are inherent in children. The child assimilates everything he hears to his own point of view and has the greatest difficulty in entering into anyone else's point of view.

The child sees things in terms of the momentary perception which is taken as absolute and, in a manner of speaking, hypostasized. He therefore makes no attempt to find the intrinsic relations existing between things. Explanation takes on the character of a narrative. Appeal to a general proposition is lacking. The child seeks neither to establish a proposition by means of successive inductions, nor to postulate it for the purposes of deduction. (Moreover) if we are to make him aware of a general rule, we shall find that it is by no means the rule for which we were prepared.

Understanding undergoes a process which is unanalytic. A sentence heard is not broken up into distinct terms, but gives rise to a general schema which is vague and indissociable. Any two phenomena perceived at the same moment become caught up in a schema which the mind will not allow to become dissociated, and which will be appealed to whenever a problem arises in connection with either of these two phenomena. The relationship of cause and effect is distorted.

Hers is an example: The sun does not fall down "because it is very high up". Explanations given will often be a simple description of what has happened; but because of "syncretism" this description will possess explanatory value.

For by the term "reasoning" should be understood the work of verifying and proving hypothesis, which work alone creates conscious implications among judgments. Claparede has distinguished with great clarity three distinctly separate moments in intellectual activity: question, the invention of hypothesis, and verification.

• The question is only the manifestation of a desire;
• the hypothesis is framed by the imagination to fill up the gap created by the desire.
• Reasoning, therefore appears only at the moment when the hypothesis is verified. Up till then there has been no logical activity. The sole function of this level of thought is to give immediate and unlimited satisfaction to desire and interests by deforming reality so as to adapt it to the ego. For reality is infinitely plastic for the ego.

For adults...it is chiefly in relation to other people that we are obliged to verify our beliefs, and to place ourselves in different planes those that are not compatible with each other or that we gradually build up within ourselves a plane of reality, a plane of possibility, a plane of fiction, and so on. The hierarchy of these planes is therefore determined by their degree of objectivity.

The child's egocentric thought processes do not lead him to try to prove whether such or such of his ideas do or do not correspond to reality. When the question is put to him, he evades it. It does not interest him.

Vygotsky on Piaget:
His conception of the prevalence of egocentrism in childhood leads Piaget to conclude that egocentrism of thought is so intimately related to the child’s psychic nature that it is impervious to experience. The influences to which adults subject the child

are not imprinted on him as on a photographic plate: They are “assimilated,” that is to say, deformed by the living being subjected to them and become implanted in his own substance. It is this psychological substance of the child or, in other words, the structure and the functioning peculiar to child thought that we have endeavored to describe and, in a measure, to explain [Judgment and Reason in the Child, p. 338].

Many adults are still egocentric to their way of thinking. Such people interpose between themselves and reality an imaginary or mystical world, and they reduce everything to this individual point of view. Unadapted to ordinary conditions, they seem to be immersed in an inner life that is all the more intense. Does this make them more conscious of themselves? Does egocentrism point the way to a truer introspection? On the contrary, it can easily be seen that there is a way of living in oneself that develops a great wealth of inexpressible feelings, of personal images and schemas, while at the same time in impoverishes analysis and consciousness of self. In short, the claim is not too bold that we become conscious of ourselves to the extent that we are adapted to other people Our discovery that other people do not spontaneously understand us nor we them is the gauge of the efforts we make to mould our language out of the thousand and one accidents created by this lack of adaption and the measure of our aptitude for the simultaneous analysis of others and of ourselves.

For the construction of the objective world and the elaboration of strict reasoning both consist in a gradual reduction of egocentricity in favor of the progressive socialization of thought. In favor, that is to say, of objective thinking and reciprocity of viewpoint. Truth - empirical truth or formal truth such as forms the subject matter of argument - is obscured by the ego. This level of thought is transductive... that is to say, it is ignorant of the logic of relations (e.g. the relationships and interrelationships between things).

Excerpt from section entitled, Transductions - First Reasonings (Logic of Inference)
Piaget also traces the steps from the “precausal” reasoning of early childhood, which he calls “transduction, to the deductive reasoning of middle childhood. He finds the same characteristics he found in the child’s concepts. The first verbal reasoning is practical and teleological: that’s to say, it is oriented to finding means to a desired end. In this respect it resembles the sensory-motor intelligence it is slowly replacing. One might think that it would be less egocentric than sensory-motor intelligence, but Piaget argues that precisely because representation enables the child to go beyond the perceptual field (what’s perceived here and now), he can now distort reality to suit his wishes, and subordinate it to his ends. Thus we find “the discovery of lying,” which Piaget views as closely linked to the distortion of reality that appears with the “dawn of reasoning.” “Transduction” (which Piaget says Stern described without using the term) is reasoning without the reversible nestings of a hierarchy of classes and relations.
Found on url: http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Precursors, Cognitive.pdf

Excerpts from the works of Shapiro and Miller
Examination of the H (histrionic) style of functioning

H cognition is global, relatively diffuse and lacking in sharp focus of attention and detail - in other words, highly impressionistic. In contrast to the OC's active and prolonged searching for details, the H tends to respond quickly and impulsively, and is highly susceptible to what's immediately striking or merely obvious. H's see only forests, never trees; their perceptions and conclusions are based on immediate, emotionally salient impressions, not on active analysis of the situation. Their lack of intense intellectual concentration and their resulting distractibility and impressionability account for the largely nonfactual world - the "fantasy world" - in which they typically live.

For the H, the hunch or the impression is the guiding cognitive process. This explains why H personalities are typically lacking in intellectual curiosity, even the mundane inquisitiveness about events around them that most people display. Inasmuch as most intellectual pursuits require at least some degree of sustained, focused attention, the H, sorely deficient in this faculty, shows a decided disinclination for cognitively demanding work.

H's are often remarkably lacking in everyday factual knowledge that has no immediate emotional impact of practical use. It's not that H's as a group are any dumber than the rest of us in the usual sense; they can learn skills or information when necessary for some particular purpose, like a job or card game. Indeed, they often show reasonably good practical intelligence when it comes to dealing with common, everyday situations or things that capture their fancy. But sustained intellectual concentration and a range of interests that transcend the immediate or personal are alien to them.

At the input stage, there's a failure of analysis, categorization, and cross-referencing of information with other incoming and already-stored data that would provide the necessary context for a stable mental representation. This, after all, is how we ordinarily form coherent personal histories - they evolve and develop as new experience continues to interact with previously formed self-conceptions throughout our lives. But the H's input is amorphous, garbled, unanalyzed, and unarticulated, especially with respect to those forms of input that require any kind of sustained or focused attention.

When internal scanning is deficient, one memory blends fuzzily with the next. Scenes and events, thoughts and reactions are comingled in an undifferentiated mental mishmash. Thus, the H gives one version of a story one minute, another version the next - not out of willful prevarication, but because what's remembered is more dictated by the feeling of the moment than by any concentrated effort to produce a factual recall.

The oft remarked-on "naiveté" of H's is also understandable in light of their cognitive style. We've all known people who live in their own little fantasy lands, blithely unconcerned with the realities of the real world around them. Indeed we may marvel at how these individuals can ignore the events and responsibilities that at times press so heavily upon our own lives. Are these people lazy or crazy? Neither, really. The H's inability to become fully aware of unpleasant thoughts or feelings lying at the periphery of awareness is abetted by his incapacity to clearly and sharply focus attention. Typically, the H's recollection is conspicuously lacking in factual detail and one sometimes gets the impression that a sober, dispassionate analysis of objective facts would "spoil" the story.

The relative absence of complex cognitive integration and the quick impressionistic mode of information processing are frequently paralleled by and expressed by raw, elemental emotion. Emotions undergo little mental elaboration.

Neurophysiological research has shown that the conscious appreciation of a particular sensory impression, whether sight, sound, smell or body sense, depends not just on the sensory pathways conveying that sensation, but also on the participation of a separate, collateral system. Called the reticular activating system, this chain of neural structures and pathways is responsible for literally "directing attention" to incoming sensory information at different levels of processing.

Impairment of or damage to this system produces a curious dissociative condition where the sensory areas of the brain process the information normally (as shown, for example, by the EEG), but the person remains subjectively unaware of the stimulus; it simply doesn't "register." Normal sensory perception then, depends on the coordinated activity of the neural systems conveying sensory information and the reticular mechanisms governing appropriate attention to and registration of this information.

Even intense stimuli like the pain from a serious battlefield wound, which under ordinary circumstances would certainly consume all of our interest, may be relegated to the back burner of consciousness of more pressing concerns - like determining how to get the hell out of there - supervene. Also, it's frequently difficult to "pay attention" to some trivial external situation when we're preoccupied by some more pressing inner concern. It is clear that in most circumstances we do have certain flexibility and volitional control over attentional processes. For example, you can "force" yourself to concentrate on unengaging material if you know you're having a test on it tomorrow. In the same way, you can "force" your attention away from something which you know is exceedingly unpleasant, like a recent disappointment of injustice.

H's exhibit an ideomotor schism that renders it impossible for the H to adequately mobilize attention and cannot, therefore, willingly remedy the dysfunction. His approach to experience is one of global, impressionistic, uncritical receptivity.

H's are notoriously poor historians because what they "remember" is dictated more by the whims of the moment than by any systematic search through the memory store. "How it sounds" is the principle that supersedes "how it actually happened."

- Laurance Miller, Inner Natures: Brain, Self & Personality

4.1. Hierarchical organization