Symbolic Function Example

Symbolic function is a term used in psychology to refer to the faculty or capacity of the mind to use symbols, which are used to represent a thing or idea is also known What Semiotics. It is the mental faculty that the child acquires during the first years to understand the relationship between the sign and the meaning.

In the thought process there is a signifier (symbolic imitation, symbolic play, language,) and a meaning (the ideas represented by the symbolic object, the child's imitation, or the words).

The human mind at birth uses the senses directly to learn things that happen in the environment around it. Later, along with growth, the mind begins to use the resource of symbols to help you understand and remember the multitude of new things and knowledge that is going acquiring. At first it is a complementary mental resource with respect to direct sensory learning, but later as the infant grows substitutes direct sensory learning for the symbolic mode, taking preeminent place as a way of acquiring knowledge and communicate them.

The mental tool of symbols helps the infant to make a mental image of things without having to have in front of the thing that is symbolized at that moment. This mental process of symbolizing things is continued throughout life, where the symbolic function extends and strengthens in the mind as time passes, being the way in which we think and we usually learn, through symbols, whether these words, images, concepts or other types of symbolization.

The symbolic function It is presented in the following ways:

The delayed imitation:

Where the child makes an imitation of something previously observed, doing it when he no longer has the observed object in front of him.

Symbolic game:

In symbolic play the representation is realistic, but accompanied by symbolic objects.

The language:

Language is a diversified system of symbols (phonetic in spoken language and visual in written language) that the child learns in order to communicate with others. (The metaphor is one of the forms of the symbolic function of language. The metaphor It is an expression related to an object or idea that can be applied to imply an idea, through a symbolic language with which what is meant is expressed).

Example of Symbolic Language Function:

(Metaphor)

The children flew to the table when they were told they were going to distribute the cake at Maria's party. (In this example the word “flew” is a symbol that refers to how quickly the children rushed to the table; also, it is not necessary to have the object in front of it: cake, or the “party” environment, to understand the full meaning of the sentence)

She was so sad that a mighty river ran down her cheeks spilling drops of a crystalline liquid. (In this metaphor it is symbolized by the phrase a mighty river, the cry of the person to whom the phrase refers is a metaphor that uses symbolism to convey an idea.

Example of symbolic function (Symbolic game):

During a child's game, a can that symbolizes a car and some pebbles represent people, or a well of water that can represent tea in a girl's game, when a boy takes a cardboard box symbolizing a car, a house, a boat etc.

Example of symbolic function (Lazy imitation):

When a child sees that a pet asks for food by sitting on the ground or making a specific movement and the child later does a similar action.