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PubMed1989

Transparency and recall of symbols among intellectually handicapped adults.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the transparency and recall of symbols representing three parts of speech (nouns, verbs, descriptors) from three different graphic symbol systems (Blissymbols, Picture Communication System, and Picsyms) among adults with intellectual handicaps. Results suggested that the Picture Communication System (PCS) and Picsyms were more transparent and easier to learn than Blissymbols. Subjects correctly identified significantly fewer Blissymbols representing nouns than either PCS or Picsyms representing nouns. In early stages of recall for nouns, PCS and Picsyms were significantly easier to recall than Blissymbols. Implications of the data for symbol system selection use for persons with severe speech impairments are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Nonlinguistic symbolic and conceptual abilities of language-impaired and normally developing children.

This study was motivated in part by the claim that language-impaired children with normal nonverbal intelligence suffer from representational and symbolization deficits (Morehead & Ingram, 1973). The study also examined the developing concepts of class, number, and order in these children to evaluate the claim that their thinking and reasoning in the nonlinguistic domain were within normal limits. Subjects were language-impaired children and two groups of normally developing children, one matched for MA and the other for MLU to the language-imparied group. Each group consisted of ten children. Each child was administered six nonstandardized cognitive tasks from the Piagetian literature. These tasks were designed to assess developing nonlinguistic symbolic abilities and conceptual knowledge of class, number, and order relations. The language-impaired children consistently performed better than MLU-matched controls but more poorly than MA-matched peers. However, only one task--Haptic Recognition--uncovered a significant difference between the language-impaired and MA-matched groups. The difficulty that language-impaired children experienced on this task was taken as evidence that they had deficient nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. Some tentative conclusions are offered concerning the role representational abilities play in language development.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1994

Symbolic representation and the components of a group-as-a-whole model.

As participants engage in the group psychotherapy process, they often generate figurative forms (i.e., metaphoric images) representative of their experiences together. Metaphors function as symbols when they depict important information about the group-as-a-whole, as well as about the individuals that comprise it. Symbols are cultural phenomena that express, contain, and transform the group process. This article presents a model of how metaphoric and symbolic images arise spontaneously as organizational phenomena and how they might be elaborated therapeutically. A bridge is made between individualistic and group-as-a-whole perspectives on the group process by demonstrating how members come together through the evolution of shaping circumstances, bipolar themes, talking points, particularizations of experience, and organizing images.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Gun culture and symbolism among U.K. and U.S. women.

The authors explored attitudes of young women in the United Kingdom (n = 108) and the United States (n = 91) toward (a) the possession and use of guns through the Attitude to Guns Scale (N. R. Branscombe, J. A. Weir, & P. Crosby, 1992) and (b) guns' perceived functional and symbolic significance through the Symbolic Nature of Guns Scale (C. A. Cooke & J. E. Puddifoot, 1997). There were significant differences in beliefs concerning the right to own a gun and the protective effect of guns but not in the perceived contribution of guns to crime. Although neither group strongly equated guns symbolically with power or control, the U.S. women were more likely to perceive guns as expressions of freedom or independence, and the U.K. women were more likely to view guns as expressions of danger and violence. The findings were contextualized by comparison with samples of male control participants of similar ages.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

At the sources of the symbolization process. The psychoanalyst as an observer of early trauma.

This paper presents a psychoanalytic study of mothers and infants, concentrating on very early traumatization and its impact on the symbolization process. This can be traced in the analysis in the destruction of freedom of association and the symbolization process, leading to petrifications, somatizations, or acting out. A theory of the origin of the symbolization process is developed by observing the kinesthesia of traumatized infants. This approach, based on years of observation, offers a perspective on the landscape before representation, before the object has become represented. The theory takes account of forces from the area of the unconscious as described in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (Freud, 1920). A new view of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the mind emerges from this study. The author tries to demonstrate that the mind is multi-dimensional and that our theory of the mind therefore needs the complexity of UCS/PRC/CS. If psychoanalytic theorizing is to remain faithful to the forms and movements of the associative mind, it should not be simplified into linear causalities, as it would be if we were concerned only with object representations.

Adoption↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Relationships between symbolic play, functional play, verbal and non-verbal ability in young children.

It is well established that certain aspects of play in young children are related to their emerging linguistic skills. The present study examined the relationships between functional play, symbolic play, non-verbal ability, and expressive and receptive language in normally developing children aged between 1 and 6 years using standardized assessment procedures, including a recently developed Test of Pretend Play (ToPP). When effects of chronological age were partialled out, symbolic play remained significantly correlated with both expressive and receptive language, but not with functional play or non-verbal ability; and functional play was only correlated significantly with expressive language. It is concluded that ToPP will provide practitioners with a useful way of assessing symbolic ability in children between the ages of 1 and 6 years, and will contribute to the assessment and diagnosis of a number of communication difficulties, and have implications for intervention.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Symbolism of community I: the boundary between hospital and community.

OBJECTIVE: To study the symbolism of community as understood and practised in a mental health Crisis and Assessment Service in an Australian city. THEORETICAL APPROACHES: The paper draws on anthropological theories of symbolism and boundary work. METHOD: Ethnographic fieldwork techniques were employed for data collection. Ethnographic analysis was then applied to these data. RESULTS: In mental health practice, community is primarily defined in contradistinction to hospital. Narratives about community, including an orthodox version and a sceptical counter-narrative, revolve around this community-hospital boundary. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis identifies a key symbol, which we have designated community, and enumerates the social values that comprise it.

Anthropology↗
PubMed2006

Symbolism of community II: the boundary between community mental health professional and community.

OBJECTIVE: To study the symbolism of community as understood and practised within a mental health Crisis and Assessment Service in an Australian city. THEORETICAL APPROACHES: The paper draws on anthropological theories of symbolism, boundary work and social networks. METHOD: Ethnographic fieldwork techniques were employed for data collection. Ethnographic analysis was then applied to these data. RESULTS: In mental health practice, rules of professional behaviour established a boundary that prohibited mental health professionals from social engagement with members of the community they served. Ethical imperatives prevented them from forming interpersonal bonds with their clients. Rules of privacy and confidentiality meant that they could not relate to the client's social network as a whole. CONCLUSIONS: The companion to this paper identified a summarizing symbol, which we designated community, and it specified the social values it represented when appropriated to the task of drawing a boundary between hospital and community. This paper specifies additional social values represented by community when it is appropriated to the task of drawing a boundary between community mental health professionals and the community.

Community Mental Health Services↗
PubMed2001

Symbolic control of visual attention.

The present study reports four pairs of experiments that examined the role of nonpredictive (i.e., task-irrelevant) symbolic stimuli on attentional orienting. The experiments involved a simple detection task, an inhibition of return (IOR) task, and choice decision tasks both with and without attentional bias. Each pair of experiments included one experiment in which nonpredictive arrows were presented at the central fixation location and another experiment in which nonpredictive direction words (e.g., "up," "down," "left," "right") were presented. The nonpredictive symbolic stimuli affected responses in all experiments, with the words producing greater effects in the detection task and the arrows producing greater effects in the IOR and choice decision tasks. Overall, the present findings indicate that there is a strong connection between the overlearned representations of the meaning of communicative symbols and the reflexive orienting of visual attention.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A developmental exploration of language used to accompany symbolic play in young, normal children (2-4 years old).

Observation of play can provide crucial information about a child's developmental level of language. To make this information available categorization and measurement are necessary. By defining, from a cognitive and pragmatic point of view, separate but parallel measures of play and language it was possible to define four different levels of symbolic functioning: representational play; conceptual play; programmatic play; and script play. Careful longitudinal descriptions of language used to accompany symbolic play of ten 2-4-year-old children are presented. Interesting developmental trends in play and cognitive and pragmatic organization of language were found. Gradually language production was considered as the primary mode for symbolic expression between the ages of 2;6 (2 years; 6 months) and 3 years. Language production increased dramatically between the ages of 3 and 3;6, and became better differentiated from the play context. The scientific study of child language using an analytic tool, such as a play procedure, to describe and analyse spontaneous production of spoken language, with a cognitive and pragmatic framework contributes not only a more accurate understanding of normal play and language development, but may also have an efficient clinical value. Suggestions for and implications of exploring components of language used in a standardized play situation are discussed in reference to developmentally disabled children.

Child Language↗
PubMed1998

Symbolic meanings of island in dreams.

Six dreams reported from neurotic patients in the therapy of Jungian analysis are presented to illustrate the symbolic meanings of islands in dreams. The island in dreams symbolizes (i) the entrance point into Jungian analysis, (ii) a complex in which a dreamer has got involved and (iii) the beginning of the newly organized ego consciousness. The multiple meanings of islands are suggested to originate from several levels of the unconscious from which the identical symbol of island comes from.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Anxiety and dream symbolism.

The present study replicates and extends previous findings of a relation between anxiety level and the use of dream symbolism. Anxiety, assessed by self-reports over a ten-day period, was positively related to the use of sexual symbolism identified from dream reports obtained over the same period. The appearance of symbolic dreams, however, was not preceded by elevated levels of anxiety. A positive relation was uncovered between the measure of anxiety and a measure of manifest sexual content in the dreams.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1987

A longitudinal study of maternal involvement and symbolic play during the toddler period.

Social contexts may provide important clues to our understanding of early symbolic play development. In the present study, the effects of maternal involvement on symbolic play development during the toddler period were investigated. 16 mother-child dyads were observed at bimonthly intervals in a free-play setting during the period from 20 to 28 months of age. Mothers' availability as a play partner varied during the course of the half-hour play sessions, depending on the presence or absence of the experimenter. When differences in level and duration of symbolic play were examined in light of maternal availability, both the level of play and length of play episodes increased when the mother was available to play with the child. 3 maternal involvement conditions were then compared: mother actively interacting and suggesting during play, mother participating via verbal commentary, and child playing alone. Results indicate that both maternal involvement conditions raise the level and length of play episodes.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Transfer by very young children in the symbolic retrieval task.

Cumulative experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been hypothesized as a source of young children's increasing sensitivity to new symbol-referent relations. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from transfer studies showing that experience with a relatively easy symbolic retrieval task improves performance on a more difficult task. Significant transfer was found for the 2(1/2)-year-old children in the 3 studies reported here, even with relatively low levels of contextual support (according to the taxonomy of transfer by Barnett & Ceci, 2002). Transfer occurred even though the 2 tasks were encountered in very different settings and there was a prolonged (1-week) delay interval between them. Transfer also occurred to a much more difficult task (one that even 3-year-olds typically fail).

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Modeling referential actions in 6- to 18-month-old infants: a precursor to symbolic understanding.

Social precursors to symbolic understanding of pictures were examined with 100 infants ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months. Adults demonstrated 1 of 2 stances toward pictures and objects (contemplative or manipulative), and then gave items to infants for exploration. For pictures, older infants (12, 15, and 18 months) emulated the adult's actions following both types of demonstration trials. For objects, infants did not emulate actions following either stance at any age. The findings suggest that infants enlist their imitative learning skills in the context of learning the conventions of action on pictorial symbols. The data are interpreted as pointing to the importance of social learning in developing an understanding of the referential function of pictorial symbols.

Cognition↗
PubMed2005

Less is more: executive function and symbolic representation in preschool children.

Executive function is recognized as a critical component of children's cognitive and social development. In two studies, a measure of executive function that had been used in research with chimpanzees was adapted for preschoolers. On this task, called Less Is More, children must point to a smaller reward (two candies) to receive a larger reward (five candies). In Study 1 (N= 101), performance was significantly related to age (3 vs. 4), verbal ability, and established measures of executive function. In Study 2 (N= 128), symbolic representations substituted for real candies in this task. Three-year-olds' performance improved significantly as a function of symbolic distancing. This research has implications for the role of symbol systems in the development of executive control over thought and action.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1984

A comment on equating information with symbol strings.

Symbol strings are advanced as the informational basis for many biological, physiological, and psychological phenomena. The role ascribed to them is that of indicating or directing states of affairs. Pattee has suggested that nature exploits information in this quasi-linguistic sense sparingly, that symbol strings are limited in detail, and that their relation to dynamics is one of complementation. A different, nonsymbolic view of information that addresses how animals can guide their locomotion in cluttered surroundings has been pursued by Gibson. It has considerable generality: information is low-dimensional qualitative properties of low-energy fields, lawfully generated by properties of systems and surround. It is argued that in the absence of information in Gibson's specificational sense, information in the indicational-injunctional sense is ineffective, and it is suggested that perplexities about the selective content of symbol strings may be resolved by a thoroughgoing understanding of Gibsonian information.

Animals↗
PubMed1985

Alexithymia and the split brain. III. Global-level content analysis of fantasy and symbolization.

8 commissurotomy patients and 8 precision-matched normal control subjects were shown a 3-min videotaped film about death. Content analysis of the subjects' spoken and written responses to this film was carried out on the global, interpretive level, for 2 fantasy and 4 symbolization variables. Commissurotomy patients were found to be significantly more alexithymic than normal controls for 3 of the symbolization variables, for factor-analytic measures of fantasy and symbolization, and for an over-all measure of alexithymia derived from these 2 factors and lexical-level and sentential-level measures of alexithymia.

Affective Symptoms↗