When a person begins to learn about the world around him, he will coordinate all the data with the sensations obtained during the study. The human mind at the same time builds a logical picture, outlining mental connections around concrete processes and things. In this case, conceptual thinking is a fundamental kind of human thinking inherent in him throughout his life.
The role of concepts for people
If you look at the very definition of a concept, it can look like this:
- summed up and structured result of the thought process, its conclusion;
- development of the process of thinking, building conclusions without resorting to real objects, but only thanks to operations and logical conclusions.
It has long been known and no less obvious that the whole development of mankind as a whole and the communication of people in particular is simply unthinkable without the use of concepts in everyday life. All forms of communication include the constant use of concepts, whether it is an everyday conversation between two townspeople in a park or a large-scale scientific conference on biology. Of course, the development of conceptual thinking is extremely useful for any areas of human activity: legal, political, economic, scientific and so on. If we imagine that the inability to express ourselves and the lack of a unified interpretation of the basic concepts would suddenly become characteristic of the current information era, then all of humanity would certainly roll back in development to the level of the ancient world.
Definition of conceptual thinking
In a general sense, conceptual thinking is a type of human thinking in which he operates with concepts and logical constructions. For the first time such a definition was given by the Soviet psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, who also deduced three basic and most important characteristics of this type:
- The ability to see and understand the essence of phenomena.
- The ability to build a causal relationship.
- Skills in organizing information and building it into a complete picture.
The presence of conceptual thinking in children is investigated. According to the data obtained, it is only in the developmental stage and inferior to the so-called preconceptual thinking. In this case, the organization of thought processes is somewhat different than that of adults, formed personalities. Children often judge specific subjects, reducing everything when explaining to a familiar and private one. Most judgments are made on the basis of similarities with something previously seen. The reason for this is the dominant position of memory in children's pre-conceptual thinking, which, in turn, prevails until about the age of five.
Key Tools and Principles
Six tools of thinking, which he uses throughout his life, help to create and formulate various concepts for a person:
- Systematization. Conditional combination of several categories into one single system.
- Abstraction. Arbitrary selection of some specific features of an object or phenomenon while simultaneously randomly distracting from other features.
- Synthesis. The generalization and association of individual parts of an object or phenomenon into a single whole.
- Analysis. Reverse synthesis is a tool for conceptual thinking. The division of the general into separate components, the separation of objects and phenomena into signs.
- Comparison The juxtaposition of two or more phenomena, events and objects.
- Generalization. Combining several different concepts within a single category.
The principles of conceptual logical thinking are entirely based on several relationships, among which the following can be noted:
- cause and investigation;
- goals and means;
- thesis, rationale and conclusion.
Household Applications
The lack of conceptual thinking in everyday life can create many difficulties for a person. The practical activity of one who does not have this kind of thinking becomes disorganized and uncertain.
A vivid example is the phrase "Sidorov is on vacation." If you interpret the word "vacation" as any absence of an employee in the workplace, then immediately there is a certain confusion and misleading. Another clear illustration of the need for a conceptual form of thinking in the domestic sphere is the usual viewing of a sporting event on television. As a rule, the concepts used are “prize winner”, “participant”, “winner”. Without a specific and clearly established sense of all these terms, viewing a competition is devoid of any semantic load.
Business Applications
All such industries, including economics, jurisprudence and politics, require strict and unambiguous interpretations of the concepts that people use when communicating. A key feature of this area is the need for a uniform interpretation of the terms used by all parties to an agreement.
When negotiators interpret key events, objects and phenomena differently, there is a risk of non-compliance with official agreements and orders. That is why conceptual thinking is a kind of cornerstone in the business industry and the entire business area as a whole.
Scientific application
Here, the need for unambiguity of concepts is no less obvious, since the result of scientific work is largely determined by the correct interpretation of the source data. However, it is reliably known that one concept can have slightly different meanings in a certain context.
If we again turn to the economic industry, then it is easy to imagine the correct interpretation of the concept of the market for the situation in a country, city or region. But if you recall the same term in the context of a grocery shopping, it immediately acquires a completely different meaning.
Statistics and Development
Psychologist Lyudmila Yasyukova in her study found that about 20% of adult men and women in Russia are completely deprived of a sufficiently developed level of conceptual thinking. According to the expert, the picture in other developed countries is not much different from the results of this study.
The most important way to develop conceptual thinking and bring it to the required quality level is to regularly set up controlled experiments. Monitoring is essential for the purity of the research. The first experience helping development, normally begins to be acquired at the age of six to seven years. It is then that the child must learn to master specific concepts and translate them into his personal baggage of experience. Otherwise, all concepts will be completely abstract, and an adult will remain with a pre-conceptual level of thinking, which, of course, will significantly affect his intellectual abilities.
The problem also lies in the fact that, like any other, conceptual thinking is the conduct of theoretical operations without the participation of the senses. Without a person checking himself and his beliefs in the real world, there can be no talk of personal development.
Researching
Verbal forms with question and answer forms are considered to be the most effective and relevant research methods. A very common technique is “Comparison of concepts”. The test subject is offered 22 pairs of different concepts, 15 of which relate to one semantic field, and the rest to different ones. The presence of correct answers for 15 pairs of one field is evaluated in points, after which the results are calculated and summed up. A good indicator is considered a result of 10-15 points. Otherwise, it is necessary to pay attention to the lack of ability of the test subject to generalize and highlight the signs of various concepts.
Another popular verbal study of conceptual thinking is the Logic of Connections technique. Usually it is used in classical works like “Complex analogies”. This technique establishes the degree of understanding of the subjects of abstracted types of relationships between individual concepts. Another equally important study is called the “Exclusion of excess”. The totality of all three blank tests allows us to draw preliminary conclusions about the qualitative level of conceptual thinking of a person.