Sifting and shifting

How do you think about "things?" For starters , your brain probably starts an internal search for a likely category [or folder] in which there are already files similar to the "thing" you are thinking about. For example, since it's baseball season, and I'm a Red Sox fan, if you ask me a question about baseball, my mind goes to my sports folder, leafs through to the baseball section, then filters your question through what it finds there. If your question raises some new issues for the baseball file in my brain, then I work to fit the new information into the existing file - or I can start a new one. This is what I call sifting and shifting. And all of this happens without my being fully aware of the process.

How does the child do this? Children are not born with their parent's folders and files : ) they have to start their own filing systems : ). They do this first by licking, tasting, smelling and touching [there was a reason Freud called his first stage "oral." This very tactual process allows the child to start developing a folder for the object being so tastily "thought" about. As the child continues to interact with that same object, the files in that folder grow. The next time there is an interaction the child already has some information about that object and now can compare and contrast the new information to that which is there. And each interaction builds the files and folders in that child's brain.