and how its related to iq.
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Abstract thought is thinking about something that isn’t in front of you, and possibly hasn’t ever been in front of you. So, you learn what a chair is by being around them – seeing them, sitting in them, moving one around. That’s concrete thought, its how we learn as babies.
The first time we use the word “chair”, we’ve used a symbol to represent the thing that is a chair – that’s basic abstraction. We learn to do that in toddlerhood when we learn language / to talk.
From there, learning to read, to see a photo or a drawing of a chair are additional layers of abstraction. From there, we can take what we know about chairs and think about different types of chairs, including chairs we’ve never seen or sat in before.
Eventually, around the time we’re teenagers, we can think about chairs in settings we’ve never been in – a chair for a spaceship without gravity, for example. That’s when you’re getting into pure abstraction.
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