One of the processes not involved in the formation of a concept i

SOLUTION

The process by which we discover the feature or features which are ‘common’ to a large number of objects and associate these with a symbol which thereafter may be applied to other similar objects is called ‘Concept formation’.

1. Observation:

• The first stage in the formation of concepts is the observation of an event, object or an experience.
• This can also be called the stage of becoming aware.
• This can be either direct or indirect.
• The child can directly see a dog and become aware of it. On the other hand, s/he also hears stories about devils and giants from his parents and grandparents; here the awareness is indirect.
• All of us have some knowledge or awareness of primitive people (or at least we believe we have) even though most of us have not seen them.
• Generally repeated experiences provide the basis for the development of concepts.

2. Generalisation:

• Repeated experiences or observations of different objects result in a tendency to form a general idea.
• If, a child first sees one dog, then another dog, then a third and so on and begins to form the general idea of a dog. This is called the process of generalisation.
• The process of generalisation explains how the child acquires many concepts like the concepts of gender, shape, number, etc.

3. Classification:

• Along with generalisation and the observation and organisation of similarities among things and objects, the child also becomes aware of the differences between them.
• If, all dogs are alike and all cows are alike. Dogs run on four legs and cows also do the same. At the same time dogs and cows are different from each other and big dogs are different from small dogs, and bulls are different from cows. It is this type of sequential operation of generalisation and classification in interaction that leads to the formation of concepts.

4. Abstraction:

•   From the description of the above processes the operation of abstraction becomes evident. The child has seen dogs and s/he happens to see a cow on a different occasion. S/He does not observe them at the same time but inwardly he compares her/his experiences on the two occasions.
• The perceptions and the experiences are now inwardly analysed and re-experienced in the absence of the objects. This results in an appreciation of similarities and differences. This process by which the experience is analysed in the absence of actual situations is known as abstraction.
• It is abstraction which actually transforms comparable and contrasting experiences into concepts.

  Hence, Information is not involved in the formation of a concept.