They are mostly examples of structured thinking, not just simple association. Children 's brains come equipped with wiring that can discover the syntax of whatever language they hear, usually before the age of three.
Foresight often involves structure.
And there is a real liking for games with arbitrary structural rules to follow, such as hopscotch or solitaire. Kids will even make up new rules as they go along, just to make it more interesting. Much of what we know about structuring comes from Chomskian linguistics, because it tells us a lot of structured things that are impossible for the brain circuitry to do in any language. We're after invention, not improvement. . . . The committee can finally do something that all the separate parts couldn't.