Language, itself, can be used effectively to manipulate the children’s figure-ground discrimination and improve the abstraction process.
The Lab assistant did give me a “D-” for not letting them go in class, so I did pass the course, but I never forgot the importance of parts for classifying objects, even in college.
Hence, as parents and teachers, we should take the effort to frequently draw a child's attention to parts. Notice that I said "draw attention to." That is another way of saying that we are directing the child's figure-ground discrimination so that the part (the bond) becomes the figure.
There is that pitfall here, as I mentioned earlier, that the child may get so caught-up in the figure, that he forgets where it came from. This, does not help in the development of a concept.
We must provide frequent cues or reminders to insure that the figure-ground relationship is maintained in the child's awareness.
This is much of what teaching is about in the early elementary grades.