Languages & Linguistics
Piaget
Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his influential theory of cognitive development in children. He proposed that children progress through distinct stages of cognitive development, from sensorimotor to formal operational stages, and that language development is closely linked to these stages. Piaget's work has had a significant impact on our understanding of how children acquire language and cognitive skills.
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12 Key excerpts on "Piaget"
eBook - PDF- Clare Painter(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
These more social dimensions, which are disregarded in the experiments, in fact get little attention in the theory generally. In explaining the nature of development, the emphasis is always on the importance of the individual child's interactions with the material environment rather than with other communicating persons. As one of Piaget's interpreters explains, The subject himself is the mainspring of his development, in that it is his own activity on the environment or his own active reactions to environmental action that can make progress. (Sinclair 1974: 58) It is the need to cope with information from the environment that cannot be interpreted by means of the current cognitive structures which is held to move the child to the next cognitive stage, but language is not seen as significant in either constituting or interpreting this information. Piaget's view on the relation between cognitive and linguistic development is entirely compatible with much of the psycholinguistic literature: 16 L E A R N I N G T H R O U G H LANGUAGE IN EARLY C H I L D H O O D Linguistic progress is not responsible for logical or operational progress. It is rather the other way around. (Piaget 1972: 14) With this belief that language development is the result rather than the cause of cognitive development, Piaget was interested in children's spontaneous speech as a way of gaining insight into their cognitive abilities. He took this approach in two ways. First there is the functional taxonomy of young children's utterances which he proposed (Piaget 1955). He based this on naturalistic observations of children in a nursery school and proposed that the proportions of particular kinds of utterances would change over time. This approach is echoed in that developed in the 19708, when speech-act theory was used to theorize about language development (e.g. Dore 1975).
- Timothy E. Moore(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Piaget's theory of cognitive development could therefore be used: first, to help us attain explanatory adequacy by trying to define the child's initial set of linguistic universals, and second, to study from a cognitive point of view the unexpected difficulties which arise later in development. It is, of course, quite impossible to sketch Piaget's theory in a few para-graphs. However, as regards our first problem, the initial set of linguistic universals, a few remarks will suffice; after discussion of one of our experi-ments, some further elaboration will follow. The second problem has been dealt with at some length by Ferreiro (1971). Piaget qualifies his epistemological theory as interactionist and biological. Knowledge is acquired through the subject's action upon, and interaction with, people and things. Action patterns become established, extended, com-bined with others, and differentiated under the influence of internal regu-latory mechanisms; later, they become interiorized (i.e., mentally represent-aba), and organized into grouplike structures. Acting upon environment, rather than copying it or talking about it, is the source of knowledge. Langu-age is only one way among others to represent knowledge. Representation in general does not appear until the end of the sensorimotor period (around the age of 1¿) when direct-acting-on-objects has become organized in a first grouplike structure: A move from a to b (e.g., when the child goes from one point to another himself, or when he moves objects, or when he observes other people moving) can be retraced to find the starting point a; it can also be composed of two different moves: from a to x, and x to b.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- The English Press(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter-2 Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to acquire it, construct it, and use it. Moreover, Piaget claims the idea that cognitive development is at the centre of human organism and language is contingent on cognitive development. Below, there is first a short description of Piaget's views about the nature of intelligence and then a description of the stages through which it develops until maturity. The Nature of Intelligence: Operative and Figurative Intelligence Piaget believed that reality is a dynamic system of continuous change, and as such is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems that change. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states. Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. States refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (e.g., a series of coins on a table might be placed close to each other or far apart) in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, that if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality.
eBook - PDFChild Psychology
Development in a Changing Society
- Robin Harwood, Scott A. Miller, Ross Vasta(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Researchers also have found that in mid- dle and later childhood private speech frequently takes the form of whispering, which may reflect the process of gradual internalization (Duncan & Pratt, 1997; Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985). These functions suggest that private speech is social in origin, as Vygotsky main- tained is the case with all cognitive abilities, rather than a symptom of preoperational thought, as Piaget maintained. Thus, using cultural tools, children construct knowledge in social contexts. Their learning drives their development, just as language can drive thought. Learning Objective 7.7: Compare and contrast the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky on the role of language in cognitive development. 1. How did Piaget and Vygotsky differ in their view of the relationships between language and thought? 2. How did Vygotsky’s dynamics of private speech differ from Piaget’s concept of egocentric speech? 3. How did Vygotsky interpret children’s collective monologues differently than Piaget? 4. What did Vygotsky mean by his idea of the sociogenesis of cognitive development? Impacts of Piaget and Vygotsky on Education American child psychologists began to discover Piaget in the late 1950s and the early 1960s as translations and summaries of his books began to appear (Flavell, 1963). Since that time, Piaget’s writings have inspired literally thousands of studies of children’s think- ing and extended his work as it applies to the field of education and other areas (Chap- man, 1988; Ginsburg & Opper, 1988; Modgil & Modgil, 1976). Piaget wrote two books about education (Piaget, 1971, 1976), and others have written extensively about the edu- cational implications of his work (Cowan, 1978; DeVries & Zan, 1994; Duckworth, 1987; Kamii & DeVries, 1993). Three main principles underlie Piagetian approaches to education. One is an empha- sis on discovery learning, or active learning.
eBook - PDFChild Psychology
A Canadian Perspective
- Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
(© Yva Momatiuk and John Eastcott) 287 Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory setting—for example, when children are interviewed in their native language by a native speaker (Nyiti, 1982) or when the children themselves play an active role in the assessment situation (Greenfield, 1966). COGNITIVE CHANGE Most of Piaget’s research was directed to the question that has been our focus throughout the chapter: What are the most important changes that occur in the course of cognitive development? In his theorizing, however, he also devoted considerable attention to the second general question that a theory of development must address: How can we explain the changes that research has identified? Piaget’s position on the nature–nurture issue is definitely interactionist. In his theory, biology and experience act together to produce changes in the child’s cognitive abilities. More specifically, Piaget (1964, 1983) identified four general factors that contribute to cognitive change. Three of the factors are found to some extent in every theory of development. First, biological maturation plays a role. Learning and development occur within constraints set by the child’s maturational level, and some kinds of development may be impossible until maturation has progressed sufficiently. Experience is also important. Piaget divided experience into two categories: physical experi- ence and social experience. The former includes the child’s interactions with inanimate objects; the latter, the child’s interactions with people. In both cases, Piaget stressed the importance of assimila- tion and accommodation. Children must fit experiences, physical or social, into what they already understand. And they must actively construct new knowledge, as opposed to having knowledge imposed ready-made upon them. Every theory talks in some way about maturation, physical experience, and social experience.
eBook - PDF- Roxana Moreno(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
If language instead is a process that depends on the stimulation offered by the environment, the answer to the second question is negative. Of course, it would not be ethical to isolate an infant from society to obtain an answer to these questions. Children display a remarkable natural ability to learn language. However, they do not absorb the language exactly as spoken to them but rather construct their own understanding of the language such as the meaning and grammatical rules governing how to combine words into meaningful sentences (Cromer, 1993; Karmiloff-Smith, Summary of cognitive development principles derived from Piaget, Vygotsky, and information-processing theories. PRINCIPLE EXPLANATION Students’ thinking tends to be qualitatively Piaget believed that cognitive changes were the result of distinctive different at different ages. cognitive stages; information-processing theorists argue that children’s thinking changes as their attention, strategies, and metacognition develops; and Vygotsky’s theory suggests that children change their ways of thinking as they gradually internalize the knowledge and skills of more capable others. Learning is more meaningful when learners As you will read in detail in Chapter 8, the theories of Piaget, actively construct their understandings. neo-Piagetians, and Vygotsky are constructivist. That is, they assume that for meaningful learning to occur, learners need to make rather than take knowledge. Learning activities are more effective when they Piaget’s cognitive developmental stages, the information-processing take into consideration the cognitive developmental theory of development, and Vygotsky’s ZPD suggest that teachers level of the learner. need to assess students’ current levels of understanding and abilities and design instruction that is within their learning potential. Learning is dependent on interactions with the Although Vygotsky overemphasized the role of social interaction in environment and with others. learning as compared to Piaget and neo-Piagetians, they all support the idea that the types of understandings learners construct depend on their interactions with the environment and others. Ta b l e 3 .7
eBook - ePubCrosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language
Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin
- Jiansheng Guo, Elena Lieven, Nancy Budwig, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Keiko Nakamura, Seyda Ozcaliskan, Jiansheng Guo, Elena Lieven, Nancy Budwig, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Keiko Nakamura, Seyda Ozcaliskan(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Slobin’s initial probes into the language and cognition puzzle took place during the late 1960s and 1970s, just as the domination of U.S. psychology by behaviorism was waning and it was no longertaboo to speculate about invisible mental representations. For American researchers working on child development, the work of Piaget—already famous in Europe but mostly unknown in the United States—burst on the scene, altering forever the way we looked at infants. Far from being a tabula rasa, Piaget showed, infants are active cognizers, and by the end of the first year and a half of life they have already built up representations of objects, events, locations, and causes.Strange though it now seems, the idea that infants’ conceptual understanding might play an important role in language acquisition was at first not at all obvious. Although it was increasingly acceptable to invoke mental representations, the kinds of representations that at first attracted child language scholars were not those of Piaget but those of Chomsky (1965)—innate notions of putative linguistic universals such as subjects, predicates, direct objects, nouns, and verbs (e.g., McNeill, 1966). Interest in the possible role of cognition in language acquisition came in large part as a reaction to Chomsky. A number of theorists accepted Chomsky’s argument that language involved structures far more complex and abstract than had been envisioned, but they balked at his claim that these structures were innate, and specific to language. Cognitive development seemed to offer an alternative route into the kinds of representations needed.In path-breaking theoretical and empirical work on this possibility, Slobin pointed out that “if you ignore word order, and read through transcriptions of two-word utterances in the various languages we have studied, the utterances read like direct translations of one another… There is a great similarity of basic vocabulary and basic meanings conveyed by the word combinations” (1970, p. 177). The basic meanings identified—to do with location, agency, naming, and the like—were exactly the kinds of meanings that Piaget had stressed in his work on sensorimotor development (Brown, 1973), which suggested that these meanings originate on the basis of universal cognitive processes and are only later mapped to language.
eBook - PDFDevelopmental Psychology
Cognitive, Perceptuo-motor and Neuropsychological Perspectives
- C.-A. Hauert(Author)
- 1990(Publication Date)
- North Holland(Publisher)
In se- veral places in the literature, these concepts have been cleverly summarized. Among them, one can profitably consult Pinard and Laurendeau (1969) and Case (1985). In Piagetian theory, post natal cognitive development consists of a series of three stages: Sensori-motor ( 6 substages), concrete ope- rations ( 2 substages) and formal operations. According to Pinard and Laurendeau (1969), the main criteria that allow us to speak of stages in psychological development are the following: Structura- tion, hierarchical organization, integration, and equilibration. 'Structuration' means that a l l the behaviors of a given stage are not simply juxtaposed in an additive fashion, but are organized into a whole system or structure. Therefore, a general organization of actions characterizes the acme of each developmental level. The important point here is that this criterion allows us to predict a large developmental synchrony in the mastering of the various dimen- sions of reality by means of the intellectual tools (operations) the child progressively builds. Today, a great deal of empirical data challenge this prediction. Actually, Piaget was the first author to provide well documented data about the existence of a chronological difference between the ages of acquisition of operations that bear on different concepts (or contents), but obey identical structural laws (Pinard and Laurendeau. 1969) i.e., the so-called 'horizontal decalages'. A strong assertion of Piagetian model is that the course of the development proceeds in a fixed order of stages and substages ('hierarchical organization') for the entire population of children. A considerable amount of empirical data has been collected to assess this hierarchical trend.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hugh J. Silverman(Authors)
- 1979(Publication Date)
- Northwestern University Press(Publisher)
60 / CONSCIOUSNESS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION D. Examination of Piage{'s Views Everything that Piaget says is exact, but must we insist on the same aspects (the transitory character of the child's thought) as he does? Do we not find the same egocentric, autistic, syncretic thinking in the adult as soon as his thinking must go beyond the domain of the acquired in order to express new notions? The no- tion of egocentric language can be completely modified if one admits that it exists legitimately in the adult and that it can have value for knowledge. In effect, a new notion cannot be ex- plained clearly at once. The terms cannot be defined in advance since they will be fully defined only by the use that one makes of them. Consequently, since the ideal or logical order can only be overturned, as it occurs in the child, the adult makes use of the "direct which consists of specifically supposing as known that which is unknown. (The philosophy professor, for example, is obliged to use in his first lecture terms which his students will not fully comprehend until the end of the tenth lecture, since at the first lecture all the terms are still unknown to them.) One can relate this illusion of a fully defined language to the notion of the "understood" [sous-entendu] in the area of lin- guistics as 'discussed by Saussure. 60 We call what is "understood" in another language that which is not expressed, whereas it is expressed in our own language (for example: for the English phrase "the man I love," we say that the relative pronoun is understood) .61 But this is artificial, since this notion does not really exist for those who use it. In reality, there is never any- thing that is "fully expressed"; there are only gaps and discon- tinuities, of which one is not conscious in own language, because comprehension between individuals speaking the same language is not affected by these gaps and discontinuities.
eBook - ePubA Reinterpretation of Linguistic Relativity
From the perspective of linguistics
- Guohui Jiang(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Books on Demand(Publisher)
Linguists are in turn inclined to quote data and conclusions of psychological research as arguments of their postulations. Among psychologists referred to frequently in earlier stage of LR study Vygotsky and Piaget were favorites, yet their theories are regarded as arguments for debate on LR not because they are themselves relevant to the doctrine of LR, rather researchers of LR have selectively understood and applied certain viewpoints of these psychological theories in favor of their own predefined position. Psychologists’ postulations such as pre-language thinking vs. pre-thought language, conceptualization and development of logical reasoning of nonverbal infants etc. are frequently cited as the counter-evidence against LR. Few proponents of LR, to my knowledge, have found out support from Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s works, among which the prominent position is maintained by Lucy (1987, 1988, and 2010).Such sharp confrontation might be expected in whichever study of the speech-thinking mechanism and function of human brain, any speculations of the language-thinking relation can be argued, upheld or criticized logically until the “black box” of human brain will be experimentally revealed by neurosciences. In this regard psychological theories cannot be exception. The disagreement between Vygotsky and Piaget about the development of children's implicit and explicit speech, for instance, demonstrates that either the design of psychological experiments or the interpretation of their outputs are to a large extent the result of researchers’ introspective speculation.Piaget claimed that the development of children’s skills of speech is a process in which the egocentric individual speech precedes social speech; and this process could be described as “autistic speech → egocentric speech → social speech”. The children’s language is, according to Piaget, the egocentric language because children have no social life, thus their language is no more than the sound form of thinking, closed in self.Vygotsky had replicated Piaget’s experiment with only a couple of additional controllable variables, but had come to an absolutely contrary conclusion. Vygotsky, suggesting the developing process of children’s speech skills as “social speech → egocentric speech → inner speech”, maintained that children carry out first of all social speech action, and then they develop egocentric individual speech under certain particular conditions; the children’s egocentric individual speech is not due to their lack of communication, for under the influence of identical variables even adults, having obtained rich experience of social interaction, can carry out the egocentric speech.
eBook - PDF- D. G. Boyle(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Pergamon(Publisher)
Many investigators have objected that Piaget exaggerates the proportion of egocentric reference in the speech of the pre-school child, but it is not our purpose at present to criticize the details of Piaget's investigations. The essential point is that the child develops an increasing ability, as he grows older, to appreciate the points of view of other people, and this is reflected in his language. The most likely situation is that the decrease in egocentric thinking and the increase in linguistic facility interact, each furthering the progress of the other. The ability to appreciate other view points means that the child learns to think in relative, rather than absolute, terms (for instance with respect to morality, justice, punishment, and so on). This means that the child of about 7 or 8 years is considerably more able than younger children to understand and deal realistically with social situations.* Finally it must be stressed that the child's ability to reflect upon his actions (and to express these reflections in his language) characteristically develops a considerable time after these actions first appear, so that the child of 4-7 years knows how to behave in social situations (such as co-operative play), and is able to solve simple problems involving physical manipulations long before he is able to give his reasons for his behaviour or his solutions to problems. This, as we have already indicated (p. 26), is why this period of development is called the intuitive stage. * The topic of language is further discussed in Chapter 9. CHAPTER 4 Operational Thinking LET us think of some of the things that a child aged between 7 and 11 years can be expected to do. At this time it becomes possible for the psychologist to use a wide range of intelligence test items in order to assess his development, and it is instructive to compare two of the best-known intelligence test items.
eBook - ePub- Geoffrey Brown, Charles Desforges, G. Brown, C. Desforges(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter 4 Specific issues in the validation of Piagetian theory Testing descriptions of competence Following Chomsky, modern studies of linguistics and language development make a distinction between performance and competence. Performance refers to the actual acts of language production or comprehension. Competence, in this sense, does not carry its common usage of 'ability to do' but rather refers to the knowledge and rules which are necessary to particular acts or performances. Linguistic competence refers to the system of rules representing a speaker/hearer's abstract knowledge of his language. A description of competence is not a psychological theory of performance in real situations. It does not represent psychological contents or operations involved in producing or interpreting sentences. It represents the grammatical knowledge that is a necessary prerequisite to performing these operations. Various factors may impede the application of this underlying competence. Since psychological data are restricted to describing acts or performances any studies of competence are indirect and must contend with these distorting factors. Since competence cannot be studied directly one is bound to ask whether it is a useful construct in accounting for performance. Flavell and Wohlwill (1969) imported the competence/performance distinction into the realm of cognitive development. In their view a psychological theory requires two components—a competence model and an automaton (or performance) model. The competence model is a formal, logical presentation of the structure of some cognitive domain whilst the automaton model represents the psychological processes 92 by which information in competence gets used in real situations
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