“Frameworks for Learning and Development 3e”

Jean Piaget (1952) theorised that cognitive development proceeds as a result of a child’s interaction with the environment and that language depends on cognition. Piaget believed that language may facilitate learning but did not bring about cognitive growth. (Personally disgree.For example, Language skills leads to reading and reading leads to cognitive development.) Piaget implied that the ability to communicate adequately is connected to cognitive development, but more often language reflects rather than determines cognitive development.

Piaget believed children passed through predictable, sequential stages of cognitive development. In the first stage, sensorimotor, the infant learns about their environment by exploring through their senses. Towards the end of sensorimotor stage the child begins to understand the existence of symbols for real objects. Initially these symbolic representations are spoken words that represent people or objects, such as “mummy”,”daddy” or “ball”.

During the next stage of development, the preoperational stage, the child develops an understanding that written words can represent people, objects, actions and feelings; tell a story; or give information.

At the concrete operational stage the childuses logic and predictions to solve problems such as mathematical concepts. By the time the child reaches the formal operational stage, symbols are used in complex ways to think abstractly about ideas and issues.

Piaget divided children’s language into egocentric speech and socialised speech.

Egocentric speech describes the child’s first attempts at language, such as babbling and cooing. As words develop, the child’s language centres on the self — talking to themselves, talking about themselves and talking for themselves. Egocentric speech continues into early childhood, and is present even when the child is interacting with other children.

Piaget observed that, by age 7, egocentric speech begins to be replaced with sociallised speech as children become less egocentric and are more able to actively listen and respond to a shared topic of conversation. ” (From my own experience, I have seen some 3 yrs old and many 4-5 yrs old using socialised speech in kinder though)

“Framework for Learning and Development 3e”:

“Noam Chomsky’s(1976) nativist theory of language development suggests children are equipped with language skills at birth which are activated as the child matures. Chomsky described language as “unfolding” as the child matures. He believed there were ‘universal principles’ built into the brain, and that the child was preprogrammed to learn language. He used the term language acquisition device (LAD) to describe this special biological brain mechanism. The LAD is activited when infants begin to be exposed to language.”

“Most recently, critics of Chomsky suggest that, rather than being born with the innate ability to use language, children are born with the ability to interpret language using structure analysis. Yang and Lust (2009) refer to this as the child’s ability to ‘crack the codes’of their language, which is a universal skill. Yang and lust believe that children can work out their language system — word meaning, setence structure and sounds — with accurary.”