PIAGET’S AND VYGOTSKY’S THEORIES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND COGNITION

 PIAGET’S AND VYGOTSKY’S THEORIES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND COGNITION ESSAY

The present day approach in teaching has been greatly influenced by the Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories of cognitive development, these theories have unraveled the complex structure in the human as a whole giving explanations on how children acquire cognitive development

and develop language as a measure to trigger more psychological developments that lead to growth of knowledge and how a child is influenced by her environment.

 Piaget argues on the intelligence nature of humans and how they adapt to new environment and situations while he attributes it on the presence of static aspects present in human nature, he argues that the figurative aspects of intelligence are submissive to the ever changing conditions that one is exposed to and therefore can only be judged by our day to day use of our intelligence (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969). He puts that the cognitive development from child to adult occurs in stages. Vygotsky’s on the other hand argues of the social nature of a person and how it influences the intelligence of the given person. He attributes the social interaction in children’s life as a key role in development, he believes that culture and the social setting is a key influence in the psychology of a child (Robbins, 2001).

 It’s evident from the reasoning of Piaget and Vygotsky that numerous differences exist on how they attribute the acquiring of intelligence and how it influences the language development and cognition. Vygotsky considers culture to play a great role on the language and cognitive development. He attributes the culture of a social setting to influence the intellectual capability while Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and sensory abilities.Vygotsky argues that the socio cultural environment influences the psychological thinking of a child in accordance to what the child is exposed to develop into complex processes known as higher mental functions (Kozulin, 2003), he feels that small children have little environmental influences and thus most of their intelligence at tender age is basically physical. He argues that as a child develops he is exposed to social cultural factors that shape the way the brain perceives functions and adapts in the process, he supports his reasoning by the fact that tools of intellectual adaptation vary from culture to culture and thus a child will do things as he or she has seen them done, its therefore evident that a child develops a language as an intellectual tool adapted from the immediate environment.

         Vygotsky emphasizes on the social contribution in the development of a child’s language and cognitive development. Piaget reasons this on the desire of self discovery an attribute of creativity and desire to unravel self intelligence. Vygotsky’s believes that the learning of a child is influenced mostly through training or the acquiring of knowledge from other sources and as a result the child internalizes the learnt knowledge to solve more complex situations. A self internalizing process of the learnt tricks enables the child to develop intelligence in the process. A child will therefore control her performance through social interaction like dialogue to develop cognitive development. The child therefore acquires knowledge from a more informed person and knowledge flow is usually from the more knowledgeable person to the lesser knowledgeable person, therefore Vygotsky is more optimistic that a child learns from a tutor. Vygotsky argues that the child’s cognitive development is within boundaries of self development, he argues that a child can only think within boundaries (shulman, 2010), however an addition of strategies are incorporated into his or her  skills to perform complex strategies when learnt. This therefore serves as a trigger to the cognitive development and thus a child should be given prior knowledge to develop a complex version of her own. Piaget believes that in the sensorimotor stage, a child develops object permanence and later the child develops the results of her actions triggering intelligence and simple thinking. Piaget argues on the concept that the child must first struggle to reason and in the process develops his or her own ways to do things, after accommodating the new reasoniong the child may advance to cognitive stage.

Vygotsky argues that language is a means by which adults transmit info to children and is therefore a special tool to the adaptation of intelligence. He puts that the development of language is a key concept far from culture as children regardless of culture develop their own ways of speech without learning from any external source. Children who talk more of their private speech usually will be more socially vibrant  as opposed to those who talk less, however all children develop private speech at tender age. It therefore aids in how the child plans strategies to acquire knowledge and is a means of a child expressing her intelligence in her own way to solve a problem. He argues that thought is the development of language that results from the shared communication and develops to intelligence through self actualization. Piaget argues that cognitive abilities such as language develop in children through a series of stages (Almy, 1966), he sees the child as a creative creature who has to develop cognitive thinking through experimentation by starting from simple skills like physical reactions and developing to complex ones like speech, children therefore hear people talk, internalize and just through the desire and creativity to do like them they learn the language. He sees the child preoperational stage as a period when the child’s speech is just a representation of what he thinks and is a self made mechanism. Children later migrate to concrete operational stage where they develop logic and only understand facts and lack any mental concepts, this happens at age 7-12. A formal operational stage begins at age 12 earliest and people at this stage make reasoned judgment. Children at this stage can now use language to argue facts and a self internalized speech is already programmed in their minds (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969).

   In similarity, during the preoperational stage, the piagetian school of thought argues the use of a tutor to disseminate information as the child cannot master mental operations then. A tutor gives instructions to be understood by the child e.g. Audio visual aids; however he doesn’t realize he shares different views with others. Similarly Piaget and Vygotsky believe that self learning and discovery plays a role in the understanding of new concepts in children at tender age. Both believe that a child has an inner understanding of cognitive reasoning without external factors.

      Vygotsky's theory becomes my theory of choice as the social cultural backing is a key component in cognitive thinking. Transferred knowledge is an easy as well as a key tool to the transfer of knowledge as we’ll as dialogue. The social cultural setting offers an immediate setting that makes it easier to acquire knowledge as opposed to Piagents school of thought; children can later incorporate the knowledge later in an easier way. In conclusion Vygotsky's school of thought stands out as an effective way that incorporate the social cultural aspects in cognitive development as opposed to Piaget’s discovery learning.

REFERENCES

Almy, M. (1966). Young children's thinking; studies of some aspects of Piaget's theory,. New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Ginsburg, H., & Opper, S. (1969). Piaget's theory of intellectual development. Englewood Cliffs: N.J., Prentice-Hall.

Kozulin, A. (2003). Vygotsky's educational theory in cultural context. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Robbins, D. (2001). Vygotsky's psychology-philosophy : a metaphor for language theory and learning. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

shulman, B. B. (2010). language development foundations, processes, and clinical applications. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett.