Language and Thought of the Child - Jean Piaget

function of language in two children of six

• The needs of a child when they use language is strictly functional: not linguistic or logical.
• the child can play by themselves or with others. In the mind of the child, there will be imaginary characters and plays and movement away from the super-ego of society.
• types of language for the child
  • egocentric and social
  • for the ego-centric, it is either a repetition, monologue, or a collective monologue
• Repetition
  • Mostly just the kid repeating things to themselves, without a care for any audience: it’s important to know here that this happens because the child has very little concept of the “self” and the difference between it and the “Other”. In this confusion between dialogue and monologue, the child makes a game and has fun with it.
• Monologue
  • this is different than repetition. The child here doesn’t have a social function but wants to supplement his action with words.
• Collective Monologue
  • Occurs when the child talks about themselves but wants an audience to reflect. They might ignore the audience’s questions but it’s important to have one.
  • the child here wants to express an idea but the end goal was satisfied after they worked it out loud.
  • This happens to adults too: after someone says something and works out a problem, it doesn’t matter what the rest say: they are just mirrors.
• Adapted Information
  • This form is the first social communication tool the child has
  • the rest above were called ego-centric since they are really about the child, not the audience.
  • “No, this is 10 o’clock”
  • “This is a big village. Do you see it?”
  • Sentences like that are social instances that are meant to influence or do something with the listener.
  • this is the first form of dialogue: if a dialogue occurs, this can improve their logic and understanding of fallacies, since you’re confronted with that situation where you have to adapt.
  • the question “why” doesn’t come up: the dialogue, if it happens, is merely an exchange of assertions:

You will marry me! No, I won’t Yes, I will No!

• The question “why” or the word “because” came only at the age of 7

Conclusions

• Children speak egocentrically even when in an audience. This is opposed to an adult, who speaks socially and thinks socially regardless if he was alone or not.

• We as humans learn to speak first to organize our own thoughts way before we start using our voice to communicate with others.

• Psycho-analysts recognize two voices:

  • the active voice: representing consciousness
  • the autistic voice: representing the sub-conscience
  • take water: the active voice is the discriminating voice that says this is h2o
  • the subconscious voice would never communicate in language but images, and it would communicate the images of fecundity, birth (of aphrodite), baptism, and richness that are symbols represented in water.

On egocentrism of children

• The author’s experiments show clearly that children have a hard time understanding each other under the age of 7. They understand adults a bit better, though.
• The author concludes that most of the language with children under the age of seven is almost entirely ego-centric or revolving around things that are going inside the speaker’s brain, with practically no regard to the objective world.
  • There was a story that a kid was relaying after hearing it. He was saying “the lady had 12 children. She picked him (who?) and asked him about them (who?). And then she went to the place (which place?), Where she played with the other tree”.
  • the above story and instances show that the child finds very little use of rationalizing their thoughts and fleshing it out more than they should
• author says this is so not because the kid doesn’t care, but because they genuinely think they are understood entirely. This is expected since all adults around them easily predict all their small and predictable needs (food, toilet, games). Why wouldn’t think that EVERYONE understands them and can “read their minds”? Why do you need to articulate your thoughts if someone can just know what you’re thinking?

Verbal Syncretism

• Verbal syncretism means an understanding of one sentence using another similar one, using general schemas
• author says that it’s been proven that a human understands things not by examining them thoroughly, but by examining the general parts of it and having a general shape around it to work with.
  • So, if I flash a word fast in front of you, you might still be able to read it because your brain database of words understands this shape and corresponds it to a word you know
• many children surprisingly can use this syncretism to connect quite complex things they don’t understand together.
• many children do use the same schema but connect them in very broken terms
  • for example, a 10-year-old was given a few sentences, among them was “when the cats out, mice go out and play” and “some people waste their time doing nothing”. The kid connected it, saying they are referring to the same thing. His rationale was that when the cat is tired, she will go to sleep. Just like people who get tired and don’t wanna do anything. The general schema is similar, but they are not the same.
  • this is an application of verbal syncretism though

Conclusion

• The ego-centric mind (children between 4-7) needs to justify things at any price
  • to do this justification, the idea of verbal syncretism comes into play: concepts are mashed together under a common umbrella by reducing (sometimes incorrectly) things into a general schema that “fits”.

For example, a child was asked to compare the two sentences “to each according to his works” and “some people get very excited and they don’t do anything” and find why are they similar. The child did not understand the word “according”. They replaced it with the word “coming to” in their minds. Their answer to why the two proverbs are similar was “because people went and did nothing. The proverb people went and did something”.

Verbal syncretism is a state in-between a dreamlike“symbolism” and a very rational and logical state. It mixed things when it needs to without regard for structure and discards that things it can’t handle or process. This is, in the long term, very economical.

Only at the ages of 11 or 12 does the child answer “I don’t know” or “who knows?”. Before that, the brain is living in a state where it thinks it understands everything and connects the dots it needs to connect by just “reaching” to where it needs to go, disregarding any obstacles.