Jean Piaget's theory

Piaget – overview
studied development of genitive processes from child-adulthood, often talked about correlation between cognitive and language skills.

Sensorimotor Stage
1^st stage of 4; Piaget believed children learned language in 4 stages, Sensorimotor lasts until child is 2 years old, focused on movement and physical reactions, small babies don’t realize they can control their own bodies, play is based on figuring out how to perform basic motor activities. Then complex tasks like crawling and walking. Starts experimenting what they can do with their mouth, learns how to imitate sounds care givers make

Preoperational Stage
Begins at around 2 years, last till about 6 years. Defining feature – egocentricity; the child seems to talk constantly, but talks about things that do not need to be said out loud. Describing what they are doing, though it is easily visible. Child shows no awareness that others may have a viewpoint/opinion. Piaget sees little distinction at this stage of development between talking with others and thinking aloud.

Concrete Operational Stage
Begins at 7, ends around 11; child is capable of using logic & solving problems in the form of stories, providing the story deals with facts, and not theories and concepts. Language at this stage is used to refer to specific and concrete facts rather than mental concepts. Piaget believes  some people remain in this stage for the remainder of their live.

Formal Operational Stage
begins at 11-12 earliest; ; the child can start to use abstract reason to make mental distinction between themselves and an idea they are considering, at this stage children learn to express and debate theories and different concepts, like maths, philosophy & logic.

Piaget believed that these four stages of cognitive and linguistic development were universal, no children ever skipped any of the four steps.

different theorists and their theories.

Innateness Theory – Chomsky

·         Children learn language from exposure

·         He believed the exposure to be fragmentary, and incomplete(Partial)

·         Observed that children had a natural ability to learn their native language – they are born naturally with the ability

·         Concluded that children would deduct their own linguistic rules, they would tend to over generalise; ’mices’ ‘sheeps’ ‘runned’ are all very common.

·         Revealed theory about the nature of the child mind structure

·         Developed the theory of LAD (Language Acquisition Device)

B.F Skinner – Imitation and Behaviourism

·         Children begin to coo and babble which are not provided with any rewards

·         Once child mimics caregivers language, which gets rewarded

·         Result; when children speak a recognisable word, they are praised, and cooing and babbling are not praised, and are forgotten

Social interactionist theory(s)

·         Bruner – believed in 3 modes of representation, these are ways of in which children process and manipulate information
1. Enactive
child has little in mental faculties, meaning they think physically rather than mentally e.g. saying what they are doing as they are doing it. Knowledge is what the child can control or do with movements, like pointing. Enactive knowledge is a key development for physical activities like riding a bike and swimming.
2. Iconic
When mental images develop in a child’s mind that allows them to retain pictures in their minds. This enables them to draw, and certain images or icons that they see or recall they can now express in pictures. Some drawings will be drawn from past experiences and exposure to familiar objects and figures e.g. caregivers.
3. Symbolic
The symbolic stage  is the stage of when a child starts to symbolize or associate a certain word with a particular object or visa versa, children begin to categorise certain objects and begin to develop basic logic, and can solve problems.