Question

I need a full summary analyzing Chapter 3 of Piaget’s book “The Language and Thought of a Child”

Answer 1

Achild pschologist Jean Piaget narrates thethe language and thought processes of children from adults as he develops an influential theory of child development.

he child mind has been focused on a quantitative nature of child psychology – it was thought that children are how they are, because they have less of the mental abilities of the adult & commit more errors. Piaget believed that it was not a matter of children having less or more of the abilities – they are fundamentally different in the way their thinking. Communication problems exist between adults & children not because of gaps in information, but due to the quite different ways each have of seeing themselves within their worlds. he observed children of four and six of the age groups, taking down everything they said while they worked , played, and the book includes transcripts of their 'conversations'.

Piaget discovered that, what every parent could confirm – is that when children speak, a lot of the time they are not talking to anyone in particular. They are thinking aloud. He identified two types of speech, egocentric & socialized. Within the egocentric type were three patspeech not directed to people, the saying of words for the simple pleasure of it.

REPETITION :speech not directed to people, the saying of words for the simple pleasure o

whole commentaries which follow the child's actions or play.

MONOLOGUE : the narration which follow the child'sactions.

COLLECTIVE MONOLOGUE When children are talking together, are not really taking what the others are saying. For an example-A room of ten children seated at different tables may be noisy with talk, but in fact are all really talking to themselves

He noted that certain age to say about six to seven, a child has no 'verbal continence', but must say anything that comes into his mind. A kindergarten / nursery, he wrote, “is a society in which, strictly speaking, individual & social life are not differentiated”. Because the child believes themselves to be the center of the universe, there is no need for the idea of privacy or witholding views in sensitivity to other while the adults, because of their comparative lack of egocentricity, has adapted to a fully socialized speech pattern in which many things are left unsaid. Only children, say whatever they think, this reason that a child is able to talk all the time in the presence of his friends, but never be able to see things from their point of view.  

The egocentricity of the child is that significant part of their language involves gesture, movements and sounds. As these are not words, they cannot express everything, so the child must remain partly a prisoner of their own minds. Language, in fact, takes a person beyond themselves, which is why human culture puts such stress on teaching it to children - it enables them to eventually move out of egocentric thinking

.Different thinking, different worlds ( two types of thought:)

Intelligent thought - is that which has an aim, adapts that aim to reality, and can communicate it in language. This thinking is based on experience and logic.

Autistic thought -involves aims which are not conscious and not adapted to reality, based on satisfaction of desires rather than establishing truth. The language of this sort of thinking is images, myths and symbols.

For the directed mind, water has certain properties and obeys certain laws. It is conceived of conceptually as well as materially. To the autistic mind, water is only relevant in relation to desires or needs: it is something that can be drunk or seen or enjoyed

These distinctions helped Piaget for development of the child's thought up to the age of 11. From 3-7 the child was largely egocentric & had elements of autistic thought, but from 7 to 11 egocentric logic made way for perceptual intelligence.

Piaget noticed that children think in terms of 'schemas', which allow them to focus on the whole of a message without having to make sense of every detail. When they hear something they do not understand, children do not try to analyze the sentence structure or words, but try to grasp or create an overall meaning. He noted that the trend in mental development is always from the syncretic to the analytical – to see the whole first, before gaining the ability to break things down into parts or categorize. Prior to ages 7 or 8, the child's mind is largely syncretic, but later develops powers of analysis which mark the shift from the juvenile to the adult mind.

CHILDS LOGIC :

He observed that because they do not engage in deductive or analytical thought, there is no reason to make a firm demarcation between 'the real' and 'the not real'. As their minds do not work in terms of causality and evidence, everything seems possible.

When a child asks for example, 'What would happen if I were an angel?', to an adult the question is not worth pursuing because we know it can't be real. But for a child, anything is not only possible, it is explainable, since no objective logic is required. To satisfy their mind, all that is required is a motivation.'.

children generally ask - WHY?---- Because they want to know the intention of everyone and everything, even if it is inanimate, not realizing that only some things have intentions. Later, when the child can appreciate that most things are caused rather than intended, her questions become about causality. The time of a child's life before she understands cause and effect – precausality – coincides with the time of egocentrism.

Adults often find it difficult to understand children because they have forgotten that the child exists in a completely different mind in which logic plays no role. You cannot make a child think in the same way as you before they are certain age. At each age, a child gains a certain equilibrium in relation to their environment. That is, the way they think and perceive at age 5 perfectly explains their world. But that way does not do when they are 8. Just as humans grow physically and adjust to their environment according to their bodies, so they adjust intellectually. As Piaget puts it," .NEEDS CREATES CONSCIOUSNESS"
Piaget explained the final stage of mental development, beginning at age 11 or 12. The teenager's ability to reason, think abstractly, make judgments and consider future possibilities made them essentially the same as an adult. From this point on it was a matter of increases in ability rather qualitative changes.

FInally, Piaget's stages of child development have largely stood the test of time, and his impact on pre-school and school education has been great.