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![]() Contents ![]() Section 1 Palaeoanthropology
![]() Section 2 Social and socio- cultural systems ![]() Section 3 Ontogeny and symbolism ![]() Section 4 Language systems ![]() Links
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![]() The origins of language and thought in early childhood![]() George Butterworth![]() Abstract ![]() The classical theories of the relation between language and thought in developmental psychology are those of Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget's claim is that language depends on thought for its development, and is based on four sources of evidence: the period of infancy, in which fundamental principles of thought are exhibited well before language; the simultaneous emergence of language, deferred imitation, symbolic play, evocative memory, and mental imagery, suggesting language is but one outcome of more fundamental changes in cognitive abilities; the lack of effect of language upon reasoning abilities in middle childhood; and the nature of speech in early childhood, the claim being that the communicative function of speech results from cognitive developments. By contrast Vygotsky, while seeing thought and language as initially separate systems, considers the two merge at around two years of age, producing verbal thought. Mental operations are regarded as embodied in the structure of language, and hence cognitive development results from an internalization of language.
Previously, this material has been used somewhat uncritically
to inform phylogenetic speculation on the role of language in
the evolution of human cognitive abilities. Recapitulatory
theories of 'terminal addition' have overlooked the
possibility that behavioural development may not occur in
stages, and that such stages may not be additive; 'neotenous'
theories do not deal satisfactorily with how a rearrangement
of the timing of abilities can lead to 'qualitative' changes
in 'behavioural capacities'. Recent work explains parallels
in ontogeny and phylogeny by appeal to common constraints on
information-processing that reflect the demands of changing
levels of the structure of knowledge as it interacts with more
basic perceptual competencies [Eds]. |
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