Cognitivism - Piaget

• Cognitivism: viewing speech acquisition in relation to a child's mental and emotional development.
• Cognition = the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
• Cognitive development must precede linguistic development.
• Language reflects thought processes, but thought processes affect language.
• Language does not contribute to the development of thinking.
• Suggests that cognition plays a primary role in the development of emotional and behavioural responses.
• Directly links language acquisition to intellectual development.
• Children will only be able to produce linguistic structures for which they understand the underlying concepts behind it.
• Piaget suggested children reason and think differently at different stages of their lives. Language develops gradually as they move onto the next stage of thinking development.
• Sensorimotor stage: Up to 2; learning about the physical world; developing motor skills.
• Preoperational stage: 2-6; developing ability to think of symbols and form words from ideas.
• Concrete operations stage: 7-12; develop logic and reasoning; begin to consider the ideas of others.
• Formal operations stage: Up to 15; complex language system develops fully.
• Overextension: The over application of the meaning of a term.
• Under extension: The under application of the meaning of a term.
• Behaviourists were reluctant to study this concept because cognition occurs inside the ‘black box’ of the brain.
• It is difficult to make precise connections between cognitive and linguistic developmental stages.