Piaget's Theory of Language & Thought (AQA GCSE Psychology): Revision Note

Language depends on thought

• Piaget (1959) was (and arguably still is) one of the most influential researchers in the field of child development, particularly concerning the cognitive development of children

• Piaget's cognitive development theory focuses on how children construct meaning from the external world, using schema to help them form mental representations of both abstract concepts (e.g. 'freedom') and concrete objects (e.g. 'cat')

• Piaget developed a stage theory of cognitive development which sets out the ages at which children learn specific cognitive skills, one of which is language

  • According to Piaget, thought precedes (comes before) language, i.e. a child's understanding of objects or concepts must come before they can name those objects, because the child initially explores the physical world and then ascribes labels to what they have experienced

• Piaget argued that if a child is taught a new word without any context being given then the learning is meaningless

  • e.g. a child can be taught (and can repeat) the word 'banana' but if the child does not know that banana is a fruit that can be eaten then no real learning has taken place

• Piaget claimed that children will only learn new words or grammatical structures when they are ready and that this will largely depend on age (his theory is known as a maturational theory)

• Children develop the foundations of language throughout Piaget's sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2) as they build schemas through sensory and motor exploration, and typically say their first words towards the end of this stage

• A child aged 2–7 years (Piaget's pre-operational stage) builds on their schemas and uses symbols (e.g. words) to represent objects, which is how language develops

  • Symbolic play (a form of imaginative play where children use props to symbolise other things) and mental imagery help children develop language

    • e.g. a child pretends that a mop is his friend Bobby and invents a conversation between them

• Piaget claimed that children up to the age of 7 years show egocentrism in their language, which is evidence of their inability to take on the viewpoint or perspective of another person

  • This recedes during the concrete operational stage from the age of 7 onwards as their language becomes more sophisticated

Evaluation of Piaget's theory of language & thought

Strengths

• Children often use two-word phrases like "Daddy cup" before they can speak fully, showing understanding of relationships between objects/people before they express it in words

  • This supports Piaget's claim that thought comes before language (Cromer, 1974)

Weaknesses

• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argues the opposite: that language comes before thought, and shapes what we're able to think about

  • This is supported by cross-cultural studies, suggesting Piaget may have got the direction of the relationship wrong

• Schemas can't be directly observed or measured, so there's no way to confirm they develop before language

  • This weakensthe scientific basis for Piaget's claim

• Language development varies with environmental factors like poverty, nutrition, culture and education, which Piaget's stage-based account doesn't explain