Piaget's speech and thinking of the child. Book: Jean Piaget “Speech and thinking of a child. Types of egocentric speech

14.04.2024

Jean Piaget

Child's speech and thinking

SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

We will try to resolve the following question here: what needs does the child seek to satisfy when he speaks? This problem is neither purely linguistic nor purely logical - it is a problem of functional psychology. But it is precisely with this that we must begin any study of a child’s logic.

The question we have posed seems strange at first glance; It seems that in a child, like in us, speech serves to convey thoughts. But in reality it is not that simple at all. First of all, an adult, with the help of words, tries to convey various shades of his thoughts. Speech serves him to state his thoughts: words objectively express thinking, provide information and remain associated with knowledge (“the weather is deteriorating,” “bodies are falling,” etc.). Sometimes, on the contrary, speech expresses an order or a desire to serve for criticism, threats, in short - to awaken feelings and provoke actions (“let’s go”, “what a horror!”, etc.). If the relationship between these two categories of transmission could be established even approximately for each individual, interesting psychological data would be obtained.

But that is not all. Is it possible to say for sure that even in an adult, speech always serves to convey, to communicate thoughts? Not to mention inner speech, many people - from the people or absent-minded intellectuals - have the habit of pronouncing monologues out loud in private. Perhaps this can be seen as preparation for public speech: a person speaking out loud in private sometimes shifts the blame onto fictitious interlocutors, like children - onto the objects of their play. Perhaps there is a “reflected influence of social habits” in this phenomenon, as Baldwin pointed out; the individual repeats in relation to himself a method of action that he initially learned only in relation to others. In this case, he talks to himself as if in order to force himself to work, he talks because he has already formed the habit of speaking to others in order to influence them. But whether we accept one or the other explanation, it is clear that here the function of speech deviates from its purpose: the individual speaking for himself experiences pleasure and excitement from this, which just greatly distracts him from the need to communicate his thoughts to others. Finally, if the function of speech were solely to inform, then it would be difficult to explain the phenomenon of verbalism. How can words, intended by their use for precise designations, existing only in order to be understood, could lead to clouding of thought, even to the creation of obscurity, multiplying only verbally existing objects, in short, precisely by making it difficult in many cases to make a thought? transmitted? Without wishing to resume discussions here about the relationship between speech and thinking, we will only note that the very existence of these discussions proves the complexity of the functions of speech and their irreducibility to a single function - the communication of thought.

So, a functional speech problem can be posed even in relation to a normal adult. Moreover, of course, it can be posed in relation to a patient, to a primitive person or to a child. Janet, Freud, Ferenczi, Jones, Spielrein proposed various theories concerning the speech of primitive people, sick people and young children - theories that are of great importance for the thought of a child 6 years old and older, that is, for the one we will study.

Janet, for example, believes that the first words come from the cries that accompany an action in animals and primitive man: cries of anger, threats in a fight, etc. For example, the cry with which a commander accompanies a military attack becomes a signal for this attack. Hence the first words - an order. Therefore, a word is first associated with an action, of which it is one element and which is then sufficient to cause that action. Psychoanalysts proceeded from similar ideas to explain the magic of words. Since the word, by its origin, is part of the action, it is sufficient to evoke all the mental movements associated with it and all the specific content.

For example, among the most primitive words, of course, are love cries that serve as a preface to sexual intercourse: as a consequence, such words, as well as all words hinting at this act, are endowed with an immediate exciting power. These facts explain the general tendency of primitive thinking to consider the names of things and persons and the designation of events as their very essence. Hence the belief that it is possible to influence these things and events by simply uttering words; This means that the word is something much more than ethics; it is the awe-inspiring reality itself, which forms part of the named object. Spielrein began to look for similar phenomena at the very first stages of a child’s speech. She tried to prove that the syllables used by the baby to designate the mother in many languages ( "Mother"), consist of labial consonants, which indicates a simple continuation of the act of sucking.

“Mama,” therefore, seems to be first a cry of desire, and then, in essence, an order, which alone can satisfy this desire. But just the cry of “mom” brings some comfort and - since it is a continuation of the act of sucking - some deceptive satisfaction. The command and immediate satisfaction are almost mixed up here, and it is impossible to know when a word serves as a real command and when it plays its magical role, so intertwined are these two moments here.

Since, for their part, Maiman and Stern showed that the first nouns in a child’s speech do not denote concepts at all, but express orders and desires, then in the end there is indeed reason to believe that the primitive speech of a child is much more complex than it seems at first sight. However, even if we treat all the details of these theories with caution, it still becomes obvious that many expressions, which we interpret simply as concepts, for a small child for a long time have not only an affective meaning, but also a magical one, where everything is connected with special ways of acting that must be studied for themselves, for what they are, and not for what they appear to adults to be.

It may therefore be interesting to pose a functional problem in relation to an older child, which is what we would like to do here as an introduction to the study of child logic - logic and speech, which are obviously independent of each other. We may not find any traces of “primitive” phenomena, but at least we will be very far from considering that the child’s speech serves to communicate thoughts, as “common sense” suggests.

There is no need to say how much this experience is in the preliminary discussion stage. We are only trying to probe the waters here. This, first of all, should contribute to the creation of a technique suitable for new observations and allowing comparison of results. This technique, which we have only just discovered, has already allowed us to state something. But since we observed only two children aged 6 years, recording their speech, although completely, but only for one month and during certain hours of the day, we consider our results to be no more than preliminary, intending to confirm them in subsequent chapters.

I. Materials

We adopted the following working technique. Two of us each watched one child (a boy) for almost one month in the morning classes of the “House of Babies” of the Institute J.-J. Rousseau, carefully recording (with context) everything the child said. In the classroom where we observed our two children, the children draw and build whatever they want, sculpt, participate in counting games, reading games, etc. This activity is completely free: children are not limited in their desire to talk or play together, without any intervention from adults, if the child himself does not cause it. Children work individually or in groups as they like; groups form and break up, and adults do not interfere; children move from one room to another (drawing room, modeling room, etc.) at will; they are not asked to engage in any consistent work until they have a desire for such consistency. In short, these rooms provide excellent soil for observing and studying the social life and speech of a child.

“Etudes on the Logic of the Child” is the result of joint work based on questionnaire surveys organized by us at the Institute J.-J. Rousseau during the 1921/22 academic year, and lectures on the thinking of the child, which we gave at the Faculty of Theoretical Knowledge of the University of Geneva based on materials collected during the same year. Thus, these studies are primarily a collection of facts and materials; What gives the various chapters of our work a commonality is a single method, rather than a specific system of presentation.

And no wonder: a child’s logic is an infinitely complex area. At every step you come across pitfalls: problems of functional psychology, structural psychology, logic and often even the theory of knowledge. Maintaining a certain direction in this labyrinth and avoiding problems that are not related to psychology is not always an easy thing. If you try to give too early a deductive presentation of the results of experience, you risk finding yourself at the mercy of preconceived ideas, superficial analogies suggested by the history of science and the psychology of primitive peoples, or, what is even more dangerous, at the mercy of the prejudices of the logical system or the epistemological system, to which you turn consciously or unconsciously, despite the fact that you yourself are a psychologist! In this regard, classical logic (that is, the logic of textbooks) and the naive realism of common sense are two mortal enemies of healthy cognitive psychology, an enemy all the more dangerous because it is often possible to avoid one only to fall into the arms of the other.

As a result of all these reasons, we have, on principle, refrained from too systematic a presentation, and even more so from any generalizations that go beyond the boundaries of the child’s psychology. We simply tried to follow step by step the facts as the experiment presented them to us. We, of course, know that an experiment is always determined by the hypotheses that gave rise to it, but for now we have limited ourselves to only considering the facts.

In addition, for teachers and for everyone whose work requires accurate knowledge of the child, analysis of facts is more important than theory. And we are convinced that only by the degree of possibility of practical application is the theoretical fruitfulness of science recognized. Therefore, we turn to both teachers and specialists in child psychology; we will be happy if the materials we have collected can serve the pedological cause and if testing in practice, in turn, confirms our theses. We are confident that the data presented in this work in the area concerning the egocentrism of a child’s thinking and the importance of social life for the development of his reasoning can be applied in pedagogical practice. If we ourselves are not now trying to draw the appropriate conclusions, it is only because we prefer to listen to practitioners first. We hope that this call will not go unanswered.

As for specialists in pedology, we ask them not to be too strict about the lack of coherence of the present studies, which, we repeat once again, are only a study of facts.

In the coming years, we expect to publish a book on the study of the child’s thinking as a whole, where we will again return to the main aspects of the child’s logic in order to connect them with the biological factors of adaptation (imitation and assimilation).

This is exactly the kind of study we undertook in this work. Before publishing a study in a systematic form, it is imperative to give as thorough and complete a catalog of the facts on which it is based. This volume opens their series. We hope that this book will be followed by a second one, which will be called “ Child's judgment and reasoning" Both of them will make up the first work entitled “ Sketches about the logic of a child" In the second work we will try to give an analysis of the function of the real and causality in the child (the child’s ideas and types of explanations). Only after this will we try to give a synthesis, which without this would be constantly constrained by the presentation of facts and would constantly strive, in turn, to distort these latter.

Two more words about what we owe to our teachers, without whom it would be impossible to carry out this research. In Geneva, Claparède and Beauvais constantly illuminated our path, bringing everything to the functional point of view and to the point of view of instincts - those points of view, without which you pass by the deepest motivators of childhood activity. In Paris, Dr. Simon introduced us to the Binet tradition. Janet, whose instructions we often used in this work, discovered to us the “psychology of behavior,” which successfully combines the genetic method with clinical analysis. We were also strongly influenced by the social psychology of S. Blondel and J. M. Baldwin. Particularly noticeable will be our borrowings from the field of psychoanalysis, which, in our opinion, has updated the psychology of primitive thinking. Is it necessary to remind us on this occasion what contribution Flournoy made to French psychological literature by widely combining the results of psychoanalysis with the results of traditional psychology?

We are greatly indebted not only to scientists working in the field of psychology, but also to other authors to whom we do not refer or do not refer sufficiently due to our desire to maintain a strictly pedological line of discussion. For example, we owe a lot to the classical studies of Lévy-Bruhl. But in our book it was impossible for us to take any position in relation to general sociological explanations.

It is easy to understand why the nature of the logic of primitive people and the nature of the logic of children are in some points very close to each other, and in others too far apart in order to allow ourselves, on the basis of some of the facts that we will talk about, to engage in a discussion of such difficult to define parallelism.

So we'll leave that discussion for later. In the logic of history, philosophy, and epistemology (fields which are more closely related to the development of the child than may seem) we are infinitely indebted to the historical-critical method of our teacher Arnold Raymond and to the capital works of Meyerson and Brunswick. Among these latter " Stages of mathematical philosophy" and the recently appeared " Human experience and physical causation"had a decisive influence on us. And finally, the teachings of Lalande and his research on the role of the convergence of minds in the development of logical norms served as a precious guiding thread in our research on the egocentrism of the child.

Jean Piaget

Geneva. Institute J.-J. Rousseau

April 1923

Part I
SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

Chapter I
SPEECH FUNCTIONS OF TWO SIX YEARS OLD CHILDREN 1
In collaboration with Germaine Gue and Gilda de Meyenburg.

But that is not all. Is it possible to say for sure that even in an adult, speech always serves to convey, to communicate thoughts? Not to mention inner speech, many people - from the people or absent-minded intellectuals - have the habit of pronouncing monologues out loud in private. Perhaps this can be seen as preparation for public speech: a person speaking out loud in private sometimes shifts the blame to fictitious interlocutors, like children to the objects of their play. Perhaps there is a “reflected influence of social habits” in this phenomenon, as Baldwin pointed out; the individual repeats in relation to himself a method of action that he initially learned only in relation to others. In this case, he talks to himself as if in order to force himself to work, he talks because he has already formed the habit of speaking to others in order to influence them. But whether we accept one or the other explanation, it is clear that here the function of speech deviates from its purpose: the individual speaking for himself experiences pleasure and excitement from this, which just greatly distracts him from the need to communicate his thoughts to others. Finally, if the function of speech were solely to inform, then it would be difficult to explain the phenomenon of verbalism. How can words, intended by their use for precise designations, existing only in order to be understood, could lead to clouding of thought, even to the creation of obscurity, multiplying only verbally existing objects, in short, precisely by making it difficult in many cases to make a thought? transmitted? Without wishing to resume discussions here about the relationship between speech and thinking, we will only note that the very existence of these discussions proves the complexity of the functions of speech and their irreducibility to a single function - the communication of thought.

Janet, for example, believes that the first words come from the cries that accompany an action in animals and primitive man: cries of anger, threats in a fight, etc. For example, the cry with which a commander accompanies a military attack becomes a signal for this attack. Hence the first words - an order. Consequently, a word is first associated with an action, of which it is one element and which then suffices to cause that action 2
See: Janet P. // The British Journal of Psychology (Med. Sect). – Cambridge, 1921. – Vol. 1, N 2. – P. 151.

Psychoanalysts proceeded from similar ideas to explain the magic of words. Since the word, by its origin, is part of the action, it is sufficient to evoke all the mental movements associated with it and all the specific content.

For example, the most primitive words certainly include love cries that serve as a preface to sexual intercourse: as a consequence, such words, as well as all words hinting at this act, are endowed with an immediate stimulating power. These facts explain the general tendency of primitive thinking to consider the names of things and persons and the designation of events as their very essence. Hence the belief that it is possible to influence these things and events by simply uttering words; This means that the word is something much more than ethics; it is the awe-inspiring reality itself, which forms part of the named object 3
See: Intern. Zeitschrift f. Psychoanal. – Bd. VI. – S. 401. (Compl?te rendu d"un rapport pr?sente au Congr?s de Psychoanalyse de la Haye).

Spielrein 4
See: Jones E. A. Linguistic Factor in English Characterology // Intern. Journ. of Psycho-Anal. – Vol. 1. – N 3. – P. 256. (See quotes from Ferenczi and from Freud, p. 257.) special ways of acting that should be studied in themselves, for what they are, and not for what they appear to adults.

I started looking for similar phenomena at the very first stages of a child’s speech. She tried to prove that the syllables used by the baby to designate mother in many languages (" Mother"), consist of tubal consonants, which indicates a simple continuation of the act of sucking.

“Mama,” therefore, seems to be first a cry of desire, and then, in essence, an order, which alone can satisfy this desire. But just the cry of “mom” brings some calm and - since it is a continuation of the act of sucking - some deceptive satisfaction. The command and immediate satisfaction are almost mixed up here, and it is impossible to know when a word serves as a real command and when it plays its magical role, so intertwined are these two moments here.

Therefore, it may be interesting to pose a functional problem in relation to an older child, which is what we would like to do here as an introduction to the study of child logic - logic and speech, which are obviously independent of each other. We may not find any traces of “primitive” phenomena, but at least we will be very far from considering that the child’s speech serves to communicate thoughts, as “common sense” suggests.

I. MATERIALS

Therefore, it should be noted that the children who served as our research objects were not observed in natural conditions. On the one hand, they talk as much as they would at home; they talk in the playroom with their friends; they can talk all day long without in any way feeling any authority or observer over them. On the other hand, they speak no more in the classroom than at home or in other settings, because, as observations show, children between 5 and 7 and a half years generally prefer to work individually and alone than in groups consisting of at least two Human. In addition, since we have the full text of our children’s speech, we can easily exclude from our calculations everything that is not the child’s voluntary speech, that is, everything that was said in the form of an answer to the questions posed.

After our materials are collected, we use them in the following way. We start by numbering all the child's phrases. In general, the child speaks in short phrases, interrupted by prolonged silence or words from other children. Each phrase is numbered separately. If the text is a little longer, there is nothing to fear that several phrases following one another will be designated by the same number; it is only important to put a number on a phrase that clearly expresses the idea. In these cases, however rare, the division is a little arbitrary, but this does not matter when it comes to several hundred phrases.

Once the text is broken down into phrases, we try to classify them into elementary functional categories; It is this classification that we will study.

§ 1. One of the conversations

First, we present one of the documents collected in the manner described above, and analyze it in all its complexity:

23. Pi (to Ezu, drawing a tram with a trailer car): “ But they don't have flags, the trams that are attached to the back" (No answer.)

24. (Talking about his tram): “ They don't have trailer cars..."(Addresses no one. No one answers.)

25. (Addressing Bea): “ This is a tram that doesn't have a carriage." (No answer.)

26. (Addressing Ge): “ This tram has no carriages, Ge, you understand, you understand, it is not red, you understand..." (No answer.)

27. (Leo says loudly: “Funny monsieur!” - at a certain distance and without addressing Pi or anyone else.) Pi: “ Funny monsieur!"(Continues to draw his tram.)

28. " Tram - I'll leave it white».

29. (Ez, who also draws, says: “I’m making it yellow.”) “ No, you don’t need to make it all yellow».

thirty. " I'm making a ladder, look" (Bea responds: “I can’t come this afternoon, I have a rhythm lesson.”)

31. " What are you saying?"(Bea repeats the same phrase.)

32. " What are you saying?"(Bea doesn't answer. She forgot what she said and pushes Ro.)

33. (Addressing Bea): “ Leave him alone».

34. (Teacher B. asks Ez if he wants to go with her): “ Eze, go, it's not over yet.(34 bis.) Eze didn't cum, mademoiselle».

35. (Not addressing anyone): “ I make black pebbles...»

36. (AKA): “ Nice... these stones».

37. (Ezu): " Better than you, huh?"(No answer: Eze did not hear the previous phrase.)

We have chosen this example from the statements of Pi (6 years 6 years old) because it represents the most energetic social activity of which Pi is capable: he draws at the same table with Ez, his inseparable friend, and talks incessantly with him. It would be natural if in this case the only function of speech was to communicate thoughts. But let's take a closer look. On the contrary, it turns out that from a social point of view these phrases or fragments of phrases have extremely varied meanings. When Pi says: " They dont have…" etc. (24) or " I'm doing...", etc. (35), he does not address anyone. He simply thinks loudly in front of his own drawing, the way commoners mutter while working. Here we have the first category of speech, which should be noted and which we will call in the future monologue. When Pi says to Ge or Bea: " This is a tram" etc. (25) or " This tram has...", etc. (26), then it seems that in this case he wants to be understood, but upon closer examination we see that, on the one hand, he is of little interest to the interlocutor (he moves from Bea to Ge in order say the same thing), but on the other hand, it doesn’t matter to him whether his interlocutor listens to him or not. He thinks being listened to is all he needs. Likewise, when Bea gives him an answer that is completely unrelated to what he has just said (30), he makes no attempt either to be understood or to understand himself. They both stop, each on their own thoughts, and are satisfied with this (30–32). The interlocutor here plays only the role of a pathogen. Pi speaks to himself, as if he were delivering a monologue; but to this is added the pleasure he feels in thinking that he is of interest to others. This will be a new category that we will call collective monologue. It differs from the previous one, but also from a real exchange of thoughts and information. The latter will form a separate category, which we will call tailored information and to which phrases 23 and 34 bis may be included. In this case, the child addresses certain interlocutors, and not the first person he meets, as before, and speaks so that the interlocutors listen and understand. Along with this exchange of the ascertaining, or objective, order, one can also note the exchange of a more imperative, or subjective, order, consisting of orders (33) or ridicule, criticism, confirmation of one’s own superiority, etc. (37). In addition, one can note simple repetitions, devoid of meaning (27), questions and answers.

Let us try to establish the criterion of these different categories.

§ 2. Classification of functions of children's speech

We can divide all the conversations of our two subjects into two large groups, which can be called egocentric And socialized. When pronouncing phrases of the first group, the child is not interested in who he is speaking to and whether they are listening to him. He speaks either for himself, or for the pleasure of involving someone in his immediate action. This speech is egocentric primarily because the child speaks only about himself, and precisely because he does not try to take the point of view of his interlocutor. For him, the interlocutor is the first person he meets. Only visible interest is important to the child, although he obviously has the illusion that he is heard and understood (except, perhaps, in the monologue itself, and even this is not certain). He does not feel the desire to influence his interlocutor, to really tell him anything: this is a conversation like those that are conducted in some living rooms, where everyone talks about himself and no one listens to anyone.

Jean Piaget

Child's speech and thinking

Introduction

As for specialists in pedology, we ask them not to be too strict about the lack of coherence of the present studies, which, we repeat once again, are only a study of facts. In the coming years, we expect to publish a book on the study of the child’s thinking as a whole, where we will again return to the main aspects of the child’s logic in order to connect them with the biological factors of adaptation (imitation and assimilation).

Jean Piaget Geneva. Institute J.-J. RussoApril 1923

SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

SPEECH FUNCTIONS OF TWO SIX YEARS OLD CHILDREN

But that is not all. Is it possible to say for sure that even in an adult, speech always serves to convey, to communicate thoughts? Not to mention inner speech, many people - from the people or absent-minded intellectuals - have the habit of pronouncing monologues out loud in private. Perhaps this can be seen as preparation for public speech: a person speaking out loud in private sometimes shifts the blame to fictitious interlocutors, like children to the objects of their play. Perhaps there is a “reflected influence of social habits” in this phenomenon, as Baldwin pointed out; the individual repeats in relation to himself a method of action that he initially learned only in relation to others. In this case, he talks to himself as if in order to force himself to work, he talks because he has already formed the habit of speaking to others in order to influence them. But whether we accept one or the other explanation, it is clear that here the function of speech deviates from its purpose: the individual speaking for himself experiences pleasure and excitement from this, which just greatly distracts him from the need to communicate his thoughts to others. Finally, if the function of speech were solely to inform, then it would be difficult to explain the phenomenon of verbalism. How can words, intended by their use for precise designations, existing only in order to be understood, could lead to clouding of thought, even to the creation of obscurity, multiplying only verbally existing objects, in short, precisely by making it difficult in many cases to make a thought? transmitted? Without wishing to resume discussions here about the relationship between speech and thinking, we will only note that the very existence of these discussions proves the complexity of the functions of speech and their irreducibility to a single function - the communication of thought.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://allbest.ru/

Introduction

Egocentric speech and thinking of a child have been studied in great detail and often in psychology. One of the first to consider this topic was Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist who conducted a number of experiments in this area. Somewhat later, Jean Piaget’s concept was criticized by L.S. Vygotsky, who proposed some changes in the theory of egocentric speech and thinking.

Jean Piaget belonged to those rare scientists who, at the very beginning of their research work, managed to pose a central problem and outline the main path to its solution, to whom time and extraordinary efficiency gave the opportunity to build a theory that covered many problems related to the main line of research into the general laws of the development of intelligence. Its main theme was the study of the origins of scientific knowledge. In terms of the number of questions posed, books and articles written, erudition in various fields of knowledge, influence on research in different countries and, finally, in the number of followers and opponents of his ideas among today's most outstanding psychologists, there is perhaps no equal to Piaget. Truly, he was first among equals.

Piaget's teaching can be called the highest achievement of psychology of the 20th century. There is a well-known paradox according to which the authority of a scientist is best determined by the extent to which he has slowed down the development of science in his field. Modern foreign psychology of children's thinking is literally blocked by Piaget's ideas.

There is a huge gap between what existed in child psychology at the beginning of the century before Piaget’s work, and the level of development of theory that now exists thanks to his work. Piaget? psychologist who paved new paths in science. He created new methods, discovered laws of the child’s mental life unknown before him.

1. Jean Piaget. On the way to science

Piaget intelligence children's thinking

At the turn of the century, members of the American Psychological Association were asked to name the 100 most prominent figures in world psychology of the past century. The Swiss Piaget took second place in the “golden hundred”. An honorary doctorate from over 30 universities (including the famous Harvard, Cambridge, etc.), winner of a dozen prestigious scientific awards, Piaget Mont Blanc rises on the landscape of world psychology.

It would not be an exaggeration to call young Jean Piaget a child prodigy - he published his first scientific work at the age of 10. This first scientific work was a short, one-page report on observations of an albino sparrow that Jean spotted in a local park. The significance of this work for science should not be overestimated, but for the novice researcher this was the first serious step along the path of scientific research.

Interest in birds gave way to interest in shellfish, which was also reflected in several publications.

Piaget did not immediately awaken an interest in psychology. A biologist by training (Piaget graduated from the University of Neuchâtel in 1915 and became a Doctor of Natural Sciences in 1918), he did not receive any formal psychological education, at least in his entire life he did not pass a single exam in psychology.

Initially, he developed an interest in psychoanalysis, but it seems that the lectures he listened to on this topic completely exhausted this interest.

A year later, he begins a series of studies that opened a new era in developmental psychology. It was in 1921 - at the time of psychoanalysis - that Piaget published his first article on the development of speech and thinking in a child. During these years, he makes the discovery of egocentric speech, which makes up approximately half of the speech production of a six-year-old child and is necessary for him to expand internal mental tasks. Biographers of Piaget traditionally focus on another source of his scientific inspiration. In 1919, having arrived in Paris to study pathopsychology, he worked on adapting intelligence tests developed by the Englishman S. Burt for French children. Formally, the essence of this work was to track children’s correct and incorrect answers to certain test questions. The attention of the young researcher was attracted not by the quantitative, but by the qualitative side of this process. Piaget became clear that the so-called incorrect answers of children are caused not by the lack of their intelligence in comparison with the intelligence of older children, but by the originality of their reasoning. He intended to devote his research to the experimental study of this phenomenon.

Invited in 1921 to the Rousseau Institute in Geneva, Piaget met there the young Valentina Chateneau, who soon became his wife. In this marriage, three children were born - two daughters and a son, observing the development of which Piaget came to formulate an innovative concept of mental development, set out in one of his most famous books, “Speech and Thinking of the Child.” It was in polemics with this labor that L.S. formulated his concept of the development of thinking. Vygotsky.

Reviewing Piaget's further life path, it is perhaps worth agreeing with L.F.'s assessment. Obukhova: “Piaget lived a life in which all the main events were associated with intellectual work. Getting acquainted with his biography, we note: 1923 - marriage, 1925, 1927, 1931 - birth of children, all other years, starting from 1907 - publications, publications ... "

2. Basic terms

It is very important to distinguish between the concepts of speech and egocentric speech, as well as to most accurately define the concept of thinking in order to make it easier to operate with it later.

Speech is a historically established form of communication between people through language. Speech communication is carried out according to the laws of a given language (Russian, English, etc.), which is a system of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and stylistic means and rules of communication. Egocentrism - (from the Latin “ego”) is a term denoting a person’s cognitive position, characterized by fixation on one’s own goals, aspirations, experiences and a lack of focus on external influences and the experiences of other people.

“Egocentric speech is speech activity that accompanies the play of a preschool child and is addressed to oneself. It represents an intermediate link in the transition from external to internal speech.”

“Thinking is the highest cognitive mental process.” Thinking is a socially conditioned, inextricably linked with speech, mental process of searching and discovering something essentially new, a process of indirect and generalized reflection of reality in the course of its analysis and synthesis.

Inner speech is silent speech, hidden verbalization, arising, for example, in the process of thinking. It is a derivative form of external (sound) speech, specially adapted to perform mental operations in the mind.

3. Development of human intelligence: stages of cognitivedevelopment

Piaget's theory is based on the idea that in the process of development the child acts actively, and does not simply react to environmental influences.

* The main unit of research for Piaget is the schema, that is, a flexible structure that can change both quantitatively and qualitatively as the child grows. Initially, the schemes are sensorimotor in nature, but later become cognitive.

* Piaget believed that intelligence is a specific example of biological adaptation. He postulated that all people have two functional invariants - organization and adaptation.

* Adaptation includes two mutually complementary processes:

assimilation, by which the individual incorporates information into already existing structures, and accommodation, by which existing structures are changed to meet the demands of a changing external environment.

* Piaget postulated that cognitive development is a sequential progression through four qualitatively different stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operations and formal operations.

“Piaget proceeded from the assertion that basic mental operations have an activity origin. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the theory of the development of a child’s thinking, proposed by Piaget, was called “operational”. An operation, according to Piaget, is an internal action, a product of the transformation of an external object of action, coordinated with other actions into a single system, the main properties of which are reversibility. Piaget identified four stages in the development of mental operations in children."

1. Sensorimotor stage (from birth to 2 years).

2. Preoperative stage (from 2 to 7 years)

3. Specifically - the operational stage (from 7 years to 11-12 years).

4. Formal-operational stage (from 11–12 to 14–15 years).

3.1 Sensorimotor stage

According to Piaget, the first stage of cognitive development (from birth to approximately 2 years). Infants use action patterns: looking, grasping, etc. - to become familiar with the world around them.

“At the sensorimotor stage, learning consists of mastering a sequence of sensory-motor actions. As the child, with the help of sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell, comes into contact with things that have different properties and are differently related to other objects, the center of the world for him moves from himself and his own body to other objects. The child is interested in the simplest motor activity: for example, picking up an object, leaning back on a pillow, blowing on his finger. Thinking, if it occurs at all at this stage, acts as a direct link between the child and the material world, with the help of which reactions to stimuli coming from the outside world are formed.”

3.2 Preoperative stage

“The preoperative stage is the period of language acquisition when the child learns to communicate with the world not only through motor activity and direct interaction with the environment, but also through the manipulation of symbols.” The second period begins around the time children begin to speak. During the preoperational stage, children learn about the world primarily through their own actions. They do not advance broad general theories about brick houses, grannies, or dogs, but use their everyday experiences to construct specific knowledge. At the preoperational stage, children do not make generalizations about a whole class of objects (for example, all grandmothers), nor can they think through the consequences of a specific chain of events. In addition, they do not understand the difference between a symbol and the object it denotes. At the beginning of this stage, children take names so seriously that they cannot separate their literal meaning from the things they represent. For example, if a child imagines that a piece of paper is a piece of cake, and the mother throws the paper “pie” into the trash, the child may be as upset as a bride who sees her wedding cake thrown away.

During the next period - the stage of concrete operations - children begin to use logic in thinking. They can classify objects and deal with hierarchical classification, are able to operate with mathematical concepts and comprehend the law of conservation. For example, at the preoperational stage it is difficult for a child to understand that a given animal can be both a “dog” and a “terrier”. He is only able to deal with one class at a time. But seven-year-olds understand that terriers are a subgroup within a larger group of dogs. They may also see other subgroups, such as a subgroup of “small dogs,” such as terriers and poodles, and a subgroup of “big dogs,” such as golden retrievers and St. Bernards. By thinking in this way, they demonstrate an understanding of class hierarchy. At the stage of concrete operations, children master logical operations of this type, and their thinking becomes more and more similar to the thinking of adults.

3.3 Stage of concrete (elementary) operations

“According to Piaget, the third period of cognitive development (from 7 to 11 years). Children begin to think logically. At this stage, they are able to classify objects based on the class hierarchy.”

During this period, according to Piaget, mental operations become reversible.

Children who have reached this level can already give logical explanations for the actions performed, are able to move from one point of view to another, and become more objective in their judgments. According to Piaget, at this age children come to an intuitive understanding of the two most important logical principles of thinking, which can be expressed by the following formulas:

A=B and B=C, then A=C

3.4 Stage of formal (propositional) operations

“The fourth and final stage of cognitive development (from - 12 years). Characterized by the ability to operate with abstract concepts.”

“It should be noted that the development of operations formed at this stage continues throughout life. At this stage of development, the child develops the ability to perform mental operations using logical reasoning and abstract concepts. In this case, individual mental operations are transformed into a unified structure of the whole.”

Formal mental operations? the basis of the logic of an adult; elementary scientific thinking, functioning with the help of hypotheses and deductions, is based on them. Abstract thinking is the ability to form conclusions according to the rules of formal logic and combinatorics, which allows a teenager to put forward hypotheses, come up with their experimental testing, and draw conclusions.

The teenager gains the ability to understand and build theories, to join the worldview of adults, going beyond the limits of his immediate experience. Piaget called the adolescent form of cognitive egocentrism the “naive idealism” of a teenager, who attributes unlimited power to thinking in the pursuit of creating a more perfect world.

Regarding the period of transition from adolescence to adulthood, Piaget outlines a number of problems regarding the further development of intelligence and its specialization. During the period of building a life program, from 15 to 20 years, one can assume a process of intellectual differentiation: firstly, general cognitive structures are identified, applied by each individual in a specific way in accordance with their own tasks, and secondly, special structures are formed for different areas of activity .

According to Piaget, adolescence is characterized by the fact that the child’s ability to perform formal operations without relying on specific properties of an object matures, and a hypothetico-deductive form of judgment develops, manifested in adolescents’ tendency to theorize, to form hypotheses, etc.

4. The theory of children's egocentrism

The concept of children's egocentrism takes, as it were, the place of a central focus, in which the threads coming from all points intersect and gather at one point. With the help of these threads, Piaget brings to unity the whole variety of individual features that characterize the child’s logic, and transforms them from an incoherent, disordered, chaotic set into a strictly connected structural complex of phenomena determined by a single cause. In his book “Speech and Thinking of the Child,” Jean Piaget tries to resolve the question: “what needs does the child strive to satisfy when he speaks?”

4.1 Ehocentric speech

Speech, even in adults, exists not only for the function of communicating thoughts. Piaget divides children's conversations into two large groups: egocentric and socialized. When pronouncing phrases related to the egocentric type of speech, the child is not interested in who he is speaking to and whether they are listening to him. Piaget writes: “This speech is egocentric, first of all, because the child speaks only about himself, precisely because he does not try to take the point of view of his interlocutor. For him, the interlocutor is the first person he meets. The child cares only about apparent interest, although he obviously has the illusion that he is heard and understood. He does not feel the desire to influence his interlocutor, to really tell him anything; this is a conversation like those that are conducted in some living rooms, where everyone talks about themselves and no one listens to anyone.” Piaget further divides egocentric speech into 3 categories: repetition, monologue, and “monologue for two.”

1) Repetition (echolalia). We are talking only about the repetition of words and syllables. The child repeats them for the pleasure of speaking, without thinking about turning to anyone, or even about uttering meaningful words. This is one of the last remnants of infantile babble, which apparently does not contain any social orientation.

2) Monologue. The child talks to himself as if he is thinking out loud. He doesn't address anyone. “The word is closer to action for a child than for us.” As a rule, the purpose of a monologue is to accompany any action or replace the desired action by pronouncing it.

3) Monologue for two or a collective monologue. Piaget writes about this type of egocentric speech: “The internal contradiction of this name is well the paradox of children's conversations, during which each one involves the other in his thought or action at the moment, but does not care about actually being heard or understood. The position of the interlocutor is never taken into account; the interlocutor is only a stimulant.”

Egocentric speech does not cover all of the child’s spontaneous speech. The coefficient of egocentric speech is variable and depends on two circumstances: on the activity of the child himself and on the type of social relationships established, on the one hand, between the child and the adult and, on the other hand, between children of the same age. Where the child is left to himself, in a spontaneous environment the coefficient of egocentric speech increases. During symbolic play, this coefficient is higher compared to experimentation or children's work. However, the younger the child, the more the differences between play and experimentation become obscured, which leads to an increase in the coefficient of egocentrism at this age.

4.2 Egocentric thinking

Like most researchers of the problem of children's thinking, Piaget notes the unconditional differences between the thinking of an adult and a child. “He showed that a child is not just a small adult who knows less, understands things and events less well. A child has a special logic of thinking that is qualitatively different from the logic of an adult. Piaget’s special merit to child psychology is in the creation of such a method.” The child thinks egocentrically, his thoughts are not inclined to intimacy. A child speaks infinitely more than an adult, because he does not know the intimacy of his “I.” His thoughts are expressed openly, but not because he wants to be heard, but only because he is not aware of himself in society. Piaget writes that “... an adult thinks socially, even when he is alone, and a child under seven years of age thinks and speaks egocentrically, even when he is in company.”

“Children's thinking is very dependent on perception, and this leads the child to erroneous judgment. The child cannot yet establish the relationship between the length of a row and the density of its elements. According to Piaget, in order for the child to establish correspondence in this changed situation, he must form the concept of class, which forms the basis for the development of the concept of number.” Piaget showed that the thinking of a child from four to seven years old is very much determined by his perception. The child, as a rule, focuses his attention on one aspect or change of an object and does not pay attention to other aspects and changes in it. However, after seven or eight years of age, the child is increasingly able to overcome the influence of perception and masters the ability to apply logical thinking to specific situations.

Turning to the materials of previous researchers on the problem of children's thinking, Piaget notes that psychoanalysts distinguish between two main types of thought: rational and autistic thinking.

1) Reasonable thinking (directed), that is, one that pursues goals that are clearly presented to the mind of the one who thinks, seeks to influence reality. A person can express such thoughts through speech.

2) Autistic thinking is subconscious, the goals of such thinking are not consciously presented, cannot be expressed in direct speech, and are not adapted to external reality.

These forms of thinking have different origins, rational thinking is social and performs the function of processing and transmitting the information received; autistic thinking is individual and not communicated. According to J. Piaget, in addition to these two forms, there must be a third, which is an intermediate link. The author identifies a type of egocentric thinking, i.e. one that tries to adapt to reality without being communicated and is in the interval between the rational and autistic stages.

Egocentric thought is an intermediate link between authentic and socialized thoughts. In its structure, it remains authentic, but its interests are no longer aimed at satisfying organic needs or the needs of play, as in pure autism, but are also focused on mental adaptation as in an adult. Egocentric thinking and understanding as a consequence of communication contain two different ways of reasoning and two different logics. The author distinguishes between egocentric and communicative logic, noting that these two types will differ less in their conclusions than in their functioning. Piaget cites a number of differences between the two types of logic.

Egocentric logic:

1) Intuitive, her reasoning is not clearly expressed. Judgment jumps from the first premises directly to the conclusions, bypassing the intermediate stages.

2) Pauses little on evidence and does not control proposals.

3) Has personal analogy schemes based on memories of previous reasoning.

4)Visual schemes play a big role.

5) Personal judgments and assessments have more influence than collective ones.

Collective logic:

1)Tries to understand the connection between sentences, deductively.

2) More insistent on proof. Clearly organizes the presentation of ideas for greater persuasiveness.

3) Eliminates schemes by analogy, replacing them with deduction.

4) Eliminates visual patterns.

5)Strives for judgments expressing a collective assessment.

The egocentric type of logic is most typical for a child. This feature is reflected, for example, when a child tries to explain something to his peer. Piaget notes the egocentric nature of the child's style; the child speaks for himself, thinking that he explains well, while children rarely understand each other correctly.

5. L.S. Vygotsky. A critical study of the theory of J. Piaget

5.1 Vygotsky’s criticism of J.’s theory of children’s egocentrism.Piaget

Vygotsky Lev Semenovich (1896-1934) - Soviet psychologist, creator of the cultural-historical theory of the development of higher mental functions. One of the central topics of his research was the problem of the development of the child's psyche.

Vygotsky was especially interested in the question of how a child becomes who he becomes. To address this issue, Vygotsky identified two levels of cognitive development. The first level is the level of the child’s actual development, determined by his ability to independently solve problems.

The second level is the level of his potential Development, determined by the nature of the tasks that the child could solve under the guidance of adults or in collaboration with a more capable peer.

Piaget believed that egocentric speech simply dies out and disappears at the threshold of school age. L.S. Vygotsky approached this issue differently. Applying the genetic principle, he hypothesized that egocentric speech does not disappear, but moves into the internal plane, becoming inner speech, which plays an important role in controlling human behavior.

According to Vygotsky, Piaget sought to avoid the duality characteristic of modern psychological thought that studies children's logic; I wanted to confine myself to a narrow circle of facts, avoiding generalizations. The main direction of Vygotsky's criticism is to rework and substantiate “the theories and methodological systems that underlie those studies, the key to understanding and evaluating which we are looking for.” Piaget avoids the system in his presentation, Vygotsky tries to find “the central link in this entire chain of facts, from which connecting connections extend along all other links, and which supports this entire structure, taken as a whole.” According to Vygotsky, for Piaget this central link lies in the idea of egocentrism in children's thinking: “this is the main nerve of his entire system, this is the cornerstone of his construction.”

The Soviet psychologist questions Piaget's assertion about the functional uselessness of a child's egocentric speech. Vygotsky conducts a number of his own clinical studies; he writes that they: “led us to a different understanding of the psychological nature of the child’s egocentric speech than that developed by Piaget.”

Thanks to a series of experiments, Vygotsky created a number of theses about the characteristics of egocentric speech and thinking of children, in contrast to Piaget's initial statements.

1) The coefficient of egocentric child speech increases by almost two in a situation that complicates the child’s activity: “Difficulty or disruption of smoothly flowing activity is one of the main factors that gives rise to egocentric speech”

2) “Egocentric speech, in addition to its purely expressive and discharge function, and in addition to the fact that it simply accompanies children’s activity, very easily becomes a means of thinking in the proper sense, i.e. begins to perform the function of forming a plan for solving a problem that arises in behavior.”

3) The main function of egocentric speech is the transition in the process of speech development from external to internal. Egocentric speech is similar to the inner speech of an adult. They also have a similar structure: shortened train of thought, imaginative thinking, inability to be understood by others without additional context, etc.

4) At school age, egocentric speech does not disappear, as Piaget claims, but becomes internal.

5) The intellectual function of egocentric speech is not a direct reflection of the egocentrism of the child’s thought, but shows that egocentric speech very early, under appropriate conditions, becomes a means of realistic thinking in the child. Therefore, there can be no connection between egocentric speech and egocentric thinking.

These are the results of Vygotsky’s criticism of the practical aspect of Piaget’s research. The second aspect of criticism is theoretical; Vygotsky considers Piaget’s theory of egocentric thinking, which, according to the author, is an intermediate link between primary autistic thinking and the rational one characteristic of an adult. Piaget considers autistic thinking to be an early form of child thinking. Vygotsky refutes this thesis: “... autistic thinking, considered from the point of view of phylogenetic and ontogenetic development, is not at all the primary stage in the mental development of the child and humanity... To assume the originality of the pleasure principle in the development of thinking means from the very beginning to make the process of the emergence of that new psychological function that we call intellect or thinking biologically inexplicable.” Thus, Vygotsky argues that autism should not be placed at the beginning of childhood development, but among later formations.

Vygotsky showed that in addition to the functions indicated by Piaget, egocentric speech very easily becomes a means of thinking in the proper sense, i.e. begins to perform the function of forming a plan for solving the problem. Regarding the results of this experiment, Vygotsky said this: “We do not want to say at all that the child’s egocentric speech always manifests itself only in this function.

We do not want to assert further that this intellectual function of egocentric speech arises in the child immediately... in egocentric speech we tend to see a transitional stage in the development of speech from external to internal.” In a simplified form, this hypothesis can be represented as:

Social speech > Egocentric speech > Inner speech

All this allows Vygotsky to recognize the main direction of development of children's thinking, presented in Piaget's theory, as incorrect. Vygotsky himself described the results of his work as follows: “The actual movement of the process of development of children's thinking occurs not from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individual - this is the main result of both theoretical and experimental research of the problem that interests us.”

5.2 TOcomments by J. Piaget

Much later, after Vygotsky conducted his critical research and summarized its results in his article “The problem of the child’s speech and thinking in the teachings of J. Piaget,” the author of the theory of child egocentrism became familiar with the refutation of the Soviet psychologist and wrote a kind of “answer” to them - “ Comments on the critical remarks of L. Vygotsky.” J. Piaget in the 60s admitted that L.S. Vygotsky was right.

Piaget writes:

“Although my friend A. Luria reported to me L. Vygotsky’s sympathetic and critical remarks regarding my early work, I never had the opportunity to read his work or meet him in person, and, reading this book today, I deeply regret that we did not could come to mutual understanding on a number of issues.

Miss E. Hanfman, who is one of the staunch followers of L. Vygotsky, kindly asked me to comment on the thoughts of this famous psychologist regarding my early work. In considering how to conduct such a discussion retrospectively, I have, however, found a solution that is simple and instructive (at least for me), namely, to try to see whether Vygotsky's criticisms are justified in the light of my later work.

The answer is both “yes” and “no”. On the main issues I now agree more with L. Vygotsky than I did in 1934, while on other issues I now have better arguments to answer him than before.

We can start with two specific issues raised in L.S.'s book. Vygotsky: from the question of egocentrism in general and from the more specific question of egocentric speech.”

First of all, Piaget clarifies the concept of egocentrism.

In his book, the author talks about cognitive egocentrism, defined as “an unconscious preferential focus or lack of differentiation of points of view that is not related to the field of interpersonal relationships.” Piaget says that a child is not able to concentrate his attention on several things and therefore turns all his attention to himself. The same thing happens with a child’s speech; he speaks “for himself” only because, due to the psychological characteristics of his age, he cannot pay attention to something else during one action.

“My description of the development of the concept of “brother,” noted by Vygotsky, shows that a child who has a brother requires effort to understand that his brother also has a brother, that this concept presupposes a mutual relationship, and not absolute “property.”

Piaget's next clarification concerns the issues of measuring the coefficient of egocentric speech in children.

Previously calculated egocentric speech rates ranged from 44% to 47% for children aged 5–7 years and from 54% to 60% for children aged 3–5 years. The author writes that further research in this area has shown that there are very large variations in the coefficient depending on the situation and environment.

In an environment where adult authority and coercive relationships dominate, egocentric speech occupies a significant place. In an environment of peers, where discussions and arguments are possible, the percentage of egocentric speech decreases. Regardless of the environment, the coefficient of verbal egocentrism decreases with age. At three years it reaches its greatest value: 75% of all spontaneous speech. From three to six years, egocentric speech gradually decreases, and after seven years, according to Piaget, it disappears.

Also J. Piaget agrees with the statement of L.S. Vygotsky regarding the fact that autistic thinking is not primary, and egocentric speech is identical to the internal speech of an adult and begins to transform at school age.

At the end of his “comments,” the author writes that, despite many practical studies in this area, “the phenomenon itself, the relative frequency of which at various levels of development we wanted to determine (as well as its decrease with age), has never been discussed in detail, because was rarely understood."

Conclusion

Piaget is one of the most revered and cited researchers, whose authority is recognized throughout the world and the number of followers does not decrease. The main thing is that he was the first to understand, explore and express the qualitative uniqueness of children's thinking, showing that the thinking of a child is completely different from the thinking of an adult. The methods he developed for studying the level of intelligence development have long become diagnostic and play a large role in modern practical psychology. Those laws of the process of mental activity that were discovered by Piaget remained unshaken, despite the large number of new facts about children's thinking. The opportunity he opened to understand and shape the child's mind is Piaget's greatest merit.

Bibliography

1. Vygotsky L.S. “The problem of speech and thinking of a child in the teachings of J. Piaget. Critical Research" // "Thinking and Speech". M., 1999

2. Davydov V.V. “Psychological Dictionary”, ?M., 1883.

3. Craig Grace. Developmental psychology. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2000. - 992 p.

4. Meshcheryakova B.G., Zinchenko V.P. Large psychological dictionary.? Prime Eurosign, 2003? 672 pp.

5. Maklakov A.G. General psychology: Textbook for universities.-- St. Petersburg: Peter, 2008.--583 p.

6. Obukhova L.F. Jean Piaget: theory, experiments, discussions. - M.: Gardariki, 2001.--624 p.

7. Obukhova L. F. Jean Piaget’s concept: pros and cons. - M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 1981. - 191 p.

8. Obukhova L. F. Stages of development of children's thinking. M., 1972.

9. Petrovsky A.V. General psychology: a textbook for pedagogical students.

Institute / ed. 2nd, add. and processed - Enlightenment, 1976.--479 p.

10. Piaget J. “Comments on the critical remarks of L. Vygotsky” // “Speech and thinking of a child.” M., 1994

11. Piaget J. Speech and thinking of a child. M., 1994.? 245 p.

12. Rice F. Psychology of adolescence and youth. - St. Petersburg:

Publishing house "Peter", 2000.--624 p.

13. Feldshtein D.I. Psychology of the modern teenager [text]: Scientific research. Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology Acad. ped. Sciences USSR.--M.: Pedagogy, 1987.--240 p.

14. Frumkina R.M. Psycholinguistics: Textbook. aid for students higher textbook institutions - M.: Publishing center "Academy", 2003. - 320 p.

Posted on Allbest.ru

...

Piaget's speech and thinking of the child. Book: Jean Piaget “Speech and thinking of a child. Types of egocentric speech

Part I
SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

Chapter I
SPEECH FUNCTIONS OF TWO SIX YEARS OLD CHILDREN 1
In collaboration with Germaine Gue and Gilda de Meyenburg.

I. MATERIALS

§ 1. One of the conversations

§ 2. Classification of functions of children's speech

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Similar documents

Report a typo

Text that will be sent to our editors:

Your comment (optional):

Part I SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

Chapter I SPEECH FUNCTIONS OF TWO SIX YEARS OLD CHILDREN 1 In collaboration with Germaine Gue and Gilda de Meyenburg.

I. MATERIALS

§ 1. One of the conversations

§ 2. Classification of functions of children's speech

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Similar documents

Report a typo

Text that will be sent to our editors:

Your comment (optional):

Part I
SPEECH AND THINKING OF A CHILD

Chapter I
SPEECH FUNCTIONS OF TWO SIX YEARS OLD CHILDREN 1
In collaboration with Germaine Gue and Gilda de Meyenburg.