Jean Piaget’s Language
Development Theory (:
Language development is relative to cognitive development –
development of a child’s thinking determines when and what the
child can speak.
i.e. “This car is bigger than that car.”
Child must have developed the ability to differentiate size
 Children learn to talk “naturally” when they are “ready”
without deliberate teaching by adults
Four stages
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Sensori Motor (birth – 2 years old)
Differentiates self from objects
Begins to act intentionally
Begins to realize that there are objects that are not seen or
visible to them.
• Pre- Operational (2-7 Years old)
• Learns to use language to represent objects by image and
words
• Egocentric
• Classifies objects by single features
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Concrete Operational (7-11)
Thinks logically about objects and events
Has a sense of numbers
Classifies objects according to features and can order them in
series along a single dimension such as size
• Formal Operational (11 and up)
• Thinks logically about abstract propositions and tests
hypotheses systematically.
• Becomes concerned with future, ideological problems.
Challenges
• Two pieces of evidence that refute:
• One – development does not always progress in the smooth
manner the theory seems to predict ‘decalage’ .
• Two – They are domain general, cognitive maturation occurs
concurrently across different domains of knowledge