Why Do Children Talk To Themselves? :: Psychology Psychological Papers

Why Do Children Talk To Themselves? Whether you atomic number 18 a parent, teacher, claw care giver, or a child observer you may have find that many children talk to themselves. Laura Berk reports that, private speech can account for 20-60 percent of the remarks a child younger than 10 years makes (78). Why do children do this? Does it benefit the child as Vygotsky would say, or is it just that the child is making egocentric remarks that play no positive role in normal cognitive development as Piaget would claim? I am going to be waying at the differences between Vygotskys and Piagets points of view. Then, I will look at Laura Berks findings in her article, Why Children Talk to Themselves. I will also talk about other findings concerning this topic. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky were developmental psychologists interested in the origins and processes of cognitive development. These two psychologists disagreed sharply on the role that private speech played in ones cogn itive development. Vygotsky called this private speech plot of land Piaget called it egocentric speech. Piaget observed the activities of three to eight year old kindergarten children, and discovered such uses of speech as verbal repetitions of another individual, monologues during an activity, and non-reciprocal remarks in collective settings. In these instances their speech was not directed towards other individuals. In Piagets mind these patterns of speech provideed evidence of egocentrism, a sign of cognitive immaturity, and an inability to share the horizon of another individual. However, he argued, as the children grow older they socialize increasingly more with others, and their speech becomes communicative. Their speech moves away from being self- to other-oriented, a sign that they are able to adopt the perspectives of others. A child overcomes egocentrism by beginning to think critically and logically, causing egocentric speech to fade away. Vygotsky belie ves that a childs cognitive development originates in socialization activities, and then goes through a process of increasing individuation. He argued that self-directed speech did not show any cognitive immaturity, but did show some form of development. He claims that private speech represents a functional differentiation in the speech of a child, or that a child begins to differentiate between speech that is directed towards the others and speech that is self-directed.