COGNITIVE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES

1. COGNITIVE LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION THEORIES
GROUP 4

2. CONTENT
PAGE 1
Members ………………………… 2
Objectives..……………………… 4
Introduction……………………… 5
Language acquisition theory by Jean
Piaget ……………………….. 6 - 17
Language acquisition theory by Lev
Vygotsky ………………………. 18 - 27

3. MEMBERS
REPORTER 1
Name: John Michael Laurio
PAGE 2 PAGE 3
REPORTER 2
Name: Angelica Mae Morado
REPORTER 3
Name: Novelyn Pillarco
REPORTER 4
Name: Bernadeth Mapili
REPORTER 5
Name: Daijera Amor Muega
REPORTER 6
Name: Angeline Medes
REPORTER 7
Name: Lineth Navarro
REPORTER 8
Name: Jie Ann Oliva
REPORTER 9
Name: Larme Mortel

4. PAGE 4 PAGE 5
• Emerged as a response to
Behaviorism.
• Focused on the inner mental
activities of human beings to
understand how people
learn.
A brief introduction to cognitivism
Language acquisition theory by Jean
Piaget
Stages of Piaget’s Theory
Language acquisition theory by Lev
Vygotsky
Compare Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s
Theory
OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION
COGNITIVISM
• Behaviorists saw humans as
programmed animals,
cognitivists viewed them as
rational beings.
• Language acquisition is viewed
in light of the child’s cognitive
development.

5. PAGE 6 PAGE 7
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY
BY JEAN PIAGET
• Language acquisition for Piaget is a
mental and emotional process.
• Piaget linked the development of
language in a child to the child’s
cognitive development.
• He believed that a child must have
the understanding of a concept
before he can verbalize it.
• For example, if a child says, “This car
is bigger than that one”, he must have
the concept of size in his mind before
commenting.

6. PAGE 8 PAGE 9
• Piaget regarded cognitive
development in a child as a pre-
requisite for language acquisition.
• He believed that language was a way
of reflecting a child’s thought process
and that language did not contribute
to development of thinking.
• He argued that cognitive
development preceded linguistic
development.
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY
BY JEAN PIAGET According to
Piaget, children
learn their initial
rational constructs
through the
environment i.e. by
interaction with
other people.
Children develop
language through a
combination of
schemas (concepts
for how to act and
respond to the
world).
As these schemas
gradually develop and
become more complex
in the mind, language
and vocabulary
progress in order for
the child to handle the
new schemas.

7. PAGE 10 PAGE 11
Piaget was the
first to say that
children reason
and think
differently at
different stages in
their life.
He believed that all
children universally
progress through
four different and
distinct stages of
cognitive
development.
PIAGET’S STAGE THEORY
Language in
children developed
gradually as they
move onto the next
stage.
THE FOUR STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
PIAGET PROPOSED ARE:
Sensorimotor Stage
Preoperational Stage
Concrete Operations Stage
Formal Operations Stage

8. PAGE 12 PAGE 13
• Begins at birth and continues up
to about age 2.
• Children learn about physical
objects and are concerned with
motor skills.
• When children in this stage see a
new object they shake it, throw
it, chew it or put it in their mouth
simply to understand the
characteristics of the object.
• This stage is marked with
concept formation.
• Around age 1, children learn the
concept of object permanence
i.e. an object continues to exist
for the children even if it is out of
their sight.
• No linguistic development is
seen at this stage except for
babbling and cooing.
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
• This stage begins around age 2
and goes up to age 6 0r 7.
• This stage is marked by
language acquisition and
children develop ability to think
of symbols and forms words
from ideas and vice versa.
• Children also begin to
understand concepts of time
and space and of addition and
subtraction.
• Children in this stage focus more
on concrete physical situations
and have difficulty in handling
abstract concepts.
• Still language for children at this
stage is less. Having verbose
conversations with children is not
going to help.
• Children at this stage start
recognizing shapes and words
ascribed to the shapes.

9. PAGE 14 PAGE 15
CONCRETE
OPERATIONS STAGE
01
02
03
04
05
06
This stage begins around age 6 or 7 and
goes up to age 11 or 12.
Children at this stage are able to group
things in logical order according to their
names, numbers or sizes.
Children develop a much more logical and
reasonable language system.
They begin to understand the concepts of
other people as well as convey their own
ideas and views.
The children also begin to understand
much complex abstract things such as
mathematics problem solving.
Yet at this stage a child can do mental
operations but only with real concrete
objects, events or situations.

10. FORMAL
OPERATIONS STAGE
PAGE 16 PAGE 17
• The final stage which begins from around age
11 or 12 and goes up to age 15.
• Many new capabilities are developed in a child
at this stage.
• A child is able to use language fully by the end
of this stage and is able to provide reasons
logically.
• The stage is marked with the child thinking and
communicating in a more adult like manner.
• The language system in children of this age is
developed completely except for those children
who suffer from autism or some other mental
dysfunction.
• The child at this stage has the concepts as well
as the language to support the concepts he
has.
• This stage can be referred to as the linguistic
maturation stage.
• Piaget believes that a child learns language by actively
participating in the learning process.
• He was of the view that adults should assist the child by
providing appropriate props and vocabulary suiting the
child’s interest in order to facilitate the learning.
• Piaget recommended that adults should not intervene in
the learning process without necessity.
• It is evident that Piaget’s theory suggests some link
between cognitive development and language
acquisition and also explains the order in which certain
aspects of language are acquired.
• But….
• Piaget’s theory does not explain why language emerges
in the first place.

11. PAGE 18 PAGE 19
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY
BY LEV VYGOTSKY
• Vygotsky was of the view that language
was a system of symbolic representation
which had been perfected over many
generations.
• He believed language came into three
categories, which were Social, Egocentric
and Inner.
• For Vygotsky, language was a tool which
made thinking a possibility and which
differentiated between thinking at an
elementary level and on a higher level.
• Vygotsky proposed the theory that
thought and speech have different roots
in mankind.
• Thought is non-verbal and speech is
non-intellectual at an early stage of
development.
• He said that the developmental lines for
thought and language are not parallel
and that they cross each other again
and again
ORIGIN OF THOUGHT AND
LANGUAGE

12. PAGE 20 PAGE 21
• From birth to age of two, the
development lines run separate but at the
age of two, they join together to initiate a
new form of behavior where thought
becomes verbal and speech becomes
logical.
• Initially a child’s language appears surface
level conversation but at some point later
on it becomes the structure of the child’s
thought.
WORD MEANING AND
CONCEPT FORMATION
ORIGIN OF THOUGHT AND
LANGUAGE
• When a child realizes that everything in
the world has a name, he faces problem
when something nameless and new is
presented to him.
• He himself names the object then but
when he, the child, is unable to find any
name for the new object, he asks it from
the adults.
• These early word-meanings form the roots
of concept formation in the child’s mind.

13. PAGE 22 PAGE 23
Vygotsky believed that in order
to understand intellectual
development, one must
understand the interrelations
between language and
thought.
According to Vygotsky, all fundamental
cognitive abilities develop in light is
social history and context.
THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE, AND
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Language for him is not merely
an expression of the knowledge a
child has but there is a relation
between thought and speech,
providing resource to other i.e.
language is essential for thought
formation.
VGOTSKY’S SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIVISM
This means that a child’s thought patterns
and cognitive skills are not primarily
determined by innate factors but the
products of the activities a child practices in
the society.
In this process language is a crucial tool
which determines how a child learns to
think because more novel thoughts are
transmitted to the child by means of words.

14. PAGE 24 PAGE 25
It is the difference between the child’s capacity to solve
problems on his own and his capacity to solve the
problems with assistance 1
It can also be defined as denoting the distance between
what a child actually knows and what the child can learn
under supervision of an adult or peer 2
3
4
ZONE OF PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY IN
CONTRAST WITH PIAGET’S
THEORY
The ZPD includes all the functions and the activities that
a child or learner can perform only with the assistance
of someone else.
The assistant can be an adult like parent or teacher or it
can be another peer who has already mastered that
ability.
Vygotsky criticized Piaget’s assumption
that developmental growth is
independent of experience and based
on a universal characteristic of stages
Vygotsky believed that characteristics
didn’t cease at a certain point but when
one thing was learnt, it was used from
then onwards

15. PAGE 26 PAGE 27
Piaget’s stage theory only approaches
up to and end at approximately age
fifteen
Vygotsky also disagreed with Piaget’s
assumption that development could not
be accelerated through instruction
Another important fact to notice is that
Piaget’s theory does not apply to
children with disabilities, for a child
suffering from autism or some brain
dysfunction will not be able to go
through all of Piaget’s stages
He believed that intellectual
development continually evolved
without any end point and not like
Piaget theorized that it was completed
in stages.

16. THANK YOU!
FOR LISTENING.
GROUP 4