Role Of Language In Intellectual Development

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Piaget’s Early Theory of the Role of Language in Intellectual Development: A Comment on DeVries’s Account of Piaget’s Social Theory by Joe Becker and Maria Varelas In the March 1997 Educational Researcher, Rheta DeVries presented a thought-provoking account of the social factors in Piaget’s conceptualization of intellectual development, primarily in his early works. However, DeVries ignored the fact that in these early writings Piaget made language an integral part of his ideas on intellectual development. DeVries’s elision is unfortunate for two reasons. First, it raises an issue of validity: Are we justified in simply discarding the linguistic element of these writings? Second, DeVries missed the opportunity to show how Piaget’s early ideas on the role of language might be relevant to contemporary interest in socio-cultural aspects of development. Piaget saw social interaction as the key to how we overcome the instability of the symbols we each individually construct. In the essay cited, Piaget (1945/1995a) does write about the fluctuation of the symbolism of individual images. However, Piaget also clearly considers that language plays a crucial role in overcoming this fluctuation: This point is missing from DeVries’s account. Here is the relevant passage from Piaget’s essay: Complete reversibility presupposes symbolism, because it is only by reference to the possible evocation of absent objects that the assimilation of things to action schemes and the accommodation of action schemes to things reach permanent equilibrium and thus constitute a reversible mechanism. The symbolism of individual images fluctuates far too much to lead to this result. Language is therefore necessary, and thus we come back to social factors. (Piaget, 1945/1995a, p.154, emphasis added) In an article in Educational Researcher DeVries (1997) sought to make the social aspect of Piaget’s
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