Piaget's Theory On Language

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. In an article in Educational Researcher DeVries (1997) sought to make the social aspect of Piaget’s ideas on intellectual development more widely known. Especially in work he published in the 1920’s through the 1940’s, Piaget emphasized the importance of social interaction to intellectual development, and DeVries drew heavily on these writings. However, DeVries did not address a major aspect of how Piaget considered social factors in this period: Reference to the very sources cited by DeVries indicates that, during the above-mentioned period, Piaget linked the role of social interaction in intellectual development to the role of language. As a first example, DeVries (1997, p. 7) cites the following remark by Piaget (1950/1995b, p. 94): “The isolated individual would never be capable of complete conservation and reversibility.” Conservation and reversibility are fundamental constructs in Piaget’s conception of logical thought. Therefore, the quotation supports DeVries’s argument that according to Piaget the development of logical thought is dep