Piagetian and Vygotskian Approaches to Language Acquisition

Both Piaget and Vygotsky were centrally concerned with the ontogenetic relationships between language, cognition, and social life. Recently, researchers have drawn on their observations and hypotheses to establish much closer links between these phenomena than either theorist ever imagined. In investigating the cognitive bases of early language, very close links have been established between specific cognitive achievements and the acquisition of certain types of early words, for example between object permanence development and the acquisition of words for disappearance and between means ends development and the acquisition of words for success/failure. In investigating the social bases of early language, close links have been established between the quantity and quality of joint attentional social interactions in which a child and an adult engage and the child’s early word learning skills. Despite their seminal contributions to the study of early language development along these two lines, neither Piaget nor Vygotsky fully appreciated the skills of social cognition that underlie the acqusition of language. © 1996 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Duke Scholars

Author Michael Tomasello Psychology & Neuroscience