Child Language Acquisition - Piaget

Terms and Stages from Piaget (Cognitive Approach)

Jean Piaget

A swiss psychologist who believed that language is controlled by thought.

Sensorimotor

The stage that a child is in between 0-2 years old.

Preoperational

The stage that a child is in between 2-7 years old.

Concrete Operational

The stage that a child is in between 7-11 years old.

Formal Operational

The stage that a child is in after 11 years old.

Object Permanence

A cognitive ability developed in the sensorimotor stage. The ability to realise that an object still exists when you cannot see it.

Egocentrism

A cognitive characteristic of the preoperational stage. The inability to recognise the viewpoints of other people.

Conservation

A cognitive ability developed in the concrete operational stage. The ability to recognise that the content of objects stays the same even when they are placed in a different environment or in a different way.

Class Inclusion

A cognitive ability developed in the concrete operational stage. The ability to classify/organise objects into several categories, and recognise that they can be in several categories at once.

Abstract Thought

A cognitive characteristic of the formal operational stage. The ability to understand concepts which are not concrete/definite ideas, such as “screen” (concrete) and “weight” (abstract).

Schema

A mental representation about concepts and objects in our environment.

Assimilation

An object being placed into the same schema as another because they share many physical descriptors. (A fox may be classified as a cat because it has big ears, a long tail, is orange, and is fluffy).

Accommodation

A new schema being developed when a new object or idea doesn’t match with any which already exist. (A raccoon may not fit the schema of a ‘cat’, so a new schema would be made for it).