Contrast Piaget's and Vygotsky's viewpoints on private speech

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Piaget and Vygotsky both observed that young children tend to talk aloud to themselves, producing speech that does not seem to really be intended for an audience. Piaget interpreted such speech as egocentric speech and saw it as representing the young child's failure to take into account the listener's needs, a necessity for true communication. He viewed such speech as a sign of cognitive immaturity. Vygotsky, on the other hand, viewed speech to the self as just that--as private speech not intended for communicative purpose. Vygotsky suggested that such speech is a sign of a growing reliance on language for planning and regulating behavior. He viewed it as a cognitive advance that helps children become more organized and efficient problem solvers. In its overt, out-loud form, it is immature in a sense according to Vygotsky. In its more mature form, private speech gradually becomes more abbreviated and covert, serving as the basis for inner verbal thought. Private speech, then, does not really disappear with increasing age and maturity, but "goes underground.". Evidence indicates that children do use private speech for self-guidance when performing difficult tasks and that it tends to become more covert with age. The brighter kids in a classroom tend to show high levels of private speech during the early elementary years and less during mid-elementary years because the internalization process has occurred earlier for these brighter children.