Two answers to one question

1. The question is which comes first, thinking or language, and whether one of them depends on the other at all.
2. Piaget (1950) argues that thinking develops first and then makes language possible.
3. Vygotsky (1981) argues that thinking and language begin as two separate systems that only later come together.

Piaget on representational thinking

1. Piaget claimed that a child first builds up representational thought, which is the ability to hold an idea of something in mind when it is not in front of you.
   1. A child forms an idea of a thing through handling it, watching it and acting on it, long before any word is attached to that idea.
2. Once the idea is in place, a word can be hung on it, so language becomes a label for thinking that already exists.
3. On this view a child cannot use a word properly until they already grasp the concept behind it.

Strengths and weaknesses of Piaget's explanation

1. One strength is that it fits the observation that babies solve problems and search for hidden objects well before they can speak.
2. A second strength is that it explains why teaching a child a word for an idea they are not ready for produces parroting rather than understanding.
3. One weakness is that it cannot easily explain evidence that the language you speak steers the way you think.
4. A second weakness is that it rests on interpreting what children do, so deciding that a concept is present stays subjective.

Vygotsky on two separate systems

1. Vygotsky argued that thinking and language begin as two separate systems with separate roots.
2. The first of these is pre-linguistic thought, which is thinking that goes on without any words at all.
   1. A baby who silently drags a cushion across the room to climb up and reach a biscuit tin is thinking, planning and solving, all without language.

1. The second system is pre-intellectual language, which is sound and speech produced before it carries any thought behind it.
   1. Crying, babbling and repeating a sound back to an adult all move other people without the baby meaning anything by them.
2. This is where Vygotsky breaks from Piaget, because language here is not a label for an idea at all.
3. As the child develops, the two systems come together, and from that point words begin to carry thinking rather than just accompany it.

Strengths and weaknesses of Vygotsky's explanation

1. One strength is that it accounts for both wordless problem solving and meaningless early speech at the same time.
2. A second strength is that talking a problem through with a child does help them reason, which is what the joining of the two systems predicts.
3. One weakness is that the point at which the two systems join is vague, so the claim is hard to test.
4. A second weakness is that it depends on reading meaning into what young children say and do, which is subjective.

Telling the two explanations apart

1. They agree that a child can think before it can speak, so pre-linguistic thought is common ground.
2. They disagree about early speech, because Piaget has no room for words that carry no thought whereas Vygotsky makes that a whole system in its own right.
3. They disagree about what language finally does, because Piaget leaves it expressing thought while Vygotsky has it join with thought and start carrying it.

Turning this into marks

1. Name Piaget or Vygotsky and state the direction of cause in the same sentence.
2. Use the terms pre-linguistic thought and pre-intellectual language exactly as they stand.
3. The mark most often lost is the weighing up, because describing both explanations without judging them earns very little.