A classic idea of the psychology It has been that children only begin to think from the moment they acquire language. This idea was linked to another twin, according to which animals, lacking language, also lacked reasoning or thinking in the strict sense. Logically, these ideas correspond to a position of the type "language determines thought."
The essence of Piaget's theory is that, during the first two years of life, the child constructs practical schemes that are are organized according to a logic of actions, which is the logic from which operations will be born intellectuals. This logic has its origin in the child's interaction with the world.
Piaget, therefore, fits perfectly into the scheme of those authors who defend that thought is independent of language and that, in one way or another, language, especially during its development, is subordinate to thought. Piaget and Chomsky coincide in highlighting the results that demonstrate the inexistence of correlations between language and thought. Piaget does it to support the specificity and independence of thought;
Chomsky, to defend that language is an autonomous capacity that is not affected by thought. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a line of inquiry based largely on Chomskyan ideas seemed to have come to fruition (contrary to Chomsky's ideas) that, to understand language acquisition, one must take into account the non-linguistic knowledge possessed by the boy.
In his speculations about the way in which the child acquires language, Chomsky suggests that, being a specific capacity, independent of any other, it is necessary to postulate the existence of an innate mechanism, a Language Acquisition Device (the DAL or the LAD). One of the new problems that psychologists faced in the early 1970s was that the meaning of children's emissions could not be reduced to their sensorimotor contents. Jerome Bruner has called these forms of interaction between children and adults interaction formats. According to him, it is a kind of games that have a certain structure, which changes depending on age and time. that the adult plays a fundamental role in organizing the interaction, making up for the child's deficiencies in each moment.
According to Bruner, these format games provide an ideal context for learning to speak. Bruner hypothesized that perhaps the structure of language could be explained as a derivation from the structures of action and interaction. It is a hypothesis very similar to the one that Piaget maintains regarding the logic of thought, which, according to him, comes from the logic of the intelligent actions that we develop during the first two years of life in interaction with the world physical.
However, at present, Bruner admits that there are linguistic structures qualitatively different from the structures of the interaction, and that its origin is probably to be found in something similar to that innate mechanism (the LAD) that he has postulated Chomsky. However, Bruner insists that language could never be acquired by the mere operation of an innate generative mechanism brought into contact with speech samples.
Bruner has created the concept of SAAL: the Help System for Language Acquisition. SAAL is made up of all those very characteristic interaction routines (formats) that adults create with children. According to Bruner, the SAAL's function is complementary to that of the LAD, and consists in creating a kind of framework so that the Chomskyan LAD can function properly.
Jean Piaget and the origins of intelligence In 1914, Wolfgang Köhler, a German psychologist who very shortly thereafter would become one of the founders of the Gestalt school, was interested in finding out if animals as similar to us as chimpanzees really did not also exhibit "intelligent" behaviors despite their lack of language. These results demonstrated that there can be intelligence in the absence of language.
It was not long before it was found that this same form of thought or practical intelligence occurred in children before the acquisition of language. Piaget formulates a theory of intelligence, according to which thought is rooted in action and not in language. According to Piaget's theory, language is another product of intellectual development. Piaget considered language as one of the four fundamental factors of cognitive development.
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