COGNITIVE & SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM and BEHAVIORISM & INNATISM

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, two of the most recognized constructive psychologists, have developed theories on children's cognitive learning styles and abilities. While these two theorists have different ideas about cognitive development in children, there are also several similarities between them. Piaget proposed various educational strategies such as discovery learning with an emphasis on activity and play. However, Vygotsky insisted on the importance of social interactions and a co-constructed knowledge.

According to Piaget, cognitive development occurs in four stages; namely, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations. Vygotsky partly agrees with him, but he mostly focused on the role of culture and social interactions. As for Piaget, children are active learners who construct knowledge from their environments. The interaction with physical and social environments is a key for cognitive development. As suggested by Piaget, I think children actively organize new information with existing information they got from the environment.
Vygotsky also says that children are actively involved in the learning and development process because they provide feedback to the adult or teacher about their level of understanding. To me, this is reasonable since children develop through informal and formal conversations with adults. Moreover, the two theorists believe that development declines with age. Moreover, Vygotsky mentions that the first few years of life are critical for development, as this is where thought and language become increasingly independent. But this development may be initiated by cognitive conflict as far as Piaget. Vygotsky and I also definitely agree with that idea. For example, when a child realizes a new idea doesn’t run in with his current thinking or prior knowledge, he will look for the correct answers in order to match his thinking. So, we can say that they learn through assimilation and accommodation, and complex cognitive development occurs through equilibrium.

Piaget insisted that learning happens after development while Vygotsky pointed out that learning takes place before development. Although it seems like development is driven by the child's enjoyment from learning, I stand on the position that maturation influences and drives development. Piaget says that children learn independently, and the source of their cognition comes solely from themselves. But I don’t feel like that. I think children are social creatures, and the source of their cognition comes from their social environment. Vygotsky believed that development can’t be detached from social context unlike Piaget. And, I think the interaction with other peers and adults plays a critical role in children's cognition. So we can say that development is driven by being around others.

There are also two basic theories for language acquisition: innatism supported by Noam Chomsky and behaviorism supported by B.F. Skinner. These two men share greatly differing ideas on the acquisition of grammar in humans. Their branches of science are already different; Skinner is a psychologist and Chomsky is a linguist. Chomsky believed that all people had innate knowledge of grammar. This means that when we begin speaking as an infant. In contrast, Skinner believed that children must be taught all aspects of language, and that they learn the rules of their native language by imitating what they hear in their environment.

Skinner believed that language skills are developed solely through watching and learning from our parents and other people in our environment, but I don’t agree with them. I think language is innate, or in other words, we are born with a capacity for language. Language rules may be influenced by experience and learning, but the capacity for language itself exists with or without environmental influences. In any event, language is so complex, with an unlimited combination of sounds, words, and phrases; hence environmental learning alone is not able to account for language acquisition. That is to say, environment and learning may be involved, but the foundation for language comes with us from the womb. People speak their language without studying. It means people already have an ability of language patterns in their brain.

 Skinner also proposed operant conditioning where the child tries and fails to use correct language until he succeeds with reinforcement and shaping provided by the parents’ gestures such as smiles and approvals. Chomsky referred to this special ability as the language acquisition device (LAD), which is an inbuilt mechanism that automatically allows a child to decode any spoken language hears around it. The LAD supplies humans with the transformational grammar, which means the process of translating underlying meaning into speech. Children use these rules but sometimes they make errors, such as “doed” and “maked” (did and made). I think these are errors in performance not in competence.

Moreover, Skinner supported that children give two types of verbal responses: One of them is the mand, which reinforced by the child receiving something it wants. For example, when the child sees a chocolate, he can show his own demand by calling out “choc”. As the child used appropriate verbal behavior, he then receives chocolate and reinforcement. The other one is tact, which caused by imitating others. For instance, when a parent points at an object and says “ball”, the child imitates this word and the parent will then approve, which is just another form of reinforcement. The human brain has a special function, unlike other animals. That’s why only humans speak languages. People usually don’t remember how they learned to speak, but everybody speaks their first language without any problems. Learning language for a human is very easy because the human brain already contains the ability of language, so even children start to speak language naturally in their early age and some children even speak more than two languages naturally.

In conclusion, as we see in these three theories, there are common principles. If we want to create a new theory using the combined version of the theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner and Chomsky, we can specify some of their major principles as follows. The interaction with physical and social environments is a key for cognitive development. Learning doesn’t happen after development, or in other words, maturation influences and drives development. Language is innate; I mean we are born with a capacity for language. Children sometimes make errors, but there is no need for operant conditioning because these are errors in performance not in competence. Lastly, there are two types of verbal responses; the mand which is reinforced by the child receiving something it wants, and the tact which is caused by imitating others. Actually, alongside the above, all these theories contain the same ideas behind them: humankind has a perfect physiological structure and we can learn everything easily and equip ourselves with skills.