Everyday life is characterized by conscious purpose. From reaching for food to designing an experiment, our actions are directed at goals. This purpose reveals itself partly in our conscious awareness and partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Cognition is the process involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving.

Much past and present theory has emphasized the parallels between the articulated prepositional structure of language and the structure of an internal code or 'language of thought'.

In this paper I will discuss language and cognition and two famous theorist who were both influential in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the process of cognitive development.

There are those that say that Jean Piaget was the first to take children's thinking seriously. Although Piaget never thought of himself as a child psychologist his real interest was epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which, like physics, was considered a branch of philosophy until Piaget came along and made it a science (2000).

Children and their reasoning process fascinated Piaget. He began to suspect that observi

(PG)- Egocentric speech appears first, dies out and is replaced by socialized speech

In the preoperational stage, from ages 2 to 7, the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. Piaget has divided this stage into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. In the preoperational phase children use language and try to make sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults. They need to test thoughts with reality on a daily basis and do not appear to be able to learn from generalizations made by adults. In the intuitive phase the child slowly moves away from drawing conclusions based solely on concrete experiences with objects. However, the conclusions drawn are based on rather vague impressions and perceptual judgments. It becomes possible to carry on a conversation with a child. Children develop the ability to classify objects on the basis of different criteria. At this stage children learn to count and use the concept of numbers.

(VG) - Egocentric speech is not first: it gives voice to internalized "social" or "inner" speech. Egocentric speech doesn't wither; it evolves upwards into inner speech

Piaget's theories maintained that there could be no understanding of a child's development if there was no understanding of the culture that child was raised under. He believed that thinking patterns are not totally due to our biology; they are products of our interactions in cultural situations and other social activities. He believed that the history of the child and the history of the child's culture must be understood to understand the child. That cognitive development occurs when children internalize the tools that are taught through the social interactions. It is through social activities that children learn cultural tools and social inventions. These include language, counting systems, writing, art, and music. Vygotsky maintained that adults have the responsibility to share their greater collective knowledge with the younger generations.

ng how the child's mind develops might discover the key to human knowledge. Piaget's insight opened a new window into the inner workings of the mind. Jean Piaget has made major theoretical and practical contributions to our understanding of the origins and evolution of knowledge.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1971
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)