Childrens Private Speech
Walk into any classroom or playground full of young children aged from four years old through to six or seven, and you will be overwhelmed by the constant noise. Now think back to your own childhood, and try to recall if it was that noisy when you were that age. If you can’t , you are probably like the majority of people. But you will definitely remember the adults in your life telling you to “shut up”, “be quiet” and “sshhh”. Many Psychologists have noted what is actually being said in all this noise, and attempted to establish what level of communication is actually taking place, and the purpose of this communication.A large proportion of this talking has been labeled “private speech”. Private speech could be defined as the “speech uttered aloud by children which appears to be addressed to either themselves or to no one in particular” (Allyn & Bacon, date unknown). Many people have attempted to explain why children use private speech so prominently, and to explain the role that it plays in a child’s development, if any at all.
The next step was to look at the relationship between private speech and academic performance, to investigate whether private speech assisted in the learning or outstanding of the child. In 1986, Berk observed 75 students from the first and third grades, whilst sitting a Mathematics test. She found that there was a strong correlation between certain type of private speech and the students test results, which means that a child’s performance could be predicted by looking at the type of private speech that they used. Berk also made the generalization that younger children, with more audible private speech, performed better academically. Not everyone agreed with Piaget’s thoughts and findings. Isaacs (1930), through his studies and observations of children in a small experimental school, noticed an extremely large amount of socialization taking place between the students of this age bracket. He also noted that the use of egocentric speech was found only in rare instances (Allyn & Bacon). This was supported by the findings of McCarthy (1930), who found that egocentric speech was only noticed in one out of every twenty subjects in his study of children aged between 18 and 54 months. This increase and then decrease in the use of private speech is due to the fact that children use private speech when they are faced with a new or difficult task or obstacle. At the age of four through to seven, children generally have not matured enough to internalize their thought processes, and hence use their private speech as a self-guiding and self-directional function. A child at the age of two is likely to use this language to account for it’s actions, then at the age of four, will more likely to use private speech while they work, and then as the child get older, they may use it to assist with the planning of what they are about to undertake. Private speech appears systematically in young children (Winsler, Carlton and Barry, 2000). Kohlberg (et al. 1968) also found that private speech developed in a set progression, moving from one developmental stage, to another, becoming inner directed speech and then finally, thought (see Fig. 6).
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1593
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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