Hermine Sinclair

What is a Word

Language is a means of expressing knowledge and at the same time an object of knowledge. How do children, in addition to using Ianguage, acquire the capacity to think about language? The authors postulate that this ‘metalinguistic competence’ develops along with general cognitive structuration as described by Piaget. The present research concerns the concept of ‘the word’, experimentally studied with children aged 4–10 years. It shows a slow development of this concept from an initial indifferentiation between word and thing (at the level of metalinguistic thought and not at the level of know-how) towards the capacity of conceiving the word both as a meaningful constituent element of larger units and as a unit which is itself built up from smaller elements.

Some thoughts on computers and cognitive development: A response to Papert

Barbara White’s interview with Seymour Papert raises a number of problems, each of which would merit extensive discussion. Such a task is quite beyond my capacities, and I shall thus limit myself to some general remarks and a few more particular points, chosen because I myself have been puzzled by similar questions. The introduction to the interview states the two main problems that are discussed: (1) the proposition that familiarity with a carefully constructed computational environment should foster the development of general “reasoning skills” in children, and (2) the question of how such development relates to Piagetian stage-theory. During the interview another important problem is raised: (3) the role of interpersonal relationships in cognitive development. As Papert emphasizes, only precise observational and experimental studies can provide the facts needed to assess the proposition. Maybe much factual material already exists, but I don’t think that enough has been published for outsiders like myself to have an informed opinion. However, from my very limited experience with children working with computers (exclusively in Logo), I would agree with Papert: one does indeed observe the appearance of “powerful ideas” and “general reasoning skills”. Two parenthetical remarks at this point. First, for children to develop powerful ideas about computers and programming when they are working in a computational environment is important. But that is not the issue discussed here; we are talking about general ideas, skills or operations (all these expressions are used in the interview). Second, although this is one of the issues 1 do not intend to discuss here, I do not think one should use these terms as synonyms. As I mentioned, even in limited and haphazard observation of young (5-7 year old) children, one is struck by behaviours that are based on powerful ideas. To name a few I have observed several times: an excellent use of approximations, of the idea of “extremes” (“I’ll try a big number first and then a very small one”), of compensation (“It went too far at the end, I’ll start further to the right”), and of different ways of annulment (“I’ll start from scratch, where the turtle was in the beginning” or “I’ll make it go back along the way it came”), and a capacity for inventing problems (as opposed to inventing new solutions). All of the above imply a sharp awareness of the correspondence or contradiction