Jerome Bruner and Cognitive Development - Essay Example

Jerome Bruner (born 1915) is thought of as one of the most outstanding psychologists of the twentieth century. Bruners involvement in the field of cognitive psychology made him interested in childrens cognitive development and in particular he attempted to investigate processes that underlie the learning by children of language. Bruner summarised his ideas on this topic in one of his well-known works "Child Talk: Learning to Use Language" published in 1983. Let us try to explain Jerome Bruner's account of how infants learn to speak, and discuss his account with reference to developmental psychological research into language development in infancy. For this latter purpose we can compare the views of Bruner with those of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), another scholar who had been interested in the same problem and to whom Bruner often refers throughout the book. The main task that Bruner set before him was to give a proper account of the evident but nevertheless difficult for explanation fact that the majority of children learn language very easily, while it seems that in order for one to be able to learn something completely new, like language is for a child, one must already have some path to follow. For instance, people who learn foreign languages already have a framework of their own language that helps them to structure new knowledge. But the question is what is this framework for children Before we overview answers that Bruner offered for this question, we should briefly describe the views of Wittgenstein that chronologically preceded "Child Talk". Wittgenstein speculated about the influence of the earliest forms of training between a teacher (an adult) and a pupil (a child) which yet contains no real explanations by the teacher and no real understanding by a child, but which with time helps a child to learn widespread judgements and to start following linguistic rules. At this moment a language understanding substitutes simple behavioural reactions that had enabled the early pre-linguistic training (Wittgenstein 1958). In his turn, Bruner in his book confirms the importance of forms of training suggested by Wittgenstein, but adds that such an early training is possible because of the existence of some forms of pre-linguistic communication, which are at least as important, or even more so, than the training. In this way, we can already see in the approach of Bruner the presence of a complex of cognitive endowments and proper encouragement due to social factors which combine to give children the necessary ground for mastering of language. To bolster his case, in a certain opposition to Wittgenstein Bruner points out that normally children do not require to be trained, but rather they seem to have an inborn inclination to manifest attention and accept external reference, which the author calls "referential intersubjectivity" (Bruner 1983, pp. 27, 122). Indeed, as Bruner observes even infants are usually treated by adults as communicative partners as if they could already understand us. At this point it becomes clear why Bruner had to introduce the a priori side of some cognitive endowments and biological inclination inherent to children, which, along with different forms of cultural motivation and social context, enable them to properly master language, and which are functionally similar to children training of Wittgenstein (Bruner 1983, p. 122). One of the concrete manifestations of such endowments is an inborn striving for systematic and abstract perception of the world which is reinforced by the exposure of a baby to repetitive and familiar circumstances that help it to increase the growing sensation of orderliness of the worlds of objects and thoughts. Therefore, infants are highly communicative and enjoy playing (Bruner 1983, 47). By the way, for Bruner, who says that "play is the culture of childhood" (Bruner 1983, p. 121), the perception of children as game players is one of the most important aspects of his views. Bruner suggests that even the earliest games are already linguistic in their essence, because in games pressure of expectations is absent and a child can try and test skills of increasingly more complicated actions that would be needed for future language learning, and at the same time not be afraid of consequences, so that play is a kind of "preparation for the technical-social life" (Bruner 1983, p. 45). Thus, as children initially cannot differentiate between objects and thoughts, through such communicative activities and playing children develop more intricate forms of communication which leads them to linguistic skills. After all, mastering of language is not just about grammar, but about "realizing one's intentions in the appropriate use of that grammar" (Bruner 1983, 38). Here, Bruner reinforces the picture he has provided with the allusion to Language Acquisition Device (LAD), a hypothetical mechanism in the brain that is responsible for language learning (Behrens 2006), and to the social environment which assumes the role of Language Acquisition Support System (LASS). On ground of this, Bruner believes that the combined participation of cognitive endowments, social context, games that promote linguistic skills, and LAD and LASS explains in children in the first place their attention towards "a patterned sound system, to grammatical constraints, to referential requirements, to communicative intentions, etc." (Bruner 1983, p. 31). Therefore, the process of mastering of language mostly depends on the mentioned dispositions that should manifest themselves and find support from the social environment, and the rest is done easily. With the above considerations in mind, we can conclude that Bruner apparently has gone further in his account of how infants learn to speak than for instance Wittgenstein, because Bruner integrated within his theory both visible elements of the language learning process, like purposeful training, games and the supportive social environment, and the hidden pre-existing conditions, represented by the suggested cognitive endowments, biological inclination, and the speculative LAD, which in the first place enable such a learning process. Nevertheless, the account of Bruner is not free from problematic issues. For one, the picture of language learning by children that Bruner depicts and which includes the existence of some innate endowments raises the question to what degree qualities of language are arbitrary and to what degree they are necessitated by these endowments. Here, unverified a priori assumptions of Bruner limit his ability to approach such questions, while their relevance seems to be warranted within the field of developmental psychological research into language development in infancy. Moreover, I believe that perhaps Bruner himself does not fully realise all possible practical and methodological consequences of his postulation of inborn endowments, so as far as his account of these endowments is concerned, it is a more of a philosopher than a researcher who speaks in him. Sources Behrens, H., (2006), 'The input-output relationship in first language acquisition', Journal of Language and Cognitive Processes, vol. 21, no. 1-3, pp. 2-24 Bruner, J., (1983), Child's Talk: Learning to Use Language, W. W. Norton & Company Wittgenstein, L., (1958), The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the 'Philosophical Investigations', Oxford: Blackwell Read More