{"agent_id":"piaget","agent_name":"Jean Piaget","slug":"childhood-egocentrism","label":"Childhood egocentrism: is the young child's thought and speech fundamentally centred on its own viewpoint?","topic":"Childhood egocentrism","question":"Is the young child's thought and speech fundamentally centred on its own viewpoint?","position":"The young child speaks and thinks largely without decentring — without holding its own viewpoint as one among others. Egocentric speech is not selfishness but a genuine cognitive limitation: the child does not yet know that it has a point of view, and so cannot take another's. Much of early \"reasoning\" is talk alongside others rather than communication with them.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The young child speaks and thinks largely without decentring — without holding its own viewpoint as one among others.","n":[]},{"t":"Egocentric speech is not selfishness but a genuine cognitive limitation: the child does not yet know that it has a point of view, and so cannot take another's.","n":[1]},{"t":"Much of early \"reasoning\" is talk alongside others rather than communication with them.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) on egocentric speech; The Child's Conception of the World (1926) on the child's inability to distinguish its own perspective from the world's. Reception: Vygotsky's reinterpretation of egocentric speech as inward-turning social speech that becomes verbal thought; later perspective-taking and theory-of-mind research (Wimmer and Perner, Wellman) locating the shift earlier and more gradually than the clinical studies suggested.","works":["The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) on egocentric speech","The Child's Conception of the World (1926) on the child's inability to distinguish its own perspective from the world's"],"reception":"Vygotsky's reinterpretation of egocentric speech as inward-turning social speech that becomes verbal thought; later perspective-taking and theory-of-mind research (Wimmer and Perner, Wellman) locating the shift earlier and more gradually than the clinical studies suggested.","status":"The phenomenon is real and reproducible; the AGE at which decentring occurs I set too late, as later work with simpler tasks has shown, and the boundary is gradual rather than sharp. Egocentrism names a direction of development — from the undifferentiated to the differentiated self — more than a fixed stage.","era":"1896-1980","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Judgment and Reasoning in the Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Not until about the age of 7-8, does argument, in particular, become what it is for the adult, namely the change from one point of view to the other, accompanied by the effort to motivate one's own and to understand that of the interlocutor. Before this, argument is nothing but a conflict of contrary IN THE CHILD 207 affirmations, affirmations without understanding, and with- out motivation.","label":"Judgment and Reasoning in the Child"},{"n":2,"work":"The Language and Thought of the Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Two aspects of this ego-centric speech make it recognizable. In the first place the child may speak without trying to influence the other speaker. For instance, when the child is playing and working in the presence of adults or even of his own friends, 262 STUDIES IN CHILD LOGIC he sometimes talks without a pause so that it is impossible to decide whether he is speaking to someone else or to him- self.","label":"The Language and Thought of the Child"},{"n":3,"work":"Judgment and Reasoning in the Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We have therefore given it the name of ego-centric, which indicates that this type of thought is still autistic in its structure but that its interests tend not merely towards organic or ' ludistic ' satisfaction as in pure autism, but towards intellectual adaptation as in adult thought. The ego-centric character of child thought has been demonstrated by three special enquiries.","label":"Judgment and Reasoning in the Child"},{"n":4,"work":"The Language and Thought of the Child","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"When, therefore, the adult is brought face to face with his fellow-beings, what he announces to them is something already socially elaborated and therefore roughly adapted to his audience, z.*., it is comprehensible. Indeed, the further a man has advanced in his own line of thought, the better able is h$ to see things from the point of view of others and to make himself understood by them.","label":"The Language and Thought of the Child"},{"n":5,"work":"The Child's Conception of the World","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Reahty is impregnated with self and thought is conceived as belonging to the category of physical matter. From the point of view of causaUty, all the universe is felt to be in communion with and obedient to the self. There is participation and magic. The desires and the commands of the self are felt to be absolute, since the s\\ibject's own point of view is regarded as the only one possible.","label":"The Child's Conception of the World"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-clinical-method","label":"The clinical method: is the flexible child-interview rigorous science or over-interpretation?"},{"slug":"constructivism-versus-nativism","label":"Constructivism versus nativism: is knowledge built by the child's own action, or given in advance?"}]}