THE CHILD MONOIOGUE

Abstract

Problem:
There are different interpretations regarding the child monologue.
According to the earlier version of Piaget (1926) the general characteristic of monologue is that it does not communicate the thoughts of the speaker to others.It serves to accompany, to reinforce, or to supplement his action.Monologue is simply a sidetracking of the original function of language. According to Piaget, we shall see the gradual disappearance of the monologue, for it is a primitive and infantile function of language. Monologue decreases and turns into socialized speech when the child gets older.
On the other hand, Vygotsky (1934) believes that the child speech is not ego-centric, but works as the responsiveness to others in the beginning. Then the child monologue begins to function for controlling his behavior and helping his thoughts. It appears during the transition stage when outer words develop into inner words.The child monologue would not decrease but increase when the child is around preschool-age, because he begins to control his behavior by himself.When the child monologue decreases, it is not just because he becomes socialized but because his monologue develops into inner words
Purpose:
Suppose that a child met a difficulty in the course of solving a problem.Piagetian theory will predict that there will be little quantitative and. qualitative difference in his monologue since it is. not directly related to thinking activity.Vygotskiart theory, on the other hand, will predict an increase of the frequency of monologues which are oriented. toward to the clarification and the solution of the problem. The present study purports to test these hypotheses.
Experiment:
Subjects: One hundred and six children par ticipated the experiment. They were separated into, 53 pairs and each pair worked at the same time on the same table.Only one child of each pair was. subject to recording.Thus the number of subjects. whose responses were recorded was 53. Eighteen of them were four years old, 17 were five years old and 18 were six years old.
Methods: Each one was to work on two tasks, a picture puzzle and afree drawing, one task at a time. Barriers were introduced in the process of performing the tasks. At a certain stage in the process of performing a picture puzzle, 3 pieces were replaced by irrelevant pieces to make the puzzle insoluble.In the task of a free drawing, the difficulty was introduced by taking away several crayons.used by the child very often. The child had to use other colors in order to finish the drawing.
Results:
1.In the process of performing a task, the egocentric language appeared more frequently than the socialized language.The difference was statistically significant.
2.In the process of performing a task, monologue appeared most frequently at the age of 5 and appeared least at the age of 6.
3.When the child noticed the barriers, the frequency of monologue increased
4.When the child noticed the barriers, the quality of monologue changed.After they had noticed the barriers, the frequencies of monologue directed toward the solutions increased while the frequencies of monologue irrelvant with the solution decreased.
Discussion:
Our results agree with what Vygotsky would have predicted and the authors conclude that the function of the child monologue is more than a primitive and infantile one which accompany, reinforce or supplement his actions, but it functions as so to formulate the solution of barriers and to control his behavior.