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.Vygotsky also made findings that were in conflict with Piaget. Vygotsky (1934) founded a theory which held that private speech performed a vital, positive function in a childs development (Allyn & Bacon). Piagets theory of 1926, illustrated a converse association between egocentric speech and social communication. This is represented in Figure 2.Fig. 2Piagets theory a converse association between egocentric and social speech.Vygotskys beliefs were somewhat different to that of Piaget. Vygotsky believed that private speech emerged out of social speech until the private speech peeked (Allyn & Bacon). This can best be represented in Figure 3.Private speech is an integral function in the integration of language with thought. It helps young children to master their own behaviour (Allyn & Bacon). As these children grow and mature, their private speech becomes more internalized, and less vocal, as it transforms into the childs inner thoughts (Vygotsky, 1934). This means that the level of private speech a child uses, will gradually decrease after it reaches its previously mentioned peek, as seen in Figure 4.Fig. 3Vygotskys beliefs of the relationship private and social speech.Fig. 4Vygotskys belief on the behaviour of private speech.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 u...
