Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky made the connection more explicit; he found that children begin by speaking their stream of consciousness aloud to inform other people, and eventually learn to suppress that stream into nonvocal (subvocal?) thought.
That doesn’t sound right. I’ve heard mentions of children who only start speaking at a late age, but when they do, they skip right to speaking in fully-formed sentences. I’m not sure whether I understand correctly what you’re saying here.
Agreed that it didn’t sound right. I have two children at two different stages of learning to speak (just learning and getting more fluent) and they don’t suppress vocalization even though they speak only a small fraction of the words they think.
I can think about how I know this if there’s any question. It’s related to the fact that speaking is awkward for them at first (for example, beginning with just one word sentences), but they understand what I say to them in much more detail. So I think they have a model for language that is advanced of their ability to speak it.
It’s the same if you have ever tried to learn a new language. Typically you can understand much more people who are fluent speaking than you can actually say, even though when you recieve the words, you’re processing them with the same brain that you produce the words with.
But can you think fluidly in a language you can’t speak fluidly? It doesn’t follow from being able to understand more than you can articulate that you speak only a small fraction of the words you can think, as byrnema implies. It sounds more like the process of articulation and understanding are decoupled.
Note: assumption made that thought is in a particular language.
I can speak English and am learning Esperanto. When I think of the referent known by the English pointer “dog” my mind most strongly associates the pointer “dog” and much less strongly the pointer “hundo”.
But as per internal narratives? I’d agree, yes, that articulating words, whether in an internal narrative or externally spoken, is separate from understanding.
I think what byrnema is saying is that they don’t articulate their running internal narrative. They are developing an internal narrative along with the worldess-concept kind of thought that is already in place.
That doesn’t sound right. I’ve heard mentions of children who only start speaking at a late age, but when they do, they skip right to speaking in fully-formed sentences. I’m not sure whether I understand correctly what you’re saying here.
Agreed that it didn’t sound right. I have two children at two different stages of learning to speak (just learning and getting more fluent) and they don’t suppress vocalization even though they speak only a small fraction of the words they think.
I can think about how I know this if there’s any question. It’s related to the fact that speaking is awkward for them at first (for example, beginning with just one word sentences), but they understand what I say to them in much more detail. So I think they have a model for language that is advanced of their ability to speak it.
This is receptive language versus productive language.
It’s the same if you have ever tried to learn a new language. Typically you can understand much more people who are fluent speaking than you can actually say, even though when you recieve the words, you’re processing them with the same brain that you produce the words with.
But can you think fluidly in a language you can’t speak fluidly? It doesn’t follow from being able to understand more than you can articulate that you speak only a small fraction of the words you can think, as byrnema implies. It sounds more like the process of articulation and understanding are decoupled.
Note: assumption made that thought is in a particular language.
I can speak English and am learning Esperanto. When I think of the referent known by the English pointer “dog” my mind most strongly associates the pointer “dog” and much less strongly the pointer “hundo”.
But as per internal narratives? I’d agree, yes, that articulating words, whether in an internal narrative or externally spoken, is separate from understanding.
I think what byrnema is saying is that they don’t articulate their running internal narrative. They are developing an internal narrative along with the worldess-concept kind of thought that is already in place.
Also what about the children who learn baby sign language before speaking?