The Language and Thought of the Child Author:Jean Piaget For many years, the processes of language and thought of the child baffled all philosophers, biologists, and psychologists who tried to deal with them. finally, Jean piaget, influenced by the work of james, Dewey, Freud, and Durkheim, organized previous theory and directed it to a new interpretation of the child's mentality. Instead of the t... more »raditional view that the child's mental growth depends merely upon quantitative addition of experience, piaget believes that the development of language and thought is primarily qualitative -- tat the character of the child's mental activity alters the kind. Today, there is little doube that piaget's work in "The Language and Thought of the Child" has established a new direction in the investigation of the mental apparatus. (1974)« less