The baby plays and imitates. For Piaget, play is an indispensable phase of the child’s cognitive development. It is in this context of play that we experience reading with the baby. Play with the written word in an adequate manner bridges sensory-motor experience and the appearing of representative and/or symbolic thought. Piaget would call such play “ludic symbolism”, since the explanation for a baby’s joy upon seeing a written word is that reading is a “make-believe” which represents the emotions related to the thought of the object when it is read.
The word ‘Mom’ represents the real mother, as the word ‘dog’ does the beloved pet. The word is the immediate stimulus; and the symbol which reminds the baby of the objects represented makes him/her think of his/her Mom and/or of her dog. Therefore, in this make-believe, the game of playing with words stimulates the development of his/her thought process regarding objects that are absent, which, in truth, are represented at that moment by the symbols s/he recognizes and/or learns to identify along with their meanings.
The baby learns easily through play, because s/he sees and distinguishes words that are part of day-to-day experiences. The words to which s/he’s exposed have meaning; therefore, they are concrete objects.
Play with words is assimilation of the world’s reality which surrounds the baby. Play fills the space between sensory-motor activity and its representation in the thought process. It is a phase of pure assimilation, accompanied by individual satisfaction through play. When the baby continues playing until no longer wants to see the word being shown, s/he practices the mental imitation of looking at the word, the continuity of the action initiating its accommodation in her cognitive system. When a word is accommodated, s/he loses interest. S/he’s satisfied.
Between assimilation and accommodation of words read, the baby exerts a functional adaptation, accommodating him/herself to reality and the environment, with satisfaction for the game. S/he starts to know who the dog is; and how ‘dog’ is read is additional information about the same “object”; more importantly, with affectionate meaning to him/her. Therefore, the baby plays with something concrete as s/he gets to know it. S/he imitates the act of play several times to obtain several times the same satisfaction of seeing the word, e.g. ‘dog’, which represents the puppy s/he loves and knows in actuality.
When the baby starts to read, distinction does not exist between the self and reality around him/her. Piaget observed that both the baby’s verbal contact with the environment and the development of vision answer to a same development. If we observe the baby and his/her curiosity trends about the surroundings, we can state that, at six months, s/he is capable of looking at flashcards and fixate on them with great interest. This capability is observable even at four months.
The baby’s intelligence keeps developing. S/he begins to reproduce models that are distinct from mental schemes s/he already has. Each new word s/he sees, likes, and leaves aside is a new scheme developed. S/he comes to exercise babbling schemes experimenting with new sound combinations and keeps playing with the words s/he already knows so that, through conservation, s/he may actually say them at a later phase. These actions are provided by the indication of the presence of mental images of past events.
The functional pleasure with reading, expressed via smiles and laughter that accompany the activities of exposure to the words show that reading play works. The baby’s pleasure in returning to the daily reading activities indicates in itself that she’s different from other babies. S/he starts to show that s/he learns more rapidly and constructs a more complex mental reality than other babies. S/he knows what things mean and has an additional reference about the thing which is signified: the symbol – the referring word.
Before age two, they are already capable of mental representation, or of thought. To the baby, reading is nothing but imitation (a mental representation that is a copy of reality or an image of the thought of an object) and ludic play (the object is the symbol which suggests something more existent in the child’s mind). In truth, well early on, the baby is not just at the sensory-motor level. She already begins the level of thought when she imitates and plays with written words.
Teaching the baby how to read leads him/her to focus on symbolic games which imply representation of objects that are absent. At the same time, this is both imitative and imitative. As the games symbolize the baby’s own feelings, interests and activities to him/her, they help him/her to express him/herself creatively and to develop a rich and satisfactory life of fantasy.
As the pleasure activities (e.g. discovering written words in magazines, billboards, supermarkets, etc.) intensify, reading becomes more and more significant and stimulating. The word read in different places preserves and conserves happy experiences related to the objects they signify. The baby’s mental activity and him/her internal world expand and multiply. Playing with words continues within the child’s realm; and soon the baby starts to teach words to others!
Everything that has been said becomes clearer when we study Piaget’s concept of representation. To him, representation is what is outside the immediate perception field. The word ‘dog’ read by the baby on the flashcard represents the animal (object) out of his/her reach at the moment in which s/he reads, leading him/her to abstract thought. This is stimulating but not impossible to be understood by those who study child development; it is known that when the baby hears a word, the same procedure occurs: s/he “remembers” the dog.
What’s the difference?
S/he thinks of the dog from the moment s/he reads the word with a symbolic reference point – to be able to identify a word is a resource that will help him/her a lot in the culture in which s/he’s immersed. S/he acquires an important additional tool when she finds the concept ‘dog’, sees the dog, hears the word ‘dog’, and reads the word ‘dog’; s/he practices the object’s representation in different ways. The representation, in its broadest sense, is identical to thought. It includes all the baby has experienced in the past (conservation) and all s/he will imagine in the future (abstraction).
On the other hand, in a stricter sense, the representation refers to a specific image, a copy of reality. To teach a baby to read is to teach him/her to make copies of reality; it is to prepare him/her to the twenty-first century. Since we know that the degree of abstraction possible at any stage in a child’s life depends on the degree of experience of each one, the amount of understanding the baby demonstrates has a chance to increase once s/he is in contact with symbols, having the opportunity to practice abstraction. If the baby knows the object, s/he identifies its symbol (s/he reads); the affirmation of all this leads him/her to a better understanding of the world. Therefore, when s/he reads, s/he speaks more rapidly as well.
The word read is a mental scheme. If the word is ‘mother’, the baby distinguishes the mother by her voice, her appearance, her smile… and still has one more reference point: the written word. S/he learns by analogy of known concepts. And that is why is possible for babies to read.
Dr. Eliane Leao is a native of Brazil, South America. She has a
background in Education from Purdue University (Masters) and a PhD in the
Department of Educational Psychology from the State University of Campinas
(UNICAMP)/Purdue University (Ph.D.). Dr. Leao has also three Bachelor’s
degrees, one in Piano, another in Musical Education, and a third in Voice. Dr.
Leao is currently a professor of Music Education and Music Therapy
conducting research on the influence of Music in Early Childhood Learning.
Her ‘babies’ have grown to become productive members of their
communities. Dr. Leao hopes that the trials and successes of her family may
inspire and convince other parents to stimulate their children during early
childhood so that they may enjoy a rich, stimulating, integrated, and happy
life always.
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