Word: bruner
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Faltering Language. As analyzed by Bruner, these somewhat predictable results yield some provocative insights into the nature of the intellect. No one teaches a baby the value of two-handedness. Yet at a certain stage in its development, the baby discovers this by itself. To Bruner, this is as if the knowledge were already there. In all of his experiments, he has repeatedly been struck by the same suspicion: that intention (the will to do something) precedes skill (the ability...
...conviction of some modern linguists that because man is the only animal that speaks, he must therefore be the only animal with an inherent capacity to do so. Like a bud, this marvelous ability lies fallow in the newborn, awaiting only the right influence to release it. To Bruner, the infant hand speaks a kind of faltering language at birth, and incrementally exhibits its innate competence-just as the neuromuscular system involved in speech, by conquering its inexperience, ultimately produces syntax and fluency. Another experiment has helped persuade Bruner of certain parallels between the acquisition of muscular competence...
This is almost exactly the way man masters language: first by articulating the meaningful bits of sound that linguists call phonemes, next by linking these bits into words, and finally by making whole sentences. If this were the result of a learning process, argues Bruner, man's grasp would be forever limited by what he has learned to reach. Yet the fact is that the gift of language carries with it the capacity to braid words into sentences that have never been spoken before. Any normal child...
Cognition Growth. Bruner's work with babies grew out of earlier studies with children between the ages of three and twelve. He was impressed by the competence of three-year-olds, decided to look at the earliest stages of intelligent being-"what was the nature of infancy, what could we say about how infancy prepares a child for this life and culture?" His experiments seem to challenge the prevailing psychological theories that say, in effect, that the baby climbs toward intellectual maturity from a very humble level, along a series of predetermined steps...
...implications of Bruner's experiments are far-reaching. If he is able to demonstrate the innate intelligence of the infant, it may remind educators of the root meaning of their profession, which is to educe, or lead out, rather than to impose learning. Bruner himself concedes that it is far too early for conclusions. His first tiny subjects, advertised for in the Harvard Crimson, arrived at the center only last spring. "It is astonishing how little we, in an advanced technological society, know about these matters," Bruner has said. He is even more astonished by how much there...