Tales from a Psychology Class

Today our professor shared a story with us about one of his daughters from when she was three. He was in the middle of a four month stint in China, working on research. One day his wife called to say that their daughter was hallucinating. She told him the daughter was saying that she heard voices in her head. She was being told what to do and what to think about. My professor said he was slightly worried as she was pretty young and shouldn't be having those kinds of problems. It never became an issue and all went along with the "voices" not being talked about as much anymore. After the time in China was complete, my professor returned home. He decided to talk to his daughter about the voices. He asked if she heard a voice like mommy's or daddy's; she said it was like mommy's. Then he asked if it was like mommy or like a little girl; she said it was like a little girl. He asked if she heard a lot of voices or just one; she only heard one voice. He then asked if the voice was like her's or someone else's; it was like her voice. The daughter then said, "it is my voice!" This was how she developed an understanding of thinking. I thought this was a neat developmental account of learning to think. Does language start inside of our minds or outside of us through our interaction with others? Babies learn the language of their parents, which lends to the source of language being socially learned. I don't think we can definitively say that language is innately or socially learned, as an all inclusive determination. There are biological functions that need to be working for language to develop, but a lot of it is social as well. Because so much of our learning is from an outside-in approach, it makes sense that a child might have an experience like this when they begin to think silently. When children learn to read, they sound things out. The process of hearing themselves say the sounds helps them organize those sounds as words, which are labels for things in the environment. I think it is all quite interesting. That's all. What? I don't have anything profound to say. I was just relating some thoughts. Go watch TV.