Qualitative Changes in Children's Cognition Following the Onset of Language Use

We organize time in an orderly manner through different cycles (hours, days, weeks, months, and years), forming a kind of social contract which, to some extent, serves to make individuals' "behavior" predictable and organizable. An individual's life is composed of activities involving particular behaviors. Yet this behavioral organization at the level of macro-social order rests upon the formation of the individual's own system of behavioral organization.

Vygotsky's research consistently maintained a close focus on human "behavior." In his theory of play, he argued that it is in play that humans first find the motivation and meaning for "action." Every "behavior" is grounded in the operation of "psychological functions," and the interactions among different psychological functions shape each person's distinct "dynamic system of behavior." Therefore, when we seek to understand human "behavior," we should first understand the psychological functions behind it. Drawing on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, this article explores how the use of language shapes the uniqueness of human "psychological functions," taking perception and attention as examples.

One part of children's perception is visual perception. Binet's research found that when children aged two and older children were asked to observe the same picture and describe what they saw, the two-year-olds could only name the main object in the picture, such as a dog or a car, whereas the older children could say "the dog is chasing the ball," that is, they could describe the picture as a whole. Binet therefore held that children's visual perception develops from the "part" to the "whole."

Vygotsky's experiments, however, challenged this view. He asked children to describe their observations not through "language" but through "body language." The results showed that even two-year-olds demonstrated, through body language, that they had perceived the picture as a whole, but their level of language development did not allow them to articulate their holistic visual perception. From this, Vygotsky concluded that human perception is initially fused, that is, the environment is perceived as a whole rather than with attention confined to its parts. On the contrary, it is precisely when the child produces the "first word" and begins to "label" objects that the child begins to learn to attend to specific objects. For instance, when a child begins to use the word "car," he becomes able to notice the element "car" within a complex environment. Likewise, when a child can understand the instruction "find the apple," even if there are many distractors in his "visual field," he can regulate his perception by means of the word "apple" and carry out the designated behavior. That is, language enables the child to regulate attention in the spatial dimension. Animals, by contrast, cannot do this; their behavior can only be controlled by the present "visual field."

The emergence of this behavior reflects how language, as a mediator, shapes the distinctively human "psychological functions": human ways of perceiving are no longer like those of animals, which can perceive only the physical properties of things, but come to carry historical and cultural meaning. For example, upon seeing a circle and a "hand," what we perceive is a "clock," not merely the shapes themselves. The use of language thoroughly shapes our way of perceiving: through language we categorize and organize the world, allowing us to see a world endowed with sense and meaning. For example, through language we understand the functions of different public places, so when I enter an art museum, I automatically adjust my mode of perception and behavior, concentrating my attention on the works of art.

‍ ‍Our original mode of perception is integral, with all information perceived simultaneously. This is why children often notice more details: their brains have not yet been influenced by language to focus on "important information" or "partial information," but instead give relatively equal attention to different pieces of information, whereas the adult brain, under the influence of sociocultural factors, tends to capture "key information." Language, however, cannot process information simultaneously and integrally; through specific words and particular grammatical structures, language deconstructs reality. Therefore, when children begin to use language, their mode of perception begins to shift from the integral to the partial, and they begin to integrate these partial pieces of information according to a certain logic; that is, the brain begins to perceive information in an "analytic" manner.

Without language, human cognition could remain forever at the level of chaotic sensory stimulation; yet without perceptual input, language would be merely empty sound. Only when language and behavior converge does distinctively human intelligence truly emerge.

Language and signs are the "director" shaping our perception and behavior. This also explains why, when children's language function is not yet fully mature, they always rely on concrete physical actions to help them think, that is, they think while acting, and perception and action cannot be fully separated. Once the adult's language function has matured, by means of the mediation of language or signs we can first organize our thinking and only then take action. This renders our behavior no longer an immediate reactive response, but one possessing a certain rationality. This is also the psychological basis of the human capacity for "self-control." Moreover, compared with direct "trial-and-error through action," language can more efficiently help us continuously optimize our behavior and constantly adjust to new situations.

Thus, as children gradually become able to organize and control their behavior through "language," for example by formulating a plan through language to achieve a certain goal, language also reshapes the way children perceive time. This means that we can regulate our attention not only in the spatial dimension but also in the temporal dimension. We can attend to prior experience, which allows us to form memory (the more important the experience, the clearer the memory), and language continually processes and organizes these experiences, generating new meanings for them. At the same time, we can attend to future goals, which allows us to form intention. Language enables the human "timeline" to extend in both directions, toward the past and toward the future, allowing us to integrate past experience, present objective conditions, and future goals.

Humans live in a historical and cultural world of meaning and signs. Language has shaped this advanced and complex psychological functioning in humans, so that human behavior is driven by motives and meaning, especially social motives, endowing people with "voluntary activity," that is, "free will."