14.4: Cognitive Theory

Cognitive Theory and Language Acquisition

Cognitivists believe that language emerges within the context of other general cognitive abilities like memory, attention and problem solving. Once language does emerge it is usually within a specific sequence of stages that is universal in most children (Goodluck, 1991). The common progression through these language stages suggests that language is developing alongside other cognitive abilities. For example, infants and toddlers typically go through four stages of language acquisition:

1. Pre-language stage (3 to 10 months) where a child makes a lot of ‘cooing’ and ‘babbling’;
2. The holophrastic stage (12 to 18 months) where a child starts to comprehend a single unit of utterance like ‘milk’, ‘eat’, ‘dad’, ‘brother’;
3. Two-word stage (18 to 20 months) where a child, through a process of acquiring two nouns or a noun and a verb (noun + verb), begins pairing two words together such as ‘baby chair’, ‘mommy eat’, ‘cat bad’;
4. Telegraphic speech-stage (before 3 years old) defines a stage where a child puts some words together, even if the words are in the incorrect order. It has a similar meaning as a sentence, such as ‘cookie I want’, ‘toy me fall’, but is not a complete sentence.^[1]

Jean Piaget is famous for his four stages of cognitive development. He believed that children do not think like adults and so before they can begin to develop language they must first actively construct their own understanding of the world through their interactions with the environment. A child has to understand a concept before they can acquire the particular language which expresses that concept. For example, a child first becomes aware of a concept such as a ‘cat’ and only afterward do they acquire the words to convey that concept. Essentially it is impossible for a young child to voice concepts that are cognitively unknown to them; therefore, a child must first learn about their environment, then they can connect language to their prior experiences. ^[1]

Piaget's cognitive theory states that children's language reflects the development of their logical thinking and reasoning skills in stages. In this way, Piaget’s stages reflect the primary role cognitive development has over language development and also reflects how language develops overtime as a child’s cognitive development progresses through each stage. Infants and toddlers are included in the first two stages of Piaget’s theory. These stages are most often discussed in reference to cognitive development. Their connection with language development will be explained below. ^[1]

Sensory-Motor Stage (birth to 2 years).

Infants and toddlers are learning about the world through motor and sensory experiences. Initially, language is limited to infants because they must first experience the world and develop mental schemas as a way to represent these experiences. The first words that infants produce are strikingly consistent as they tend to talk about important people in their life (“mom,” “dad”), social routines (“hi,” “uh-oh”), animals (“dog,” “duck”), and foods (“milk,” “banana”) (Schneider, Yurovsky, & Frank, 2015; Tardif et al., 2008). From a cognitive theorist perspective, this makes sense because these first words represent schemas that infants have been able to consistently develop and reinforce, due to high frequency exposure. In other words, infants’ first words are for concepts they have strong cognitive representations for. ^[2]

Pre-Operational Stage (2 years to 7).

From 2 to 3 years of age, children's cognitive development makes rapid progress. The increase in quantity and complexity of mental schemas to represent and organize the world, allows toddlers to be able to quickly accommodate new words into their vocabulary. As Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) exemplifies, just within the third year of life (the first year under the preoperational stage) the vocabulary production abilities of toddlers rapidly increases. Children's language becomes "symbolic" allowing them to talk beyond the "here and now" and to talk about things such as the past, future, and feelings. Cognitivists would emphasize that the increase in vocabulary is driven first by an increase in cognitive development.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Productive vocabulary size by child’s age. (^[3])

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^[1] Psycholinguistics/Theories and Models of Language Acquisition. CC BY-SA 3.0 https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics/Theories_and_Models_of_Language_Acquisition#cite_note-A_Linguistic_Introduction-8

^[2] Braginsky, M., Yurovsky, D., Marchman, V. A., & Frank, M. C. (2019). Consistency and variability in children’s word learning across languages. Open Mind, 3, 52-67. CC by 4.0 https://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/doi/10.1162/opmi_a_00026/5378/Consistency-and-Variability-in-Children-s-Word

^[3] Image by Wordbank is licensed under CC by 4.0 http://wordbank.stanford.edu/analyses?name=vocab_norms