Cognitive functions of language in the preschool years.

Abstract

In this review, the hypothesis was advanced that language influences the young child's thinking and behavior at an age earlier than that commonly reported. Consideration was given to three areas: concept formation, communication, and problem solving. Prelinguistic mastery in these functions is available through sensorimotor skills. Such skills, however, are geared to visual spatial information. In the absence of this information or in the presence of other forms of information, the child begins to employ his verbal system. Because most experimental paradigms are based on visual spatial cues, it was proposed that they are not well suited for tapping the linguistic functions available to the young child. Language development in the young child appears to be marked by a schism between structure and function. Thus, from the normative studies of the 1930s (McCarthy, 1954), we have clear evidence that by three to four years of age the child has acquired an extensive language repertoire; from the more recent psycholinguistic research based on transformatio nal grammar (Brown & Bellugi, 1964; Chomsky, 1957; Lenneberg, 1967), we know further that this verbalization is based not on simple associational learning but rather on the grasp of a complex set of rules underlying the structure of language. Difficulties have been encountered, however, in showing that the child's language has any appreciable effect on his thinking or behavior before the period of five to seven years (Conrad, 1971; Flavell, 1970; Kendler, 1972; White, 1965). This situation is typically summarized as follows: