From meta-processes to conscious access: Evidence from children's metalinguistic and repair data

Abstract

This paper explores possible relations obtaining between unconscious meta-processes and those available to conscious access and verbal statement. It is argued that the issue of conscious access must be conceptualized within a developmental perspective, in order to understand its function in human cognition. A theoretical framework is specified, in the form of a recurrent 3-phase model (differentiated from stage models), which stresses the distinction between implicitly defined representations and progressive representational explicitation at several levels of processing, culminating in the possibility of conscious access. The role of conscious access, as well as that of negative and positive feedback, are discussed in the light of a distinction drawn between models of developmental sequence and models of information processing flow in real time. Prominence is given to a success-based model of representational change as opposed to a failure-based model of behavioural change. The data consist of a detailed comparison of children's metalinguistic responses and spontaneous repairs. It is argued that metalinguistic awareness has little or no role to play in language acquisition macrodevelopmentally, a minor role to play in linguistic processing in real time, but that verbally encoded representations have an essential role to play in overall macrodevelopment. The implications of the model are briefly examined with respect to the representational status of the fluent language of some children with low IQ and that of fluent adult speakers of a non-native language. Consideration is given to the fact that some aspects of language, but not others, are available to conscious access. This leads to speculations with respect to the plausibility of considering modularity as a product of some aspects of development, rather than restricting modularity solely to innate givens.