Metalinguistic Awareness and Cognitive Development

Abstract

In recent years it has been argued that there is an important relationship between the development of metalinguistic awareness and the development of cognitive abilities during childhood [e.g., Donaldson, 1978; Flavell, 1977; Hakes et al., 1980]. In particular, it is argued that the development of metalinguistic awareness in the preschool and early school years is closely related to the child’s developing ability to reflect upon the products of his own thought processes and apply his cognitive skills in a wide range of contexts. As this may have important implications for our understanding of young children and their education, it is our intention in this paper to consider some recent arguments concerning the relationships between metalinguistic awareness and cognitive development. In order to do so, however, it is first necessary to consider recent changes that have taken place in the study of cognitive development in children, particularly those related to the preschool and early school years.KeywordsEarly SchoolMetacognitive SkillTransitive InferenceLinguistic SignalMetacognitive AbilityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.