Preschoolers linguistic-cognitive abilities and verbal production and interaction

Abstract

SUMMARY From 3 to 6 the child acquires language and communication skills approaching those of adult performance. Theoretical hypotheses have been developed as to the way the child acquires verbal ability. The most prominent current theory is the social-communicative approach, according to which if the child is to acquire language it is necessary to interact with his/her environment. Based on a synthesis of social-communicative and sociolinguistic approach for language development, a research was conducted on a sample of 172 preschoolers. Our aim was to explore differentiations between abilities and language performance in an attempt to make suggestions for their preschool education. Linguistic-cognitive abilities were found to have no direct relation with verbal interaction and production. Three different patterns of language ability and performance were found corresponding to the three different sociocultural groups (urban area, working area, rural area) we have explored.