Chapter 3
Cognitive Development: Building a Foundation for Language
Chapter Overview
In this chapter, the relationship between intellectual development and language development is addressed. Since
language is a means by which people express what they are thinking, the relationship between cognition and
language is certainly connected, but the precise relationship has been the subject of debate throughout the ages. This
Learning Outcomes
• Define concepts and behaviors central to intellectual functioning and development in Piaget’s theory, including
distancing, object permanence, causality, means/ends, play, and communication.
• Explain the tents of Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development and the dynamic systems theory and contrast
Key Terms and Concepts
• Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, p. 64
• Jean Piaget, p. 64
• Adaptations, p. 64
• Organization, p. 64
• Schema, p. 65
• Perception, p. 67
• Distancing, p. 68
• Representation, p. 68
• Object permanence, p. 69
• Causality, p. 69
• Means/Ends, p. 70
• Cognitive abilities in the sensorimotor stage (Table 3.5), p. 84
• Summary of language events in the sensorimotor stage (Table 3.6), p. 86
• Lev Vygotsky, p. 89
• Private speech, p. 90
• Egocentric speech, p. 91
• Working memory, p. 104
• Theory of mind, p. 106-107
• Limited capacity hypothesis, p. 109
• Subtractive bilingual environment, p. 109
• Additive bilingual environment, p. 109
Points of Emphasis
1. Howard Gardner developed his theory of multiple intelligences to recognize that humans have several types of
2. Jean Piaget came to understand that many actions of living creatures are adaptations to their environments and
that these actions help creatures organize their environments.
3. Piaget described four stages of intellectual development from birth through late adolescence: sensorimotor
4. The six substages of the sensorimotor stage prepare children for the challenges and expressive opportunities
inherent in speech and language development.
a. We need to consider how perception works with cognition in helping establish a foundation for language.
Perception refers to the processes by which the person selects, organizes, integrates and interprets sensory
stimuli.
i. Distancing is a basic perceptual principle affecting those cognitive changes that apparently precede
and lay the foundation for language acquisition. This principle allows children to relate to stimuli from
a greater and greater distance and ultimately moves the child’s experience with her environment from
her hands and mouth to her brain.
ii. Language represents the ultimate perceptual distance. The ability to use words in place of things is
called representation.
5. Piaget did not have access to modern research methodologies, so his theories were based on observations.
Today’s researchers have tried to verify Piaget’s observations about what happens during the sensorimotor stage
and when.
a. There is consensus that Piaget’s general time frame for the maturity of cognitive abilities is, for the most
part, on target.
6. Table 3.6 on p. 86 contains a brief summary of key events of cognitive development that are related, or appear
to be related, to language development.
7. Piaget’s higher cognitive stages include continued cognitive attainments with relationships to language. Clues to
8. Whereas Piaget believed that the child operates independently to construct knowledge through her actions on
the environment, especially during the early stages of cognitive development, Vygotsky was convinced that the
9. Vygotsky’s view of intellectual development is generally consistent with the dominant view of language
development today, the social interactionist view.
10. Vygotsky believes that human children are born with fundamental cognitive and perceptual abilities, including
capacities for memory and attending. The nature of cognitive development changes radically, however, as soon
as the child can mentally represent the environmental phenomena he is experiencing.
a. This mental representation includes, as a primary component, language.
11. Vygotsky believed that children learn how to do things, and they learn how to process their thoughts in ways
that appropriately reflect the culture in which they live, by interacting with adults who already know how things
12. According to the dynamic systems theory, the uniqueness of each child and his environment is particularly
important in development of cognition. The real-time interactions of all the components of the child and his
13. Perception refers to the processes by which a person selects, organizes, integrates and interprets the sensory
stimuli received. Perception cannot be completely separated from cognition.
a. Children perceive sensory information and store and use those characteristics, such as shape, when
responding to new experiences.
b. Visual and tactile stimuli play a great role in establishing the bond between adult and child.
child/caregiver relationship.
a) Research has shown that as infants, children with autism frequently show disturbances of visual
attention and gaze patterning.
c. Children seem to be especially attracted to sound, especially the human voice and speech. Research shows
that infants show a greater interest in human speech than in other noises.
d. Newborn infants have significant perceptual abilities, including the ability to distinguish between speech
14. Executive functions refer to a set of control processes in the human brain that allow us to maintain attention,
inhibit irrelevant associations and use working memory. Interrelationships between executive functions,
language and academic skills are complex and not well understood, but associations have been made between
executive functions and social competence, moral conduct, school readiness and theory of mind.
a. Attention and memory co-occur in any learning situation and language is highly associated with attention
and working memory.
i. Difficulties in controlled attention and working memory result in poor performance when attention
must be divided.
b. Research about the relationship between bilingual experience and executive function indicates that
bilingual children are more advanced in their ability to focus attention in the presence of competing
information.
c. The development of executive function and language have been associated with advances in theory of
mind.
i. There is some evidence that bilingual speakers have advanced theory of mind in comparison to
monolingual preschoolers.
d. Research suggests that bilingualism does not adversely affect cognitive development but, in fact,
strengthens it. Bilingual children perform better than monolingual children on a number of cognitive tasks,
including selective attention, forming concepts and reasoning analytically. In addition, children who speak
two or more language are more cognitively agile or flexible than children who speak just one language.
e. There is disagreement about what might happen in the earliest phases of development if the child is
exposed to two or more languages.
Discussion Topics
• What does the principle of distancing contribute to our understanding of cognitive and language development?
• Discuss the role of visual perception and auditory perception in the acquisition of knowledge and language.
How does the absence of one or both of these modalities affect the way and rate at which knowledge and
language are acquired?
• How have recent advances in research methodologies impacted our interpretations of the cognitive theories of
Piaget and Vygotsky?
• Why do some critics of Piaget’s theory believe that the stage concept of cognitive development is no longer
viable? Why do others believe that the stage concept has value and should be retained in some form?
• Compare and contrast the cognitive theories of Piaget and Vygotsky in light of the social interactionist view of
language development.
• What does recent research suggest about Piaget’s predictions regarding the emergence of object permanence
and mental representations? Why is there such a disparity between Piaget’s predictions and empirical
evidence?
• What are two important executive functions that allow children to efficiently and effectively learn information
Suggested Activities
• Take a self-quiz for multiple intelligences to discover your most prominent forms of intelligence. Write a
paragraph about your three highest scoring and one least scoring types of intelligence as they apply specifically
to yourself. What did you find out about your strengths and weaknesses? Dow did you develop these strengths?
How have your strengths and weaknesses influenced your life? Did you learn anything new?
• Develop tasks designed to determine if a child exhibits the following concepts and behaviors: object
Assignment Suggestions
• Video Example 3.1 (p. 77): Notice in the video that this nine-month-old child is practicing his emerging ability
to stack rings onto the stack. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned when he misses, but he is certainly diligent
in his focus on the objects and completion of the task. What sensory motor stage do you think best fits this
child?
• Video Reflection 3.1 (p. 80): Readers may watch the video of a child who is in sensorimotor stage 5, then
answer the question.
• Video Reflection 3.2 (p. 93): Readers may watch the video to observe a teacher using the zone of proximal
development to guide students, then answer the question.
• Readers may assess their understanding by completing these brief, self-check quizzes:
o 3.1 (p. 89): concepts and behaviors central to cognitive development and the sensorimotor stages of
cognitive development
o 3.2 (p. 96): Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development
o 3.3 (p. 108): the relationship between cognition and perception
o 3.4 (p. 111): the role of executive functioning in cognition and the relationships between cognition,
language, and literacy
• Chapter Review 3.1 (p. 112)
Websites to Explore
• Howard Gardner’s professional website discusses his theory of multiple intelligences, as well as other projects
he is addressing.
• The website Surfaquarium was developed by an education consultant and professional, Walter McKenzie, Jr.,
and addresses educational aspects of multiple intelligences and a survey to determine an individual’s strengths
according to the theory of multiple intelligences.
• The page titled “Preoperational Stage” on the website Simply Psychology offers information on research tasks
completed with children to examine concepts outlined by Piaget, such as the “three mountains task.”
• This article discusses shape bias as it occurs in a larger perspective. Elman, J. L. (2008). The shape bias: an
important piece in a bigger puzzle. Developmental Science, 11(2), 219–222. doi:10.1111/j.1467–
7687.2007.00669.x.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00668.x.
• The McGurk effect is a way to observe the way humans use both auditory and visual information to determine
speech sounds. It can easily be found via a website search.