Towards a cognitive-environmental theory of language acquisition

Main Article Content

Jean A. Rondal
Carlos Rodríguez Springall

Abstract

Every comprehensive analysis of language acquisition should account for three different issues and specify their relationships: 1) the changing environment to which children are exposed during their development, 2) the characteristics of cognitive processes used by children to analyse the adults’ language and the inferences from which the y de­rive gramatical rules, and 3) children ‘s comprehension and production behavior at different moments of language development.

These paper deals primarily with the first issue, and to a lesser extent with the second. The effects of vocabulary and morpitosyntactic simplification and adaptation of the 

language used by parents when addressing children are discussed. It is suggested that language is taught under such conditions in an implicit ,manner.

Finally, some cognitive processes necessary for language development in children are identfied, and some research strategies for the study of such processes are suggested.

 

Article Details

How to Cite
Rondal, J. A., & Rodríguez Springall, C. (2011). Towards a cognitive-environmental theory of language acquisition. Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis, 11(1 y 2), 55–68. https://doi.org/10.5514/rmac.v11.i1 y 2.25770