The Development of Cognitive Flexibility and Language Abilities
Section snippets
PAST AND CURRENT STUDIES OF FLEXIBLE COGNITION
Before defining flexible cognition it is useful to survey past ideas and treatments of flexibility. It is notable that no historical approach considered the development of flexible cognition, which has been studied in earnest only since the 1990s. Also, historical approaches have not considered how language reflects or facilitates flexible cognition. Though a full historical review is beyond the current scope, four influential historical traditions are summarized here, with a focus on the
Developing Toward … ? Adults’ Flexible Cognitive Processing of Meanings and Messages
To understand children’s developing flexibility in language processing and production, we need to understand the mature phenotype: adults’ flexible processing and production of messages and meanings. In this section, I briefly summarize evidence of flexible cognition in the language of neurologically intact adults.
Toward a Model of Flexible Representation in Language Processing
Having defined flexible cognition and discussed its ecological role in early childhood, and sketched its manifestations in adult language, we can consider evidence of children’s flexible cognition. To render such evidence interpretable, though, it will be helpful to have a theoretical framework that can encompass children’s and adults’ flexible cognitive processes in language comprehension and production. I will therefore briefly digress to sketch such a framework. Though it cannot yet yield
Children’s Flexible Thinking About Meanings and Messages
Young children are believed to be qualitatively less cognitively flexible than are older children and adults. In this section, I explore that claim with regard to children’s language. A guiding concern is how children’s language is flexible or inflexible. Normal language errors—retrieving the wrong word, say, or misconstruing an idiom—can reveal developmental limitations of flexibility that recur with some types of brain injuries (Brownell & Martino, 1998; Cohen & Dehaene, 1998; Grattan &
Questions and Conclusions
Available data on children’s flexible language processing contradict outdated and simplistic views of its development. These data also highlight difficult questions. Outlining the most pressing of these is important for guiding future empirical efforts. These are summarized overleaf.
Acknowledgements
Preparation of this chapter was supported by NSF award BCS-0092027. Address correspondences to the author at [email protected].
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