katherineNelson

Catherine Nelson, in her Study of Language in Cognitive Development, spoke of "co-construction" of meaning from the individual child, building on their own internal mechanisms and experiences interacting with new experiences and environments to construct meaning to words. Thus, "mom" moves from all women to the nurturing woman who feeds and cares for the infant to all nurturing women to women who are connected with other children (his mom). She contends that language and knowledge are interrelated, meaning coming from both knowledge (experience, perception, etc..) and language used to express that knowledge. (from Virginia Yonkers in [|connectivism conference discussion thread])

reference: "[|Language in Cognitive Development: Emergence of the Mediated Mind]" by Katherine Nelson (online Google books)

"... it is surprising how little attention is paid to language in current psychological theories of cognitive development ... (blames Piaget for this) ... language is recognised as an important communicative tool that children acquire and through which thoughts are expressed, but not something that affects basic cognitive functions or cognitive change ... (blames input output cognitivist model for that) " (pp. 3-4)

[|review (amazon)]: "For linguists, the main value of the book lies perhaps not in the originality of its view on language acquisition as a process of collaborative construction of culture-specific concepts and categories through which the child becomes a member of a culture and a social group, but more in the convincing way this view is substantiated with a wealth of interesting data which no one interested in language acquisition can afford to ignore." Language