Journal o f PsychoIinguistic Research, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1978

Book Review: Studies in the Cognitive Basis of Language Development

Studies in the Cognitive Basis of Language Development. By Harry Beilin. Academic Press, New York, 1975, 420 pp., $22.50.

The issue of the relation between language and cognition has been around for several decades, but it has attracted particular attention in recent years as psycholinguists have attempted to reconcile the divergent positions of Chomsky and Piaget. Unfortunately, much of the discussion on this point typically takes place on entirely theoretical grounds, so that headway infrequently results. This is far from true for this book by Harry Beilin, however, which is an extremely comprehensive and detailed examination of linguistic and cognitive development in children between the ages of 2 and 10. Coming from an initially Piagetian perspective, Beilin has provided us with one of the more valuable books to date on this topic. Indeed, I am prepared to compare it favorably with Piaget (1962) and Ferreiro (1971) in importance, and it surpasses the latter in terms of the scope of its topics and its extensive discussion and review of all of the relevant literature.

Beilin treats this issue by providing discussion of highly detailed experiments on four specific linguistic constructions; these are the development of (1)passive sentences, (2)temporal reference, (3)the number lexicon and number agreement, and lastly (4)logical and linguistic connectives. These sections are preceded by an extremely brief introduction, and followed by a much longer and highly important summary chapter which attempts to pull all of the studies together. The individual chapters are as follows: "Chapter 1. Linguistic Theory and Its Psychologicai Significance" (5 pages!); "Chapter 2. The Passive: Linguistic and Psychological Theory" (coauthored with Hinda Sack); "Chapter 3. Experiments on the Passive"; "Chapter 4. Temporal Reference and Development of the Conception of

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Time"; "Chapter 5. Development of the Number Lexicon and Number Agreement"; "Chapter 6. Connectives: Logical, Linguistics, and Psychological Theory" (coauthored with Barbara Lust, as are Chapters 7 and 8); "Chapter 7. A Study of the Development of Logical and Linguistic Connectives: Linguistic Data"; "Chapter 8. A Study of the Development of Logical and Linguistic Connectives: Cognitive Data and Summary"; and "Chapter 9. The Cognitive Basis of Language Development." The four major areas under investigation vary in the degree of treatment. The development of time and the development of number get the shortest discussion, with a single chapter on each. The analysis of logical and linguistic connectives receives by far the greatest concentration, with nearly a third of the book on this topic alone.

The book is not one which lends itself easily to a cover-to-cover reading. In fact, the attempt to do this can result in immersion in detailed discussion of specific methodological points and even possible uncertainty as to the direction of the work. Because of this, a more reasonable approach would be to read the last chapter first to get an overview of the scope of the book and its findings. Having done this, one could go to that particular area of the four studies which is of the most interest. Those who are particularly interested in the topic will, of course, want to read the entire work. The last chapter, however, is recommended to everyone with a general interest in language and cognition.

The very first paragraph of the book, the one which begins the Preface, presents in quite straightforward fashion the major conclusion of the studies:

In this volume we first report on a series of studies that delineate the influence of cognition on language development . . . . Although that influence is shown to be great, there, nevertheless, exists considerable autonomy in tile linguistic system that is not accounted for directly by the development of cognitive structure. The principal common denominator between language and cognitive development is logical structure that defines the fundamental properties of both systems. (p. ix)

The subsequent body of the book is research presented to substantiate this claim. This is done by showing that cognitive milestones can account for only some of the linguistic developments that children go through.

Each of the four major sections has the same general organization. Basically, Berlin introduces his own work in each case with three specific discussions of the construction under study: (1)a discussion of linguistic theories proposed for that construction, (2)a discussion of proposed psychological theories, and (3) a review of relevant literature. These introductions of each topic are enjoyably thorough and valuable in their own right. They include not only research in English but also papers written in French by Piagetian researchers, e.g., Sinclair and Ferreiro (1970) on passives. While the comprehensive survey of psychological theory and studies is not

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surprising given Beilin's background in psychology, it is clear that Beilin is also well read in the relevant linguistic literature. Those readers who may not wish to go through all the details of Beilin's experiments will nonetheless find these introductions well worthwhile. On the topics of t h e development of passive sentences and the development of linguistic and logical connectives, the introductions involve entire chapters (Chapters 2 and 6, respectively).

The central part of each section is Beilin's report on experiments conducted by himself and his students. These are very carefully described and reported, and the reader will need to refer to the book itself to acquire a thorough appreciation of the scope of these studies. The general procedure is to present both linguistic and cognitive tasks to the children so that a comparison of abilities can be made. For example, one of the two experiments reported for passives tested for linguistic ability on passive sentences and also cognitive ability on tasks involving reversibility. Within each, several specific tasks were used. For linguistic skills, different studies selected among several possible tasks. In the experiment on number agreement, children had to imitate, show comprehension through acting out sentences, and also make judgments of grammaticality and synonymy. The tasks varied, of course, according to the major focus of the investigation. All studies were cross-sectional, with subjects ranging from as young as 2 years old to as old as 11. (Testing of adults was also ocdasionally done.) Here are specific figures regarding subjects in the experiments: development of passive sentences-two experiments, both using four age groups, nursery, kindergarten, first and second graders, 86 and 64 subjects, respectively; development of temporal reference- five age groups from 4 years old to 11 years old, 130 subjects; development of number lexicon-five age groups, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 years old, 387 subjects; development of number agreement-five age groups, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 years old, 90 subjects; the development of linguistic and logical connectives-four age groups from 2 years old to 10 years old, 64 subjects. The results of all studies are provided in detail, comprising numerous tables and statistical tendencies.

The last general feature of the organization of the major sections is the discussion that ends each. For each experiment, Beilin uses the discussion to reduce all o f the results to the most important ones, and presents a brief summary of these, related to the major points mentioned in the introduction. Often, the results are interpreted in terms of stages of development in a very Piagetian fashion. These discussions are highly effective and will serve the selective reader quite well.

The first major topic of the book, the development of passives, spans two chapters. The first of these chapters is devoted to introducing theoretical interpretations and review of previous studies. The second chapter describes

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two experiments conducted to compare linguistic skills with passives to the cognitive skill of reversibility. The linguistic tasks here as well as elsewhere in the book are quite diverse and provide invaluable information on how children process language. Passives were examined in young children from nursery school through second grade with the following tasks: imitation (of both simple sentences and pairs of sentences); comprehension, by picking the one of two pictures which matches a sentence read to the child and by enacting the sentence read through object manipulation; and production, by having the child see an action done by two dolls and then explain it with a sentence beginning with the object noun. The child's ability to judge the synonymy of sentence pairs was also examined, partially in the first experiment and more extensively in the second. The cognitive tasks were typical Piagetian experiments, including conservation of quantity, seriation, and classification. They were designed to place subjects into three groups: (1) those who did not demonstrate operational reversibility, (2)those in a transitional state with one-way mapping, and (3) those who had acquired reversibility.

The results showed a high correlation between reversibility performance and language performance. A low reversibility level typically occurs with poor language performance (for comprehension and production), and high reversibility indicates good language performance. Beilin states, however, that

The evidence does not point to a perfect one-to-one cognitive-linguistic mapping, because being at a low reversibility level did not necessarily preclude a subject from demonstrating adequate linguistic performance, nor did a high reversibility level ensure adequate linguistic performance. A direct relation between cognitive and linguistic processes in respect to knowledge of voice, therefore, cannot be maintained, although there is good evidence for an indirect relationship. (p. 364)

Regarding judgments of synonymy, Berlin found that comprehension of passives preceded this ability, the latter appearing around age 7. Berlin suggests that this may indicate the development of new cognitive functions that enable the child to reflect on his linguistic performance. If so, certainly this result enhances the claim for a relation between linguistic and cognitive performance.

The next major topic concerns the development of temporal reference and the conception of time. The format for this chapter differs from the other three major topics in the following way. After discussing the linguistic and psychological theories behind this topic, Berlin includes the report of his own research as part of a general survey of the literature. The research reported is actually the dissertation of one of his students (Weil, 1970). The discussion of this study is followed by a review of other research done on this topic by Cromer (1971), Ferreiro (1971), and Clark (1971). As in the research

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on passives, Weil (1970) attempted to compare linguistic and cognitive abilities of young children (from ages 4 to 11) by administering a series of tasks in both areas. The linguistic tasks were designed to reveal knowledge on three aspects: (1)time syntax, i.e., the use of the tenses past, future, progressive, perfect, conditional; (2) time lexicon, such as first and last; and (3) connectives before and after. (The last items have been studied extensively in the studies mentioned above as well as several others.) The hypothesis was that cognitive reversibility would be required for the acquisition of temporal reference. As in the work on the passives, there were various substantive observations on the development of the linguistic expression of time. Regarding the relation between linguistic and cognitive performance, Weft found that it was closest on the use of the connectives before and after. It was less clear on the tenses, a result that leads to a good deal of discussion and speculation on Beilin's part. As with passives, Beilin focuses on the discrepancies to conclude a close but not one-to-one relation between language and cognition.

Another interesting aspect of Weil's study concerns a time-concept training experiment that was conducted to teach subjects the concepts of more or less time through verbal instruction. The results showed that only 20% of the first and second graders improved, whereas essentially all the ninth to eleventh graders did. Beilin uses this result to discuss whether or not language may assist in cognitive growth. The Piagetian position on this which has been highly discussed and criticized in the literature is that language has a minimal role in cognitive growth. Beilin accepts this for younger children, but allows for the possibility of more vital role of language as the child approaches the period of formal operations. He states that it is not likely to occur prior to the ages of 10-12.

The other two major topics, the development of number lexicon and number agreement and the development of logical and linguistic connectives, provide results that are interpreted in a way that is similar to that already described above. That is, Beilin finds in each results that indicate a substantial but not one-to-one relation between language and cognition where cognitive developments in concrete operations are necessary for certain linguistic advances. This suggests that linguistic structure, to some extent, is independent from cognitive structure.

While these studies were all done with children 4 years and up, there is some recent evidence that this finding also is valid for earlier linguistic growth. Some recent investigators (e.g., Bloom, 1973) have suggested that representational ability, achieved around 1,6-2,0, is necessary for syntactic development. The evidence from most children acquiring language (el. review

260 Book Rev~w

in Ingram, 1977) appears to support this in a very general way. In Ingram (1978), however, I observed a young child who began using multiword utterances in stage 5 of sensorimotor development and showed rapid and elaborate syntactic development afterward. This child was at least 3 months syntactically ahead of the rate most "average" children seemed to follow. The functions of her utterances, however, were commensurate with those of her peers, although the latter had much less syntax. The conclusion I drew from this child's development was that representational ability does appear to correlate highly with syntactic development, but that this child's language shows that syntactic structure may have a certain degree of independence.

Besides establishing the fact that language may have specific characteristics of its own, Beilin cites Piaget's introduction to Ferreiro (1971), which shows that this is also Piaget's position on this issue. Beilin does not stop there, however, but also attempts to explain the nature of this structure. What follows is the major theoretical conclusion of the book:

The conception of the relationship between cognition, logic, and language that seems most consistent with the data is one that posits an abstract cognitive system of structures whose basic relations and functions are realized in systems of thought (logical and otherwise) and in language, each system with properties independent of the other. The fundamental relations, then, between these systems are not direct but are mediated through a common abstract system of relations and structures. (pp. 361-362)

Whether Beilin has established this, however, is open to question. He has, nonetheless, contributed a substantial body of empirical findings on these issues, as well as provided some challenging proposals for future discussion.

REFERENCES

Bloom, L. (1973). One Word at a Time: The Use o f Single-Word Utterances Before Syntax, Mouton, The Hagl~e.

Clark, E. V. (1971). On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 10:266-275.

Cromer, R. F. (1971). The development of the ability to decenter in time. Br. J. PsychoL 62:353-365.

Ferreiro, E. (1971). Les Relations Temporelles clans le Langage de l'Enfant, Librairie Droz, Geneva.

Ingrain, D. (1977). Sensori-motor intelligence and language development. In Lock, A. (Ed.), Action, Gesture, and Symbol, Academic Press, New York.

Ingram, D. (1978). Syntax during the sensorimotor period. Unpublished manuscript. Piaget, J. (1962). Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. Norton, New York. (original

edition, La Formation du Symbole, 1946). Sinclair, H., and Perreiro, E. (1970). Comprdhension, production, et r~p~tition des

phrases au mode passif. Arch. Psychol. 40(160): 1-42.

Book Review 261

Well, J. (1970). The relationship between time conceptualization and time language in young children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York.

David Ingrarn Department of Linguistics

University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia