Relations between Semantic and Cognitive Development in the One-Word Stage: The Specificity Hypothesis

Abstract

GOPNIK, ALISON, and MELTZOFF, ANDREW N. Relations between Semantic and Cognitive Development in the One-Word Stage: The Specificity Hypothesis. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 1040-1053. We develop a which we call the specificity hypothesis, concerning the interrelation between early linguistic and cognitive development. This hypothesis states that there are specific relations between particular linguistic and particular cognitive developments in the 1-word period. It suggests that the acquisition of words encoding disappearance is related to the development of the object concept, while the acquisition of words encoding success and failure is related to the development of means-ends understanding. The results of a longitudinal study of 19 children confirm this specificity hypothesis. The results show that children acquired disappearance words within a few weeks of their solution of a complex object-permanence task involving invisible displacements and acquired success/failure words within a few weeks of their solution of complex means-end tasks. The cross-relations did not hold; that is, there were no similarly close relations between disappearance words and the means-ends tasks or between success/failure words and the object-permanence tasks. These findings show that there are at least 2 specific relations between semantic and conceptual development in the 1-word stage.