Time Parsing, Normal Language Acquisition, and Language-Related Developmental Disorders

Abstract

What are the necessary conditions for a child to acquire language? Put another way, what are the causes of delayed or deviant language development? In this chapter I suggest that one necessary condition for normal language acquisition is the normal development and function of biopsychological time processing mechanisms, or what I will refer to as “time parsing mechanisms”. I will also suggest that defective time parsing mechanisms cause specific language impairments, and also contribute to other language-related developmental disorders including autism and attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first describes time parsing mechanisms. The second outlines some of the main functions of these mechanisms, emphasising their involvement in language acquisition and language function. The final section outlines the argument that defective time parsing causes of contributes to language-related developmental disorders.

Article FootNote

“Time is clearly important in cognition. It is inextricably bound up with many behaviours (such as language) which express themselves as temporal sequences. Indeed, it is difficult to know how one might deal with such basic problems as goal-directed behaviour, planning, or causation without some way of representing time.”

(Elman, 1990, p. 179)

“In the last twenty years, the idea that organisms contain within them rhythmic biochemical processes that function as internal clocks has passed from the status of a controversial hypothesis to an accepted fact. That virtually all organisms, including bacteria, possess an endogenous twenty-four-hour clock is widely known. Less widely known is the evidence for rhythmic processes with much shorter periods-as short as a 1 thousandth of a second-and much longer periods-a year and longer. The existence of an array of internal rhythmic processes with vastly different periods provides a biological foundation for representing the time of occurrence of an event.”

(Gallistel, 1990, pp. 5–6)