Abstract
The conversations of 36 41/2 to 5-year-olds differing in race (black and white) and social class (professional and working class) and the adults with whom they spoke were tape-recorded during play and teaching time at preschool and dinnertime at home. Usage of cognitive words was analyzed for six levels of meaning that differed in depth of processing from reference to (1) perception and attention, (2) recognition, (3) fact recall, (4) understanding, (5) metacognition, and (6) evaluation of presuppositions. Although the rank order of usage was the same, children devoted less of their lexicon to the three higher levels of meaning than adults. Even in adults, perceptual references predominated. Use of higher-level meaning was less prominent in school and in the black working-class population. There were significant correlations between exposure to adult conversations with high-level meaning and child use of those meanings, and between the diversity of cognitive vocabulary in children and adults, but those correlations were smallest in the black working-class population.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bennett, D., & Woll, S. (1980). Some psychological influences on the linguistic performance of black teenagers.Discourse Processes, 3, 73–97.
Brewer, W. F., & Lichtenstein, E. L. (1982).Stories are to entertain: A structural-affect theory of stories (Technical Report No. 265). Urbana: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading.
Cazden, C. (1970). The situation: A neglected source of social class differences in language use.Journal of Social Issues, 26, 35–60.
Cole, M., Dore, J., Hall, W. S., & Dowley, G. (1978). Situational variability in the speech of preschool children. In M. Ebihart & R. Gianutsos (Eds.),Papers in anthropology and linguistics, New York Academy of Sciences, 318, 65–105.
Deutsch, M. (1965). The role of social class in language development and cognition.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 35, 78–88.
Flavell, J. H. (1978).Cognitive monitoring. Paper presented at the Conference on Children's Oral Communication Skills, University of Wisconsin.
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring. A new area of cognitive developmental inquiry.American Psychologist, 34, 906–911.
Gearhart, M., & Hall, W. S. (1982). Internal state words: Cultural and situational variation in vocabulary usage. In K. Borman (Ed.),The social life of children in a changing society (pp. 219–252). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Hall, W. S., & Nagy, E. (1986). Theoretical issues in the investigation of words of internal report. In I. Gopnik & M. Gopnik (Eds.),Studies in cognitive sciences (pp. 26–65). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
Hall, W. S., Nagy, W. E., & Linn, R. (1984).Spoken words, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Hall, W. S., Nagy, W. E., & Nottenburg, G. (1981).Situational variation in the use of internal state words (Technical Report No. 212). Urbana: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading.
Hall, W. S., & Tirre, W. C. (1979).The communicative environment of young children: Social class, ethnic and stituational differences (Technical Report No. 125). Urbana: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading.
Hughes, A. T., & Hall, W. S. (1987, April).A hierarchical model of the acquisition of word meanings. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore.
Johnson, C. N., & Maratsos, M. P. (1977). Early comprehension of mental verbs: Think and know.Child Development, 48, 1743–1747.
Johnson, C. N., & Wellman, H. M. (1980). Children's developing understanding of mental verbs: Remember, know and guess.Child Development, 51, 1095–1102.
Jones, L., & Wepman, J. M. (1966).A spoken word count. Chicago: Language Research Associates.
Jordan, T. E. (1978). Influences on vocabulary attainment: A five-year prospect study.Child Development, 49, 1099–1106.
Litowitz, B. (1977). Learning to make definitions.Journal of Child Language, 4, 289–304.
MacNamara, J., Baker, E., & Olson, C. (1976). Four-year-olds' understanding of pretend, forget and know: Evidence for propositional operations.Child Development, 47, 62–70.
Miscione, J. L., Marvin, R. S., O'Brien, R. G., & Greenberg, M. T. (1978). A developmental study of preschool children's understanding of the words “know” and “guess”.Child Development, 49, 1107–1113.
Nelson, K. (1983). The derivations of concepts and categories from event representations. In E. K. Scholnick (Ed.),New trends in conceptual representation: Challenges to Piaget's theory? (pp. 131–149). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Newport, E. L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. R. (1977). Mother I'd rather do it myself: Some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In C. E. Snow & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.),Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension fostering and comprehension monitoring activities.Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117–175.
Seashore, R. H., & Eckerson, L. D. (1940). The measurement of individual differences in general English vocabularies.Journal of Educational Psychology, 31, 14–38.
Shatz, M., Wellman, H. M., & Silber, S. (1983). The acquisition of mental verbs: A systematic investigation of the first reference to mental state.Cognition, 14, 301–321.
Steffensen, M. S., & Guthrie, L. F. (1980).Effect of situation on the verbalization of black inner-city children (Technical Report No. 180). Urbana: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading.
Templin, M. C. (1957).Certain language skills in children. Their development and interrelationships (Insitute of Child Welfare Monograph Series No. 26). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Warner, L., Meeker, M., & Eells, K. (1949).Social class in America. Chicago: Science Research Associates.
Wellman, H. M., & Estes, D. (1987). Children's early use of mental verbs and what they mean.Discourse Processes, in press.
Wellman, H. M., & Johnson, C. N. (1979). Understanding of mental process: A developmental study ofremember andforget.Child Development, 50, 79–88.
Wing, C. S., & Scholnick, E. K. (1986). Understanding the language of reasoning: Developmental, cognitive, and linguistic factors.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 383–401.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Funds to the project on which this paper is based were given by The Carnegie Corporation of New York to William S. Hall. The authors wish to thank the Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland for funds for data analysis.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hall, W.S., Scholnick, E.K. & Hughes, A.T. Contextual constraints on usage of cognitive words. J Psycholinguist Res 16, 289–310 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069284
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069284