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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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On the relation between grammatical number and cardinal numbers in development.

Barbara W Sarnecka1

  • 1Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at Irvine , Irvine, CA, USA.

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|October 28, 2014
PubMed
Summary

Children learning languages with grammatical number distinctions, like singular/plural, grasp cardinal number words ("one," "two") faster. This suggests language structure aids early number concept development.

Keywords:
cardinalcountinggrammatical numberlanguage developmentnumberplural

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • The acquisition of cardinal number words is a key developmental milestone.
  • Understanding how children learn number concepts is crucial for cognitive development research.
  • The role of linguistic structures, specifically grammatical number, in number concept acquisition is debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the influence of a child's native language's grammatical number system on learning cardinal number words.
  • To explore potential differences in number-word learning trajectories across various languages.
  • To contribute to the debate on whether number concepts are innate or learned.

Main Methods:

  • This mini-review synthesizes existing evidence on number-word learning in children across diverse language backgrounds.
  • Comparative analysis of learning trajectories in children acquiring languages with varying degrees of grammatical number marking (e.g., English, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian, Saudi Arabic).

Main Results:

  • Children learning languages with robust singular/plural distinctions (e.g., English) tend to learn "one" earlier than those learning languages with minimal marking (e.g., Japanese, Mandarin).
  • Children acquiring languages with singular/dual/plural systems (e.g., Slovenian, Saudi Arabic) demonstrate earlier acquisition of "two" compared to English-speaking children.
  • Evidence suggests a correlation between grammatical number features and the speed of cardinal number word acquisition.

Conclusions:

  • Grammatical number systems in a child's language appear to facilitate the learning of cardinal number words.
  • The findings support constructivist theories of number acquisition, emphasizing conceptual change influenced by language.
  • While not refuting nativist views, the data align more closely with theories where language shapes early number understanding.