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Updated: Jun 22, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
How important is it to learn language rather than create it?
1Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USAhttp://goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/.
Abstract:
I focus here on concepts that are not part of core knowledge - the ability to treat people as social agents with shareable mental states. Spelke proposes that learning language from another might account for the development of these concepts. I suggest that homesigners, who create language rather than learn it, may be a potential counterexample to this hypothesis.
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