Relational Language and Relational Thought

Human cognitive abilities are remarkable. We easily go beyond what is perceptually available to reason about abstract systems. Our cognitive ability to adapt to a vast range of environments, and even to alter our environment to suit our desires, has given our species so great an advantage over other mammals that we are now poised to exterminate most of our former predators, and must use our ingenuity to preserve a few. Indeed, for many theorists, the sophistication of adult human reasoning defies any explanation based on learning. How do we get so smart? Traditional theories of cognitive development can be grouped into four broad categories. Behaviorist accounts used mechanisms of association and stimulus generalization over perceptual gradients to explain learning, eschewing discussion of mental representations. Current descendants of this view rely on mechanisms such as statistical learning of transitive probabilities. Piagetian constructivism postulated increasingly complex mental representations learned through the child’s interactions with the world and cognitive stages characterized by different representational formats and logical operations (Piaget, 195 1, 1955). Another constructivist approach is Vygotsky’s (1 962) theory that abstract cogni tion develops through the child’s interactions with cultural and linguistic systems. The fourth approach, of renewed interest of late, is a nativist approach that postulates that children possess nascent cognitive systems and theories that unfold through interaction with the world.