This essay is aimed at establishing the link between language and cognition, Language is the

human ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, and a language is any
specific example of such a system, cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes
related to knowledge: attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation,
reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and
production of language, etc.
Language is the way we communicate with each other using words, sentences, grammar and
syntax. It has to do with words. Cognition is how we think, what we think, and why we think. It
has to do with our thoughts. When we create our thoughts inside our heads we do so using
words. (Before we learned words as infants, we still had thoughts...just not words.) Cognition
precedes language. To add when the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it
extracts similarities from numerous examples; the simplification enables higher-level thinking.
While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a function of the brain, a cognitive
theory will not necessarily make reference to the brain or other biological process. It may purely
describe behavior in terms of information flow or function. Relatively recent fields of study such
as cognitive science and neuropsychology aim to bridge this gap, using cognitive paradigms to
understand how the brain implements these information-processing functions or how pure
information-processing systems (e.g., computers) can simulate.
Cognitivist positions see language development as the consequence of more general cognitive
mechanisms, which are themselves determined by biologically pre-programmed processes. teractionist
models see social-cultural factors as the most important determinants of learning mechanisms
underlying all of child development, including language, cognitive, and social development. With
respect to initial equipment, then, cognitivist models postulate a general cognitive capacity allowing the
infant to construct a gradually more complex representation of the world as a result of underlying
endogenous processes. In comparison, interactionist models equip it with an initial capacity for
interpersonal interaction, allowing for complex forms of communication, which provide exogenous
factors driving the child’s construction of the world. In both cases, language plays an important role in
providing a powerful symbolic system for the child's epistemological constructions or for its
interactions with other members of its culture, however, theories vary here in how special or crucial they
consider the role of language to be and/or in the extent to which they view particular aspects of children's
cognitive or communicative capacities as being pre-programmed and species-specific. Expressing motion.
For example, they use path particles in English, e.g., out (wanting to go out), up (wanting to be picked
up), down (sitting down), whereas they distinguish voluntary and caused motion.
Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930) was an influential American female pioneer in the realm of
psychology. Her work also focused on the human memory capacity. A common theory, called
the Recency effect, can be attributed to the studies that she conducted. The recency effect, also
discussed in the subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to be able to
accurately recollect the final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Her theory is closely
related to the aforementioned study and conclusion of the memory experiments conducted by
Herman Ebbinghaus.
Herman Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the function
and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he
constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words, for instance EAS. He then
examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as
opposed to real words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words
might symbolize, thus enabling easier recollection of them. Ebbinghaus observed and
hypothesized a number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn and recall the non-
words he created. One of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the
presentation of the list of stimuli and the clarification needed. His work heavily influenced the
study of serial position and its effect on memory, discussed in subsequent sections.
Part of language development is the development of abstract thinking. It is believed that children,
infants actually, learn to ascribe the term "dog" for example at first to all animals, but as time
goes on, they develop a concept of "dog" as a class of animal. Over time we use language as part
of our thinking. For example, our concepts of the world differ in various cultures and this is
reflected in language and vice versa. For example, Eskimos can see twenty-four different
variations of snow and they have a word for each one. Someone brought up even in Vermont,
where it snows a lot, may only recognize four different types of snow.
The same can be true of relationships. Different forms of grammar can affect the way people
look at events, their sequence at timing. People can have different concepts of time and space.
Word order is different in different languages. These concepts have been studied and researched
and there are books describing the differences and consequences. It is fascinating.
Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human
language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so accurately must be
already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every child has a language
acquisition device (LAD) which encodes the major principles of language and its grammatical
structure into the child’s brain. Children have then only to learn new vocabulary and apply the
syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences. Chomsky points out that a child could not
possibly learn the language through imitation alone because the language spoken around them is
highly irregular, adult speech is often broken up and sometimes grammatical. Chomsky’s theory
apply to all languages as they contain nouns, verbs, consonants, and vowels and children appear
to be; hard wired to acquire the grammar.
Cognition is the technological expression for "the process of thought". It is brought into play in a
variety of disciplines to describe things differently; in the case of cognitive discipline and
psychology, it is normally meant for data dispensation position of a person’s psychological
intention. Other elucidations of the subtext of cognition hook it up on to the advancement of
concepts; intellect of people, businesses and groups. Existing psychologists in the field of
education, give more importance to the cognitive standpoint than the behavioral perspective,
maybe because it discloses causally associated mental builds such as emotions, motivations,
traits, memories, and beliefs. Human cognition is conscious and unconscious, concrete or
abstract, as well as intuitive like knowledge of a language and conceptual (like a model of a
language). Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge. Cognition
can in some specific and abstract sense also be artificial
In conclusion, cognition includes thought processes and ways to reason. A particularly important
concept in this unit is that of mental set or functional fixedness. Imitation is our inherent way of
learning new things and we learn our earliest lessons by imitation. As children we spend a lot of
our time imitating action from our social surroundings and incorporating them into our language.
Cognitivist positions see language development as the consequence of more general cognitive
mechanisms, which are themselves determined by biologically pre-programmed processes.
Interactionist models see social-cultural factors as the most important determinants of
learning mechanisms underlying all of child development, including language, cognitive,
and social development. With respect to initial equipment, then, cognitivist models postulate a
general cognitive capacity allowing the infant to construct a gradually more complex
representation of the world as a result of underlying endogenous processes. In comparison,
interactionist models equip it with an initial capacity for interpersonal interaction, allowing
for complex forms of communication, which provide exogenous factors driving the child’s
construction of the world. In both cases, language plays an important role in providing a
powerful symbolic system for the child's epistemological constructions or for its interactions
with other members of its culture.
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Farrant J. S. (1982) principles and practice of education (3 rd impression) Harlow

Essex. Longman

Cook and Bassetti (2011) language and Bilingual cognition

Brown, R. (1994) The Ins and Ons of Tzeltal locative expressions: The semantics
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Choi, S., & M. Bowerman (1991) Learning to express motion events in English
and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition
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Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.