Cognitive development and the acquisition of language in three subcultural groups.

Investigated the relationship between cognitive development and language acquisition by administering a sentence repetition task and a discrimination, seriation, and numeration Piagetian task to a total of 67 black inner-city, white middle-class, and white rural children. Within each subcultural group, samples were drawn from each of 3 grade levels: kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade. Results indicate that when valid reconstructions from standard English to Negro nonstandard English forms were considered correct, the performance of black inner-city and white middle-class children was nonsignificantly different. However, significant differences between the 3 groups were found on function-word omission scores and Piagetian task scores. Analyses of covariance were performed using Piagetian task scores as the covariate and function word omission scores as the dependent variable. Results support D. I. Slobin's (1973) proposition that the acquisition of semantic notions in language is predictable from cognitive development. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)