The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential interaction
of conceptual representations and linguistic systems in the process of
language acquisition. Language–thought interactions were studied
in 80
American, 48 Finnish and 48 Polish preschool children. The research
focused on the conceptual and linguistic development of space and time.
The spatial and temporal conceptual tasks were designed to measure the
transition from experiential to inferential knowledge of space/time
representations. In the linguistic domain, comprehension and production
tests were used to evaluate the children's capacity to understand
mono- and bi-referential location in space and time, where mono-referential
location involves a single referent object/event with intrinsic
properties (e.g. in/on or past/non-past), and
bi-referential location
requires two or more referent objects/events and relative perspective
(e.g. deictic front/back or before/after).
The conceptual and linguistic
tests revealed significant changes during the period from two to five
years of age, and measures of conceptual development were correlated
with measures of linguistic development. As spatial and temporal
representations became more structured, children were able to move
from mono- to bi-referential location. In a comprehension test, we
discovered an interaction of language by dimension. Finnish children
found spatial distinctions relatively easy and Polish children found
temporal distinctions relatively easy. This interaction was expected on
the basis of the relative complexity of the morpho-syntactic coding in
the spatial and temporal systems of the two languages. However, the
argument relating the timing of acquisition to the transparency versus
opacity of the linguistic systems was not supported by the English
language comparison. Finally, the Finnish children were relatively
better able to accomplish the spatial conceptual tasks as compared to the
Polish children. This finding is consistent with a developmental concept
of linguistic relativity. In general, the research indicates that spatial
and
temporal linguistic systems and representational knowledge interact
during development with the influence occurring in both directions.