¿Cómo aprenden los niños el significado de las palabras? El presente artículo examina cuatro perspectivas actuales que intentan dar respuesta a esta pregunta: posiciones innatistas; enfoques asociacionistas; propuestas neo-constructivistas y aproximaciones socio-culturales. Se confrontan analíticamente sus posiciones respecto al peso atribuido a lo innato, a la experiencia, a la construcción y al contexto en la adquisición del significado en la mente en desarrollo. Asimismo, se consideran los puntos de vista que estas propuestas asumen acerca del vínculo conceptos-significado dentro del marco más general de la relación entre cognición y lenguaje. Finalmente, el artículo discute la necesidad de profundizar en una perspectiva más inclusiva acerca del aprendizaje del significado de palabras sugiriendo una alternativa integradora y sus posibles proyecciones.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BloomP. (2000). How Children Learn The Meanings Of Words.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2.
BloomP. (2001). Précis of how children learn the meanings of words.Behavioral and Brain Science, 24, 1095–1103.
3.
BloomfieldL. (1933). Language.Nueva York: Holt.
4.
BrunerJ. (1983). Child's Talk: Learning to Use Language.Nueva York: Norton.
5.
ByrnesJ. PGelmanS. (1991). Perspective on thought and language: Traditional and contemporary views. EnGel- ManS.A.ByrnesJ. P. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and thought. Interrelations in Development (pp. 3–27). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
CallananM. A. (1985). How Parents Label Objects for Young Children: The Role of Input in the Acquisition of Category Hierarchies.Child Development, 56, 508–523.
7.
CallanamM. (1991). Parent-child collaboration in young children's understanding of categories hierarchies. EnGelmanS. A.ByrnesJ. P. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and thought. Interrelations in Development (pp. 440–484). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
8.
CareyS. (1982). Semantic development: The state of the art. EnWannerE.GleitmanL. R. (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 347–389). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
9.
CareyS. (1985). Conceptual Development in Childhood.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.
CarpenterM.NagellK.TomaselloM. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age.Monographs of Society for Research in Child Development, 63.
11.
ChomskyN. (1975). Reflections on Language.Nueva York: Random house.
12.
ChomskyN. (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
ClarkE. (1988). On the logic of contrast.Journal of Child Language, 15, 317–335.
14.
ClarkE. (1990). On the pragmatics of contrast.Journal of Child language, 17, 417–431.
15.
ClarkE. (1991). Acquisitioned principles in lexical development. EnGelmanS. A.ByrnesJ. P. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and Thought. Interrelations in Development (pp. 31–71). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
16.
ClarkE. V. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. EnMacWhinneyB. (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition: The 20th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition (pp. 1–33). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
17.
FensonL.DaleP. H.ReznickJ. S.BatesE.ThalD.PethickS. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development.Monographs of Society for Research in Child Development, 59 (5, serial no 242).
18.
FodorJ. (1981). The mind-body problem.Scientific American, 244 (1), 124–232.
19.
FodorJ. (1983). The Modularity of Mind.Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (Trad. cast. de J. M. Igoa: La modularidadde la mente.Madrid: Morata, 1986).
20.
GartonA. F. (2001). Peer assistance in children's problem solving.British Journal of Developmental Psychology19, 307–318.
21.
GelmanS. (2002). Cognitive development. EnPshlerH.MedinD. L. (Eds.), Stevens's Handbook Of Experimental Psychology (3a ed., Vol. 2, pp. 533–559). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
22.
GelmanS.KalishCH. (2006). Conceptual development. EnKuhnD.SieglerR. S. (Vol. Eds.) Volume 2: Cognition, Perception and Language. En DamonW. (Series Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology (6a ed., Cap.16. pp. 687–724). Nueva York: Wiley.
23.
GelmanS.MedinD. L. (1993). What's so essential about essentialism? A different perspective on the interaction of perception, language, and conceptual knowledge.Cognitive Development, 8, 157–167.
24.
GelmanS. A.ColeyJ. D. (1990). The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird: Categories and inferences in two-year-olds.Developmental Psychology, 26, 796–804.
25.
GentnerD.BoroditskyL. (2001). Individuation, relativity and early word learning. EnBowermanM.LevinsonS. (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 215–256). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
26.
GoldstoneR. L. (1998). Perceptual learning.Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 585–612.
27.
GopnikA.MetzolffA. N.KuhlP. K. (1999). The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn.Nueva York: Harper-Collins.
28.
HlckmannM. (1988). The implications of discourse skills in vygotsky's development theory. EnWertschJ. (Ed.), Culture Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives (pp. 236–257). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
29.
JonesS. S.SmithL. B. (1993). The place of perception in children's concepts.Cognitive Development, 8, 113–139.
30.
Karmiloff-SmithA. (1994). Más allá de la Modularidad.Madrid: Alianza.
31.
KatzjJ.FodorJ. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory.Language, 39, 170–210.
32.
KeilF. C. (1996). Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
33.
MadoleK.OakesL. (1999). Making sense of infant categorization: stable processes and changing representations.Developmental Review, 19 (2), 213–318.
34.
MandlerJ. M. (2000). Perceptual and conceptual processes in Infancy.Journal of Cognition of Development, 1 (1), 3–36.
35.
MandlerJ. M.DonoughM.C. (1998). Studies in Inductive Inferences in Infancy.Cognitive Psychology, 37, 60–96.
36.
MarkmanE. M.HutchinsonJ. E. (1984). Children's sensibility to constraints on word meaning: Taxonomic versus thematic relationship.Cognitive Psychology, 16, 1–27.
37.
MarkmanE. M.WachtelG. F. (1988). Children's use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meaning of words.Cognitive Psychology, 20, 121–157.
38.
MarkmanE. M. (1991). The whole-object, taxonomic, and mutual exclusivity assumptions as initial constraints on word meanings. EnGelmanS. A.ByrnesJ. P. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and thought. Interrelations in Development (pp. 72–105). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
39.
MervisC. B. (1987). Child-basic object categories and early lexical development. EnNeisserU. (Ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 201–233). Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
40.
MurphyG. (1991). Meaning and concepts. EnSchwanengluglelP. (Ed.), The Psychology of Word Meanings (pp. 11–35). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
41.
NelsonK. (1991). The matter of time: Interdependencies between language and Thought in Development. EnGel- ManS.A.ByrnesJ. P. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and thought. Interrelations in Development (pp. 278–317). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
42.
NelsonK. (1996). Language in Cognitive Development. The Emergence of the Mediated Mind.Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
43.
NelsonK. (2000). Global and Functional: Mandler's Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Infancy.Journal of Cognition and Development, 1, 49–54
44.
OakesL.MadoleK. (2003). Principles of developmental change in infants' category formation. EnRakisonD. H.OakesL. M. (Eds.), Early Category and Concept Development: Making sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion (pp. 132–158). Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press.
45.
QuineW. V. O. (1960). Word and Object.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
46.
QuinnP. C.EimasP. D. (2000). The Emergence of Category Representations During Infancy: Are Separate Perceptual and Conceptual Processes Required?Journal of Cognition and Development, 1 (1), 55–61
47.
RakisonD. H.Polin-DuboisD. (2001). Developmental origin of the animate distinction.Psychological Bulletin, 127209–228.
48.
RobertsR. J.JR.GoodmanG. S. (1985). Reverse developmental trends: developments as acquisition of constraints. Comunicación presentada en la Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto.
49.
SkinnerB. F. (1957). Verbal Behavior.Nueva York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
50.
SloutskyV. M. (2003). The role of similarity in the development of categorization.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 246–251.
51.
SmithL. B.ColungaE.YoshidaH. (2003). Making ontology: Cross-linguistic evidence. EnRakisonD. H.OakesL. M. (Eds.), Early Category and Concept Development: Making Sense of the Blooming, Buzzing Confusion (pp. 275–302). Londres: Oxford University Press.
52.
SojaN.CareyS.SpelkeE. (1991). Ontological categories guide young children's inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms.Cognition, 38, 179–211.
53.
TomaselloM. (1995). Joint attention as social cognition. EnMooreC.DunhamP. (Eds.), Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development (pp. 103–130). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
54.
TomaselloM. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
55.
TomaselloM. (2001). Could we please lose the mapping metaphor, please? EnBloomP.Précis of how children learn the Meaning Of Words. Behavioral and Brain Science.24, 1095–1103.
56.
VygotskyL. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.ColeM.John-SteinerV.ScriberS.SoubermanE. (Eds. y trads.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
57.
WaxmanS. R.BoothA. E. (2001). Seeing pink elephants: Fourteen-month-olds' interpretations of novel nouns and adjectives.Cognitive Psychology, 43, 217–242.
58.
WaxmanS. R.BoothA. E. (2003). The origins and evolution of links between word learning and conceptual organization: New evidence from 11-month-olds.Developmental Science, 6 (2), 130–137.
59.
WaxmanS. R.LldzJ. (2006). Early word learning. EnKuhnD.SieglerR. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 2. Cognition, Perception and Language (6a Edition, pp. 299–335). Nueva York: Wiley.
60.
WertschJ. (1988). Vygotsky y la Formación Social de la Mente.Buenos Aires: Paidós.
YoshidaH.SmithL. B. (2003). Shifting ontological boundaries: How Japanese- and English-speaking children generalize names for animals and artifacts.Developmental Science, 6 (1), 1–17.
