It is impossible for the young child to voice concepts that are totally unknown to them.
Children learn about the world first, then map language onto their prior experience.
Example of Cognitive Theory
An infant experiences the house cat; they know that it meows, is furry, purrs, eats from a bowl in the kitchen –
hence develops the concept of cat first then learns to map the word “kitty” onto that concept
Early Life Experiences and their relationship to speech
Memory and the concept of time and space determine the use and understanding of language (Piaget, 1926;
Sinclair-deZwart, 1973)
Children's first words and first steps occur near their first birthday. For the cognitive theorist, it is no coincidence
that language and mobility are correlated because mobility better allows the infant to experience the world and
thus begin to map verbal concepts onto their experiences.
Arguments Against Cognitive Theory
It is difficult to know exactly how much of language development is dependant on other facets of development
(causation-correlation errors possible)
Many concepts may be acquired long before any language is used to convey them yet simply never voiced
Arguments Against Cognitive Theory
Possible disassociations between cognitive and linguistic development are not a hindrance upon regular language
development.
Paralyzed children still form sensorimotor concepts and voice them
Children with intellectual impairments (for example, an IQ of 50) still have complete and sophisticated language