Language and Cognition: Some Life-Span Developmental Issues

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Abstract
Structural aspects of language and cognition are emphasized. Structures are composed of relations; elements enter only secondarily into consideration. In particular, recursive relations provide stability; contrastive relations provide diversification to structures. Development is described as leading to operations with increasingly complex structures but abiding to operations of formal logic. Maturity is described as readmitting contradictions within a framework of dialectic logic. Examples are presented from developmental studies of cognition (Piaget's conservation tasks) and psycholinguistics (operations with comparative terms). It is concluded that cognitive developmental psychology, unless extended into dialectic operations, is unable to deal appropriately with maturity and aging.

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