9309376 WEIST ABSTRACT The purpose of the research is to study the relationship between conceptual development and language acquisition in the domain of spatial and temporal location within a Polish/Finnish/ English comparative framework. The research was designed to test the hypothesis that language/thought interactions are bidirectional, i.e., cognitive and linguistic relativity are inherent in the acquisition process. Previous research on conceptual development has show that the form of space/time representations changes during the period from about three to four years of age. In the early phases of development, spatial schemas are egocentric, routelike, and landmark-oriented, and temporal schemas contain event-to-event sequential linkage. In the late phase, children acquire the potential to construct representations with properties which are abstracted from the experience such as an allocentric/coordinated perspective on space and a higher order/scheduled perspective on event structure. Prior research by the PI and others on child language has uncovered a transition in the form of spatial/temporal location from mono- to bi-referential. Within the monoreferential system, the primary object/event (or figure) is related to a single referent object/event, and with the emergence of the bireferential system, children acquire the potential to relate the primary object/event to two or more referent objects/events. Regarding cognitive relativity, the research was designed to determine if the development of coordinated representations establishes a state of conceptual readiness for the linguistic transition to bireferential location. This research is relevant to a number of basic questions concerning the process of language acquisition. It has been proposed that the spatial systems are more primitive then temporal systems, and the inference has been made that spatial location will precede temporal location in development. This inference has never been tested directly, and this research will do so. Currently, cognitive relativity is likely to be accepted as a demonstrated fact in the spatial domain but not the temporal domain in spite of the fact that supporting evidence is equally scarce in both areas. This research will provide a balanced perspective on this issue. The question of linguistic relativity is the most difficult to evaluate. This research takes advantage of some general differences between Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages to probe the potential effect of linguistic complexity on the acquisition process. ***
