Language in Scripts

Preschoolers' event descriptions indicate that they are able to engage in displaced reference, use timeless verb forms, report optional and conditional relationships, appropriately sequence events, engage in temporal reversibility, and appropriately use a number of relational terms, all at a much younger age than has traditionally been believed possible. These findings contradict the results of a number of studies and challenge the theories developed to account for those results. If 3- and 4-year-olds understand temporal and logical relationships well enough to describe them linguistically, assertions cannot be accepted that claim "preoperational" children necessarily cannot comprehend such relationships. Nor can componential models of lexical acquisition be accepted if predictions made by the models find no support in production data. While the present data indicate that preschoolers have cognitive abilities they were thought to lack, it is likely that the children's abilities are limited to certain highly meaningful and well-represented contexts. The nature of young children's limitations in these domains, and the processes by which they overcome them, are topics for future research. (Tables provide examples of event descriptions, expressions of options and conditions, self-corrections of temporal sequences, and the production of relational terms.) (RH)