1974 Chapters (Layout Features)

Talking, understanding, and thinking: Developmental relationship between receptive and expressive language

Bloom, Lois

The purpose of this chapter was to explore the relation between comprehension and expression, and the relation of each to children’s cognition in early language development. A problem in evaluating comprehension is that a child’s response can be multidetermined—what children do in responding to what others say depends on many things in addition to what they hear. In contrast, child speech can be recorded, reported, and described. There has also been an unfortunate tendency to take comprehension for granted in the prevailing view that comprehension precedes expression in development. The purpose of this chapter, in 1974, was to explore the factors that contribute to understanding messages, how such factors relate to producing messages, and the relation of each to developments in both language and cognition.