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Domain-General and Domain-Specific Processes in Cognitive Development

The tension between what is domain-general and what is domain-specific in cognitive development was articulated in a remarkably lucid way by Annette Karmiloff-Smith [1992] in her discussion of language acquisition. She argued that a domain-general theory ‘would not grant the neonate any innately specified linguistic structures or mechanisms which are preferentially attentive to linguistic input’ [p. 33]. Instead, a domain-general theory, such as Piagetian theory, ‘would maintain that both syntax and semantics are solely products of the general structural organization of sensorimotor intelligence’ [p. 33]. This radical domain-general position she considers flawed because infants would not be able to attend selectively to linguistically relevant input already in the first 4 days of their lives without a domain-specific mechanism to support this discrimination. After only 4 days of life, infants are already sensitive to differences between their mother tongue and other languages [Mehler, Lambertz, Jusczyk, & Amiel-Tison, 1986]. This amazing achievement would be unexplainable by a domain-general cognitive development theory that does not credit the infant with sophisticated perceptual abilities. The infant is also sensitive to constraints on possible word meanings, Karmiloff-Smith argues, which bias the way the child interprets linguistic inputs long before the notion of object permanence has developed sufficiently to explain semantic development [Carey, 1982]. If someone were to say ‘Look, a cat!,’ an infant would not assume that this refers to the color of the cat or to the softness of its fur, but to the whole animal. Such specifically linguistic constraints on possible word meanings are seen as essential for language acquisition and innately programmed in the human infant. It should be noted that this view of innate constraints on language acquisition does not preclude the idea that there are further developments in children’s linguistic knowledge. Children go on to make language into an object of