A Cognitivist Perspective on Language Development: The Nigerian Child

Many theories have been put forward to explain or account for how children acquire their first language. Each of the theories had been received enthusiastically in its own time. However, as new ideas are introduced, the old approaches and theories are set aside while the new ones become fashionable, making the debate concerning a child's first language acquisition to be produced. Prominent among the theories are behaviorism or nativism, cognitivism. interactionism, connectivism, emergentism etc. This paper is principally concerned with the cognitivism theory. The paper, therefore, uses this theory of cognitivism to account for how a Nigerian child acquires his first language in an e home using one of the research paradigms in psycholinguistics. This paper also highlights some of the problems encountered in Nasarawa and the prospects. to account for how a Nigerian child acquires his first home, using one of the research paradigms i