The Cognitive Approach posits that children acquire linguistic knowledge after acquiring what?

• A. Cognitive structures necessary to process language
• B. Social interactions alone
• C. External reinforcement
• D. Innate grammar rules

Answer: (A)

Linguistic knowledge develops after children acquire cognitive processing structures. In the cognitive approach, language emerges as a result of general thinking abilities—attention, memory, symbol use, categorization, and problem solving—that let a child interpret, organize, and manipulate linguistic input. Once these cognitive structures mature, children can map sounds to meanings, detect patterns, and build grammar from their own internal reasoning about language and the world. This view isn’t about language being learned only through social interaction, reinforcement, or innate grammar rules; rather, it’s about language growing out of the child’s developing cognition. So the best answer reflects that language knowledge follows the development of the cognitive systems that process language.