ABSTRACT
Van Geert develops further his growth modeling approach to cognitive development (Van Geert, 1991, 1994) using language acquisition as the phenomena of focus. He shows that empirical growth phenomena such as the growth of linguistic variables (e.g., words, sentences) in spontaneous speech recordings of children can be modeled with the aid of a connected growers model. The model rests on the cooperation and competition of particular linguistic variables and their changing relations over time. This approach is consistent with the perspective that relatively simple equations can handle a considerable degree of the variance in the development of cognitive phenomena.
