Could we please lose the mapping metaphor, please?
Although Bloom gives more credit to social cognition (mind reading) than do most other theorists of word learning, he does not go far enough. He still relies fundamentally on a learning process of association (or mapping), neglecting the joint attentional and cultural learning skills from which linguistic communication emerges at one year of age.
Tomasello
Michael
M
Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany tomas@eva.mpg.de http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/