Language – “The Mirror of the Mind”. Types of Cognitive Definitions in the Utterances of Children and Intellectually Disabled Adult Language Users

Abstract

The article discusses the problems associated with the creation of cognitive definitions in relation to an individual’s mental capabilities (developmentally normal 6-year-old children and adults with mild intellectual disability). The objective of the discussion is to present different models of definitions: in the form of metaphor, reference to a stereotype or prototype, description. The goal of the considerations in this paper is to draw attention to the role of defining in the diagnosis of the linguistic and cognitive competence of developmentally normal children and intellectually disabled persons. The next objective is to emphasize the programming of logopedic measures towards inter alia broadening vocabulary - from concrete names (at the basic level and prototype items) to abstract, superordinate names. Problems of conceptualization usually go hand in hand with the
semantic organization of utterances, which is why in logopedic work special attention should be focused on categorization processes, determinants of linguistic fields, and comparison of the scopes of concepts, and on determination of relationships between them.