Cognitive ability rears to the capacity t0 perceive.reason,or use intuition.Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget,who had been studying children’S cognitive development since the 1 920s,claimed
that children construct new knowledge by applying their current knowledge structures t0 new
experiences and modifying them accordingly.His perspective,called constructivism,emphasized
the active role children play in their own mental growth as inquisitive thinkers。While Chomsky
placed linguistics at the core of studies of the mind,he claimed that linguistic theory must
account for uuiversal similarities between all languages and for the fact that children are able to
learn language fluently at an early age in spite of insufficient data that has no systematic logic.
He claimed that“Children acquire...1anguages quite successfully even though no special care is
taken tO each ofthem and no special attention is given to their progress.”(Chomsky 1965:200-1)
This implication is that we don’t learn to have tO learn a native language.The ability tO acquire a
native language is part of our genetic endowment.His contribution to the cognitive sciences———
fields that seek to understand how we“nk,learn。and perceive—emcees from this claim.