Abstract:

The way language contributes to thought, in general, and learning, in particular, has occupied the minds of philosophers and educators from ancient Greece to the present day. Notwithstanding considerable disagreement about the exact nature of this relationship (for a review, see Carruthers, 2002), there seems to be a consensus that being without language impedes the ability of individuals to learn and think, in a rather essential way. Particularly for the acquisition of cognitive skills such as reading and writing, failure to properly internalize and access the coded language – that is, spoken language – is assumed to have rather far-reaching consequences (Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000).

The objective of the reported illustrative case study was to demonstrate that the importance of spoken language in the development of cognitive and linguistic skills may have been overstated. The author reached at this conclusion by closely following the achievements of Navon, a 13-year-old deaf boy, over a three-month period of exposure to Logo, a programming language that visualizes specific programming commands by means of a drawing Turtle (Miller, 2009). Despite an almost complete lack of skills in spoken and sign language, Navon developed into a surprisingly competent programmer, mastering an impressive number of computer commands and other written vocabulary (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.), including a substantial set of Logo rules which he learned to apply purposefully for the realization of self-set goals. Navon’s achievements are discussed with reference to widely held assumptions concerning the relationship between language and cognitive development. This discussion includes highlighting the central principles responsible for Navon’s rather unexpected cognitive and linguistic development and the way they can be harvested for the development of effective reading methods for individuals with profound hearing losses.

Keywords:

Learning, Cognition, Visualization, Programming, Reading and Writing.