Understanding cognitive language: The mental idioms in children's talk.

Considerable debate has occurred among behavior analysts about the value of cognitive language for labels or descriptions of phenomena in the analysis of behavior. That value is difficult to assess, however, until a clearer understanding of the definitions of those terms is obtained. To begin that process, this article demonstrates through a series of examples what children mean when they use typical cognitive expressions. One conclusion possible from the results of such an analysis is that cognitive terms describe nothing more than behavior in context, a very behavioral idea. Cognitive expressions may be more suitable to a behavioral analysis than to one derived from the current computer metaphor of cognitive science. The usefulness of these more accurately defined cognitive expressions for the scientific language of behavior analysis is discussed.