Siegler’s Overlapping Waves Theory Applied to Language Development

According to Siegler’s overlapping waves theory, proposed in response to criticisms against traditional developmental theories, many different strategies would be available to a child for problem solving throughout development. Over time, the child would use some strategies more or less frequently, discover new ones, and eliminate others. Even though this theory has been applied mostly to arithmetic development, it can also explain some variations in language development. The present report presents Siegler and others’ work that allows the application of the overlapping waves theory to different components of language. According to this work, children’s strategy choice would depend on adult speech, task difficulty, concurrent learning, and efficient availability of efficient strategies.