SEMIOTIC ASPECTS OF COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENT - ILLUSTRATIONS FROM EARLY MATHEMATICAL COGNITION

The premise of this article is that cognitive development involves bot h conceptual and semiotic achievements. From this perspective, the aut hors emphasize the distinctness of the semiotic issues and develop a d ifferentiated appreciation of semiotic aspects of cognition, particula rly in the field of elementary mathematical cognition. The authors pro vide semiotic analyses of the differences between counting, adding, an d multiplying and of the conventional place-value sign system. The aut hors introduce the concept of the field of reference of a sign, the di fferentiation of the field into foreground and background, and the dyn amics within the field of reference. Finally, the authors relate these ideas to the dynamics between two dimensions of semiotic relations: t he sign-referent dimension and the sign-sign dimension.