Meanings
- uncountableThe theory that children acquire cognitive and behavioral abilities in a series of stages that reflect the biological development of the child's brain and body.
Maturationism is a theoretical perspective that emphasizes the contribution of biological processes to children's development.
2007, Moncrieff Cochran, Rebecca S. New, Early Childhood Education, page 5093 more examples
The overall regularity of development explains why a maturational theory survived as well as it did, but pure maturationism was nevertheless a straw-man position, vulnerable to attack.
1982, Robert J. Sternberg, Handbook of Human Intelligence, page 614Here I would like to give two arguments for the selection of constructionism over maturationism as the correct underlying theory of acquisition.
1989, David Ingram, First Language Acquisition, page 73Much like perceptionism, maturationism is not an entirely homogeneous body of theoretical assumptions, but rather a kind of leading idea (in the sense of Chomsky, 1981).
2013, Juergen Weissenborn, Helen Goodluck, Thomas Roeper, Theoretical Issues in Language Acquisition, page 27
Origin
Cite this entry
maturationism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maturationism
“maturationism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maturationism. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “maturationism,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/maturationism.
Source: maturationism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.