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

Deitz (1986) looked at the way kids say things like "I forgot" or "I guessed." The paper says these words are not tiny ghosts in the head. They are just more behavior that happens in a setting.

The author maps each mental idiom to plain behavioral events. For example, "I forgot" equals "I once could say it, now I cannot under these cues." No new brain boxes are needed.

The paper finds kids' cognitive talk can ride safely inside ABA vocabulary. You keep the kid's words, but you redescribe them with observable cues, responses, and histories.

This lets clinicians record "I forget" as data without buying a mind-machine.

Eilon et al. (2025) extends the idea into autism. They show autistic 3- to 11-year-olds understand verbs like "think" and "know" less well than peers. Theory-of-Mind scores predict how well they get "know." So the words Deitz (1986) calls safe may need extra teaching for this group.

Brown (2025) and Leigland (1987) echo the same move: clean up our talk. Brown wants "lapse" kept separate from "relapse;" S wants one label for inhibition. All three papers push the field to speak in slices everyone can see and count.

There is no clash. Deitz (1986) gives the green light to use kids' words; Inbal shows you may need to train the meaning first. Method difference, not disagreement.

You can keep your session notes in the child's own voice without sounding mentalistic. When a learner says "I can't remember," jot the cue, the pause, and the final response. That line is now behavioral data. For autistic clients, check they truly grasp the verb before you treat self-reports as solid. Clean language travels better across teams, parents, and payers.