PSYA02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Exemplar Theory, Language Acquisition Device, Frontal Lobe
52
PSYA02H3 Full Course Notes
Verified Note
52 documents
Document Summary
All infants begin with one-word utterances before moving on to telegraphic speech then to simple sentence that include function morphemes. Or orderly progression might depend on experience w/ a specific language. Language acquisition process is subject of controversy b/w 3 approaches; behaviorist, nativist and interactionist. According to bf skinner"s behaviorist explanation of language learning: we learn to talk in the same way we learn any other skill: through. Reinforcement, shaping, extinction, and other basic principles of operant conditioning . Infants nature and begin to vocalize, those vocalizations that aren"t reinforced gradually diminish, those reinforced stay in the developing child"s repertoire. They also imitate speech patterns they hear usually shaped by parents or other adults by reinforcing those that are grammatical and ignoring/punishing those ungrammatical. Behavioral explanation is attractive b/c it offers simple account of language development, but theory cannot account for fundamental characteristics of language development. 1st; parents don"t spend much time teaching their children to speak grammatically.
