The Psychology Book

THE LANGUAGE

ORGAN GROWS

LIKE ANY OTHER

BODY ORGAN

NOAM CHOMSKY (1928– )

IN CONTEXT

APPROACH

Nativism

BEFORE

1958 B.F. Skinner uses

operant conditioning to

explain language development,

arguing that children learn

words and phrases through

reinforcement.

1977 Albert Bandura argues

that children may imitate the

general form of sentences, and

fill in these with specific words.

AFTER

1994 Steven Pinker argues

that language is an instinct

from an innate program

hard-wired in the brain, which

arose because it was adaptive

for human survival.

2003 Psychologists Stan Kuczaj

and Heather Hill claim parents

offer children better examples

of grammatical sentences than

Chomsky suggests.

I

n the middle of the 20th

century, learning theory as

explained by B.F. Skinner

and Albert Bandura dominated

psychologists’ conception of

language development. These

behaviorists believed that

language—like all other human

faculties—was a direct result

of environmental input and

learning, developed through

the reinforcement and reward

techniques at the heart of operant

conditioning. Skinner noted that

when children imitate verbal

sounds, and form correct

words, they receive immediate

reinforcement and approval from

their parents, which motivates

294