Behaviourism CLD Flashcards
Tabula rasa
“Blank slate”
Lenneburg 1967
Critical period hypothesis- if a child does not learn a lang before the onset of puberty, the child will never master language.
What do behaviourists believe?
Lang is acquired through imitation and reinforcement.
Who is the key behaviourist?
B.F. Skinner
What did Skinner come up with?
Operant conditioning, positive and negative reinforcement.
Operant Conditioning
Idea that either a positive or negative response given by caregivers influence the way a child talks.
Positive reinforcement
Positive feedback given to a child which is thought to encourage similar performance again.
Negative reinforcement
Lack of feedback, correction, negative feedback
B.F. Skinner
Children learn to speak by imitating their parents and being rewarded/punished according to their utterances.
How did Skinner develop his theory?
Experimenting on rats, who responded well to the reward/punishment game.
What does Skinner’s theory look like?
- Adults modelling/ teaching lang and children responding.
- Children imitating + repeating speech.
- Children learning/ repairing mistakes after correction from adults.
FOR Skinner
- Imitations of accents/dialects
- Learn politeness = pragmatics elements of lang
- Repeat lang they have heard around them and incorporate into theirs’
AGAINST Skinner
- Research not conducted on humans but rats.
- Imitate but don’t necessarily understand the meanings.
- ‘Fis’ phenomenon
- Pinker- create unheard utterances
