Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal behaviour Flashcards
What did Skinner mean by a functional analysis?
Skinner means identification of the variables that control this behaviour and specification of how they interact to determine a particular verbal response.
What does Chomsky claim makes Skinner’s programme so big and bold?
It is not primarily the fact that he has set functional analysis as his problem, or that he limits himself to study of observables, i.e., input-output relations. What is so surprising is the particular limitations he has imposed on the way in which the observables of behaviour are to be studied, and, above all, the particularly simple nature of the function which, he claims, describes the causation of behaviour.
What does Chomsky suggest that the prediction of the behaviour of a complex organism would require?
in addition to information about external stimulation, knowledge of the internal structure of the organism, the ways in which it processes input information and organises its own behaviour.
How does Chomskey therefore perceive the work of Skinner and behaviouralists on complex processes such as language?
“Anyone who sets himself the problem of analyzing the causation of behavior will (in the absence of independent neurophysiological evidence) concern himself with the only data available, namely the record of inputs to the organism and the organism’s present response, and will try to describe the function specifying the response in terms of the history of inputs. This is nothing more than the definition of his problem. “
i.e Studying this complex behaviour without studying the actual processes, is only studying the basic input and output which gives no substantial information about the causation of the process.
