Page 85 - Demo

Language Development MODULE 13 215MAKE IT STICK!1. ____________ argued that a child will repeat a parent%u2019s words to earn the parent%u2019s praise.2. ____________ argues that humans wired to acquire language.3. Which of the following statements best summarizes the positions of B. F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky in the language acquisition debate?a. Behaviorists think language is acquired through rewards, and cognitive psychologists think the brain is wired to learn language.b. Language is acquired in stages according to behaviorists, but cognitive psychologists think it is acquired mostly in childhood.c. Cognitive psychologists emphasize how we model language use, and behaviorists look to brain research to explain language acquisition.d. Noam Chomsky thinks language is best learned as an adult, and B. F. Skinner thinks it%u2019s easiest to learn language as a child.4. Studies of bilingual speakers show that language influences the way we ____________.Most psychologists today believe that Chomsky and Skinner were both partially right and partially wrong. Chomsky%u2019s view that humans have a predisposition to learn language helps explain why all languages in the world have complicated sets of rules that children seem to master at amazingly young ages. Skinner%u2019s view that we learn language through association, imitation, and rewards helps explain why we speak the language we hear at home. As is the case in so much of psychology, language is neither simply nature nor simply nurture. It%u2019s both, and these aspects interact to give us a rich tool with which we communicate events, feelings, beliefs, and emotions to other humans.Language acquisition is important because language influences how we think. Bilingual individuals experience this all the time, and the impact can be profound. For example, when Chinese-born students at a university in Canada were asked to describe themselves in English, their descriptions were similar to those of native Canadians (expressing positive self-statements and moods). When they were asked to describe themselves in Chinese, they responded with statements that would be typical of Chinese culture and values (with roughly equal positive and negative self-statements and moods).10 It%u2019s almost as if they became slightly different people when they switched languages! One Czech proverb observes, %u201cLearn a new language and get a new soul.%u201dNext, let%u2019s look at how and when children master this wonderful tool we call language. (And also look at Thinking Like a Psychological Scientist: Animal Language to discover whether animals can learn human languages.)THINKING LIKE A PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENTISTAnimal LanguageDo animals have language?Psychologists have been trying to answer this question for more than a century, most often with chimpanzees. In the 1930s, Winthrop and Luella Kellogg raised an infant chimpanzee, Gua, in their home, along with their son, Donald. They wondered whether the chimpanzee might develop language abilities if they raised it as a human. The Kelloggs did learn some interesting things from their work with Gua, but%u2014despite eating in a highchair and wearing clothes like little Donald%u2019s%u2014the chimpanzee never did learn to talk.11(Continued)%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.