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Language Learning theories: the

behaviorist and Mentalist approaches
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Behaviourism
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What is the Behaviourist Theory?

Learning is nothing more than the

acquisition of new behaviour based on
environmental conditions.
 This theory implies that the learner responds to environmental stimuli
without his/her mental state being a factor in the learner’s behavior
 Individuals learn to behave through conditioning
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The Theorists

Pavlov (1849 – 1936)

Skinner (1904 – 1990)
Watson (1878 – 1958)
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Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

 Russian scientist
 Nobel prize winner in 1904
 Famous for “Pavlov’s dogs”
 CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
Pavlov (1902) started from the idea
that there are some things that a
dog does not need to learn. For
example, dogs don’t learn to
salivate whenever they see food.
This reflex is ‘hard wired’ into the
dog. In behaviorist terms, it is an
unconditioned response (i.e. a
stimulus-response connection that
required no learning).
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Classical Conditioning

 First Pavlov established that meat caused the dog to salivate.

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Classical Conditioning

 Then Pavlov established that a tone did not cause the dog to salivate
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Classical Conditioning

 He then presented the tone with the food

 Notethat the dog is salivating in response to the
food at this time.
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Classical Conditioning

 After several pairings of the tone and food, Pavlov found that the dog
would salivate to the tone when it was presented alone.
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 From this experiment, Pavlov coined terminology to explain the

experimental process:

 The food is the unconditioned stimulus, eliciting an unconditioned

response (required no learning) of salivation. If a bell (conditioned
stimulus) immediately precedes the presentation of food
(unconditioned stimulus) then, after several pairings of the bell and
the food, the bell (conditioned stimulus) acquires the ability to elicit
the conditioned response of salivation.
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Classical Conditioning

 To condition means to mould someone or something to a certain way

of behaving or thinking.
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Match the term to its meaning
Unconditioned The reflexive response that occurs after
stimulus exposure to the conditioned stimulus.

Conditioned The innate (reflexive) response to a

stimulus stimulus that has not been conditioned.

The stimulus that causes the reflex response

Unconditioned
before conditioning. It is the stimulus that
response naturally produces the response.

The stimulus which, after repeated pairings

Conditioned
with the unconditioned stimulus, produces
response the response.
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Burrhus Frederic Skinner

 American Psychologist
 Author

 Famous for “Skinner box”

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Skinner’s Theory

“Changes in behaviour are the result of an

individual's response to events”
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Skinner

 Skinner developed the theory of operant conditioning by

conducting experiments with animals such as rats and pigeons.

 One of his famous experiments involved a rat in a Skinner box.

The rat had to learn to press the lever that would provide food
and avoid the lever that would give an electric shock
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Operant Conditioning

 It works on the assumption of learning through reward and

punishment.

 The main influences are; positive reinforcement (reward), negative

reinforcement and punishment.
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Operant conditioning
 The “Skinner box” was used in order to
investigate the impact of reward and
punishment on behaviour.

 Their reward was food and they were

required to learn (in a variety of ways)
how to get it.
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Reinforcement and punishment

 Reinforcement is anything that increases the likelihood of a

behaviour repeating
 Reinforcement can be either positive or negative.
 Positive reinforcement is reward
 Negative reinforcement involves punishment.
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Key assumptions of
behaviourism
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Key assumptions of behaviourism
 When born our mind is
'tabula rasa' (a blank slate).
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Key assumptions of behaviourism
 People have no free will – a
person’s environment
determines their behaviour. We
are puppets on strings!
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Key assumptions of behaviourism
 Behaviourism is primarily
concerned with observable
behaviour, as opposed to internal
events like thinking and emotion.
+ SKINNER’S VIEW ON LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION

 Skinner viewed babies as ‘empty vessels’ which language had to

be ‘put in to’

 No complicated innate or mental mechanisms are needed. All that is necessary

is the systematic observation of the events in the external world which prompt
the speaker to utter sounds.

 operant conditioning - child goes through trial-and-error in

other words he tries and fails to use correct language until it
succeeds; with reinforcement and shaping provided by the
parents gestures (smiles, attention and approval) which are
pleasant to the child.
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Criticism by Chomsky

 Children are often unable to repeat what an adult says

especially if the adult utterance contains a structure the child
has not yet started to use.

 Simple and well-defined sequence of events observed in the boxes of rats is

just not applicable to language.

 Observational studies of parent-child conversations (Brown and

Hanlon, 1970) show that parents rarely reinforce correct
grammar in a child’s speech, but instead tend to focus on the
truthfulness or accuracy of statements.
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Chomsky’s Approach
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Who is Chomsky?

 Avram Noam Chomsky

 Born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia

 Studied at University of Pennsylvannia – BA, MA and PhD

 American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,

logician, political commentator and activist

 Sometimes described as the “father of modern linguistics”

 Wrote over 100 books

 Especially critical of the work of B. F. Skinner

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CHOMSKY’S VIEW ON LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
 He argues that language acquisition is an innate structure, or
function, of the human brain.

 Chomsky believes that there are structures of the brain that control
the interpretation and production of speech.

 Children do not need any kind of formal teaching to learn to speak.

 Factors that Chomsky used to support his theory:

 There is an optimal learning age. Between the ages 3 to 10 a child is the
most likely to learn a language in its entirety and grasp fluency.
 The child does not need a trigger to begin language acquisition, it
happens on its own. The parent does not need to coax the child to speak, if
it around language production, the child will work to produce that language
on its own
 It does not matter if a child is corrected, they still grasp the language in
the same manner and speak the same way. During one stage, a child will
make things plural that are already plural.
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 Creativity is another fundamental aspect of language which is

stressed repeatedly by Chomsky.

 By this he seems to mean two things:

 Humans have the ability to understand and produce new/innovative
utterances. Even quite strange sentences, which are unlikely to have been
uttered before, cause no problems for speakers and hearers. For example:
the elephant drank seventeen bottles of shampoo, then skipped drunkenly
round the room.
 Secondly, utterances are not controlled by external happenings. The
appearance of a daffodil does not force humans to shriek “Daffodil”. They
can say whatever they like: what a lovely color, it’s spring etc.
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 So, it becomes clear that there is much more to language than merely
stringing together words. In order to speak a human possesses a
highly complex internalized set of rules which enables him to utter
any of the permissible sequences of English.

 Children have managed to build an automatic grammatizator – a

device which will account for all and only the permissible sequences
of English.
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How do children construct ‘automatic
grammatizators for themselves?

 At the moment the issue is an open one. Two possibilities exist:

 Possibility 1: Human infants know in advance what languages are

like.

 Possibility 2: No special advance knowledge is needed because

children are highly efficient puzzle-solvers in all areas of human
behaviour. Language is just one type of puzzle which their high level
of general intelligence enables them to solve fast and well.
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 Chomsky’s belief that humans are genetically imprinted with

knowledge about language is often referred to as “the innateness
hypothesis.”

 Chomsky claims that the mind is constituted of mental organs just as

specialized and differentiated as those of the body.

 He merely claims that a blueprint is there, which is brought into use

when the child reaches a certain point in his/her general development.
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Limitation

The theory is hard to prove because it is not allowed to isolate

somebody just to do a research.
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CONCLUSIONS

 Environment makes contribution in both theories:

 As for Chomsky, he believes that as long as there are people available to
speak to the child, the child’s biological endowments will do the rest.
 But for Skinner, he believes that children will learn by imitation,
reinforcement that comes from the environments.
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That’s all for today. See you in next

class!!!