For this post I wanted to mainly focus on the three different theories, and I wanted to determine which one I believed the most.
The first theory is that infants need to be taught. This theory basically just states that all learning is acquired through association and reinforcement. I liked how they compared this theory to the Pavlov's dog experiment. This helped back up the theory because just as infants associate objects with words that have been repeated often the dogs learned to associate the sound of a tone with the presentation of food.
The second theory is Social Impulses Foster Infant Language. This theories belief is that infants communicate because humans are social beings. It states that it is the emotional messages of speech are the focus of early communication. Out of the three theories that is the one that I don't believe in.
The last theory is the Infants Teach Themselves. This is the theory that language is innate.
Out of all three theories I personally believe that infants need to be taught.
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ReplyDeleteIf i would have to choose only one i would likely also choose the theory that infants need to be taught. This is obviously true, as young children who are deprived of stimulus don't develop properly mentally or emotionally. But considering what we learned about the innate language acquisition device and our inborn desire to communicate i think there are measures of truth in the other theories as well. If we weren't wired to connect with other humans and/or lacked the innate ability to speak would we be able to learn language or have any motivation to learn language.
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