Chapter 6

The main part of chapter 6 that really interested me was the 3 different theories of language learning. Language learning is a combination of outside factors. It is affected through behaviorism, the sociocultural theory and universalism. The first theory, behaviorism, says that infants need to be taught step by step and through reinforcement. It says that parents are expert teachers, need to reinforce repetitive speech and through this, help infants learn to speak. B.F Skinner believes this theory and brought up an example of this. Whenever a mother hears their child saying "ma ma ma ma", the mother reinforces that by saying the same thing back to the child with grins and high pitched voices along with praise. Infants like this response from the parent, then repeat those sounds. The second theory is called social pragmatic. This says that outside social factors affects the infants speech. It says that infants communicate with humans because they need humans to survive and be joyful. The third theory is when infants teach themselves. This goes along with the LAD. It is innate and built in. A child is already born with the ability to eventually speak and adults cannot teach a child to speak. I think this one out of all three is the strangest. I think human interaction and peoples responses and repetition is how children learn. It is difficult to teach yourself. Infants need a reaction out of other people to know what to say and how to progress. This section was just interesting to read because the three theories are opposite of each other.