Nature vs. Nurture Continued

     Earlier in the year, Mrs. Perl mentioned that the debate of nature vs. nurture was an ongoing debate that has many sides to it. The debate actually continues when looking at Skinner vs. Chomsky's contributions to the nature-nurture debate over how children acquire language. Skinner, a pro-behaviorist, takes on the nurture side to the debate of language-development. He says that we learn language by the familiar principles of association, where we put things of similar sights and sounds together to make words. He also focuses on imitation of words and syntax that we model after others and reinforcement, where we are smiled and hugged by our parents when we correctly say something.
     On the other hand, Chomsky takes on the nature position, and believes that we are born with language acquisition devices that are biological and that prepare us to learn language. His evidence lies in the species-wide presence of language and its underlying universal grammar. Children have an incredible capacity to learn new vocabulary, and this is a uniform sequence in the stages of language development.
     The nature-nurture debate lives on...