Education

Behaviorist View of Language Acquisition – Imitation (Skinner) ·          This school of psychology believes that mental states are unspecific and all behavior can be explained as stimulus and response relations. ·          Learning is produced by rewarding or punishing the results of the active behavior of a human or any other organism as it interacts with the environment. According to him Reinforcement is a stimulus that increases the probability of a desired response. ·          Behaviorists did their experiments with animals and concluded that they could be taught various tasks by encouraging habit formation. This can be done by rewarding the desirable behavior ( Positive Reinforcement) and taking away the desirable behavior or object ( Negative Reinforcement) Skinners’ Theory of Language Acquisition In Verbal Behavior (1957) Skinner stated, ‘ ...

PSYCHOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING Language development in children Structure of Language Language is a system of symbols and rules that is used for meaningful communication. A system of communication should have following criteria in order to be considered as language. ·          Symbols: These are sounds, gestures or written characters used for representing objects, action, events and ideas. ·          Meaningful: Language is meaningful and can be understood by other person using it. ·          Generative: Symbols of language can combine to form infinite messages. ·          Rules: Language contains certain rules which need to be followed. The Building Blocks of Language 1.        Phonemes are the smallest distinguishable units in a language. Ex. Single (t, ...