Language Learning - Skinner: Language Acquisition in Children - Behaviorist View of Language Acquisition – Imitation (Skinner)
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, ‘ ...