1. Thinking & Language (Chapter 10)
Unit 5
Thinking & Language (Chapter 10)

2. Clear your desks & get out a writing stick.
Vocab Quiz
Clear your desks & get out a writing stick.

3. Part 2
Language

4. Entry Task
On average, how many words do you think you learn per day between ages 0 & 18?
The average high school graduate knows ~60,000 words. That’s 3,500 words each year, 10 words a day.
Your teachers only consciously taught you an average of 200 words a year.

5. Language Development Theories
Operant Learning: Skinner (1957, 1985) believed that language development may be explained on the basis of learning principles such as:
Association: linking sights of things with the sounds of words
Imitation: mimicking words and syntax modeled by others
Reinforcement: giving smiles and hugs when the child says something right
OBJECTIVE 13| Discuss Skinner’s and Chomsky’s contributions to the nature-nurture debate over how children acquire language, and explain why statistical learning and critical periods are important concepts in children’s language learning.

6. Language Development Theories
Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky (1959, 1987) opposed Skinner’s ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn.

7. Language Development Statistical Learning and Critical Periods:
Well before our first birthday, our brains are discerning word breaks by statistically analyzing which syllables go together.
These statistical analyses are learned during critical periods of child development.

8. Genes, Brain, & Language
Genes design the mechanisms for a language, experience modifies the brain.

9. Language & Age
Learning new languages gets harder with age.

10. Language Development
Discovering Psychology #6: Language Development