Social conditioning of vocalizations in the infant.

Naming appears to be the source of the explosion in language development and involves the integration of the initially separate listener and speaker responses. This integration has a role in the development of reading, writing, and the following and construction of verbal algorithms that make types of complex human behavior possible. Considerable research has investigated the role of Naming in the emergence of derived relations. Recent research has also investigated the emergence of Naming itself. We describe these experiments and the experiences that function to induce Naming. We also describe evidence about preverbal developmental cusps that are foundational to the emergence of Naming and the evidence on its reinforcement sources. The isolation of the role of the environment in the emergence of Naming identifies stimuli that were said to be missing in accounts that were critical of Skinner's (1957) account of verbal behavior. These arguments purported that the phenomenon was not attributable to learning because of the ''poverty of the stimulus.'' Some of the relevant stimuli now appear to be identified.

Section: Whence the Original Reinforcement For Naming?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

Greer

Longano

2010

“…In direct reinforcement the delivery of reinforcement is mediated through another. person, and it is easy to observe and document its positive effects on infant vocal behavior (e.g., Rheingold, Gewirtz, & Ross, 1959). There is a second type of reinforcement that is less obvious, and much less researched, but perhaps at least equally potent as an independent variable relevant to the emergence of infant babbling.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of automatic reinforcement in early language acquisition

Sundberg¹,

Michael

Partington

et al. 1996

137

176

The vocal behavior of five children was recorded and analyzed during pre-and post-pairing conditions. Between these conditions there was a pairing condition where a target sound, word, or phrase was paired with an established form of reinforcement (e.g., tickling). In the first experiment all of the children emitted the targeted responses during the post-pairing condition. The results showed that the children acquired new vocal and verbal responses by pairing neutral stimuli with established forms of conditioned or unconditioned reinforcement. Perhaps the most significant aspect of these results was that new vocal responses were acquired by the children without the use of direct reinforcement, echoic training, or prompts. In the second experiment several parameters of the pairing procedure were examined. The results of the two experiments have implications for the analysis of native language acquisition, and for the development of language intervention procedures for individuals who fail to acquire language.Most children around the world readily acquire their parent's or caretaker's language, despite the fact that no special instruction is provided. This phenomenon, typically identified as native language acquisition, has generated a substantial amount of research and controversy (e.g., Chomsky, 1959;Skinner, 1957). What makes this universal event intriguing is that native language acquisition occurs only early in life, and only for a first lan-The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Cassie Braam,

“…For example, children are provided positive evidence (a) when their grammatically correct utterances are directly reinforced by adults (e.g., Rheingold, Gewirtz, & Ross, 1959;Weisberg, 1963); (b) when their grammatically correct utterances are indirectly reinforced by adults by means of automatic reinforcement (e.g., Smith et al, 1996;Sundberg et al, 1996); and (c) when adults provide grammatically correct exemplars (e.g., Moerk, 1983). Further, they are provided direct negative evidence when their grammatically incorrect utterances result in corrective feedback (e.g., Moerk, 1991) as well as indirect negative evidence by usually not being exposed to grammatically incorrect utterances (e.g., Gold, 1967).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

Schoneberger

2010

Three popular assertions have hindered the promotion of an empiricist approach to language acquisition: (a) that Brown and Hanlon (1970) claimed to offer data that parents do not reinforce their children's grammaticality; (b) that Brown and Hanlon also claimed to offer data that parents do not provide negative evidence (i.e., corrective feedback) for ungrammaticality; and (c) that Gold (1967) claimed to offer a formal proof showing that, without negative evidence, a child cannot acquire a language solely from environmental input. In this paper I offer introductory comments on the nature-nurture distinction (including interactionism, and the nativists' claim to have found a gene for language). Next I debunk the three aforementioned assertions by arguing that the authors (Brown & Hanlon; Gold) never made the claims attributed to them; review evidence on the role of reinforcement and corrective feedback in language acquisition; and offer some concluding comments.