25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Simon Baron-Cohen: Radical Behaviorism
The central idea of Radical Behaviorism—that all behavior can be explained as the result of learned associations between a stimulus and a response, reinforced or extinguished through reward and/or punishment—stems from the early 20th century psychologists B.F. Skinner (at Harvard) and John B. Watson (at John Hopkins). Radical Behaviorism came under public attack when Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (published in 1957) received a critical review by cognitivist-linguist Noam Chomsky in 1959 ...12 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Possible Innate Nature of Language Acquisition in Chi...
Consider first the
nature of primary linguistic data. This consists of a finite amount
of information about sentences, which, furthermore, must be
rather restricted in scope, considering the time limitations that
are in effect, and fairly degenerate in quality (cf. note 1 4). For
example, certain signals might be accepted as properly formed
sentences, while others are classed as nonsentences, as a result of
correction of the learner's attempts on the part of the linguistic
community. Furtherm...It is possible that children are born with the ability to acquire language.