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Language Development
A process concerned with the determinants, processes, and mechanisms of acquiring language. For decades, researchers from different disciplines and theoretical perspectives have investigated this issue along the continuum of nature (biology) and nurture (environment). Among many others, three theories have been influential: behaviorist, nativist, and interactionist.
From the behaviorist perspective, language develop ment is due to environmental influences. Behaviorists believe that children learn language through recognizing and forming associations between experience and language. Therefore, they claim that young children's language development is the result of imitation as well as parents' and other caretakers' behavioral reinforcement.
The nativist view of language development was initially backed by Noam Chomsky's theory that humans are biologically programmed to acquire language. Specifically, Chomsky argues that the biological determinant is the inborn language ...