Historically, many theories of development have pitted biology, or nature, again

Question

Historically, many theories of development have pitted biology, or nature, against environment, or nurture. For example, attempts to explain the ease with which babies acquire language focused either on the ways in which parents teach language to their children or on the emergence of the infant's innate language abilities. Behaviorist B. F. Skinner believed that language development could be explainedtirely by principles of learning, including imitation, reinforcement, and discrimination. Arguing against the nurture position, linguist Noam Chomsky maintained that language is far too complex to be mastered so early and so easily through learning alone. Instead, Chomsky maintained that our language capacity is inborn More recently, developmentalists have concluded that both Skinner's and Chomsky's theories have some validity but that neither is completely correct; rather, it is the interaction of nature and nurture win a specific social context that accounts for the ease with which children acquire language. In this exercise, review he ollowing examp es of language use and decide whether ea prov Explain your reasoning es ev dence o the impact o nature nuru orthe neraction of nature and nurture n anguage development. Examples 4. When Michelle was an infant, she was able to perceive differences among the spoken sounds of many languages. As she grew, her preference for hearing her native language actually influenced the development of her brain. Now a teenager, Michelle can no longer perceive certain speech sounds form languages other than her own.

Explanation / Answer

Answer: As explained in this question, both nature and nurture plays role in language development and it is a topic of debate as both nativist (Noam Chomsky) and empiricist (B.F.Skinner) emphasize on their views of language development. Chomsky says that all children have an innate language acquisition device (LAD), an area of the brain that has different neural connections for all languages. On the other hand Skinner said that it is necessary for children to engage with environment to learn language because they get language stimuli from the environment only. And it is proved by researches that both the reasons for language development and acquisition are valid.   

Language development takes place as result of the involvement of biological predisposition that is specific brain areas and environmental inputs/ stimuli. Children acquire the forms, meanings and uses of words and utterances from the linguistic input from the environment and brain gives them ability to acquire these inputs. Hence both nature (biological/ brain areas) and nurture (environmental inputs) are important for language acquisition and development.

In this question only one example is visible and explanation for language development for this example is as follows;

For first statement- “Michelle was an infant and able to perceive differences among sounds of many languages”, here this capability of perceiving different sounds is purely a brain functioning. Because every sound perception has different neural activity or neural pathway and therefore different sounds activate different neural connections. In this age brain development is at its pace and perception of different sounds is possible if infant is getting different stimuli from the environment. If only one type of stimulus will be given to the infant, infant’s different neural pathways would not be activated and brain development for language acquisition will be affected accordingly.

For second statement in the example-“as she grows up her preference for hearing her native language actually influenced the development of her brain”, here preference for hearing her native language is purely an environmental factor (nurture) because as she listens her native language more, her brain’s neural pathway will be activated and develop accordingly or more for native language as compared to other languages. Her learning capacity for native language will be more as compared to others as brain functioning for other languages will be less. Hence as she grows up in her preferences of language, first nurture plays important role and then it is carried further by neural connections, hence both nature and nurture acting simultaneously for language acquisition and development.

For third statement- “Michelle is no longer able to perceive certain sounds from languages other than her own”, because her environment gave her more stimuli for native language as compared to others and her brain/neural functioning get adopted for the same and neural pathways for other languages remain inactive and hence could not develop properly. Because maximum brain development takes place till the age 15-16 years of age. Therefore after this age new language acquisition becomes tough task. Here again if environment had given her stimuli for different languages Michelle could have been able to perceive sounds from other languages as well.

Hence both nature and nurture are important and responsible for language development in human being.     

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