Give
one example of operant conditioning in humans (suitable examples
would include the acquisition of language),
and evaluate operant conditioning as explanations of human behaviour.
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"They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps."
—
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labor Lost
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of young children is the breathtaking speed with which they acquire language. By the age of 2. most children use language to communicate hundreds of messages. By the age of 5, children who may not even have started school have mastered most of the grammatical rules of their native language. However, very few parents are consciously aware of the rules of grammar. Thus, young children simply "pick up" the complex rules of grammar without the benefit of much formal teaching.
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Language development can be divided into receptive language (language comprehension) and productive language (language expression or speaking). Children have better receptive language skills than productive language so we cannot assume that children's speech reflects all the knowledge of language that they have learnt. Children usually learn language in a certain order: Phonology - they learn how to make sounds Semantics - they learn what the sounds mean Syntax - grammatical rules indicating how to make sentences Pragmatics - how to change what they say to fit the situation |
Skinner claimed that language is acquired by means of operant conditioning, in which learning is controlled by reward or reinforcement. According to this approach. only those utterances of the child that are rewarded or reinforced become stronger.
Language develops through a process of shaping, in which respnses become progressively closer to the correct response to be rewarded. As they make sounds, they get excitement and responses from their caregivers. These responses are positive reinforcement, because the baby likes the attention. Operant conditioning suggests that when we get a positive response for a behaviour, we do it again, so the baby is likely to make that sound again – e.g. ‘dada’. There is a two-way interaction in that the care-giver will reinforce the right sounds by their responses, and the baby will respond more to get this attention. Language is shaped by these reinforcement patterns. Those sounds not reinforced are the ones lost in the early months (first year).
Imitation is often involved, with the child trying to repeat what his or her parent has just said. This is known as an echoic response.
A tact is involved when a child is rewarded for pronouncing a sound that resembles the correct pronunciation of the word. A mand is involved when the child learns a word whose meaning has significance for him or her.
Watch the programme 6. Language Development at http://www.learner.org/resources/series138.html#
and complete the worksheet on language acquistion