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 explained entirely by principles of learning, including imitation, reinforcement, and discrimination. Arguing from 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 within a specific social context that accounts for the ease with which children acquire language.
In the exercise on the next page, review the examples of early language use and decide whether each provides evidence of the impact of either nature, nurture, or the interaction of nature and nurture in language development. Explain your reasoning.
- Whenever 8-month-old Juwan wants his mother, he calls out, “Mama,” and she comes running. Consequently, Juwan utters “Mama” much more frequently now that he did at 7 months of age.
Position Supported: - Even in her very first sentences, 21-month-old Melissa has obviously figured out the basics of subject-predicate word order. Seeing her mother returning from work, for example, she says, “Mommy home,” rather than “home Mommy.”
Position Supported: - Seven-month-old Tara, who is deaf, has begun to babbly manually at about the same time hearing infants begin babbling orally.
Position Supported: - 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 from languages other than her own.
Position Supported: