Describe the nativist and interactionist perspectives of language development
What will be an ideal response?
Linguist Noam Chomsky proposed a nativist theory that regards language as a uniquely human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the brain. Focusing on grammar, Chomsky reasoned that the rules for sentence organization are too complex to be directly taught to or discovered by even a cognitively sophisticated young child. Rather, Chomsky proposed that all children have a language acquisition device (LAD)—an innate system that permits them, once they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear.
Recent ideas about language development emphasize interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences. One type of interactionist theory applies the information-processing perspective to language development. The most influential information-processing accounts are devised from research with connectionist, or artificial neural network, models. Connectionist researchers design computer systems to simulate the multilayered networks of neural connections in the brain and program them with basic learning procedures.
Other theorists blend Chomsky's nativist perspective with the information-processing proposal that the human brain is extraordinarily skilled at detecting patterns. According to the social interactionist perspective, native capacity, a strong desire to understand others and to be understood by them, and a rich language environment combine to help children discover the functions and regularities of language. Children's social competencies and language experiences greatly affect language development. In reality, native endowment, cognitive-processing strategies, and social experience may operate in different balances with respect to each component of language.
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What will be an ideal response?