What was Chomsky’s view on first language acquisition, and what impact did his theory have on psychology?
What will be an ideal response?
Chomsky argued that language is too complex to be explained by operant principles,
maintaining that the human brain is genetically programmed to generate language, with
each child being born with brain structures (a language acquisition device) that make it
relatively easy for the child to learn the rules of language; the deep grammar and
syntactical structures that are common to all languages. Chomsky argues that children
cannot learn these rules if they have to rely solely on principles of association (such as
frequency or contiguity), and on Skinnerian reinforcement. Chomsky’s argument
helped weaken the influence of behaviorism in psychology, and many consider his
review of Skinner’s 1957 book Verbal Behavior to be the first shot of the “cognitive
revolution,” and his arguments had an even bigger effect since he was from linguistics
rather than psychology.
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Dominic tells you that he is married to Jennifer Lopez and that together, they rule the world. Vincent tells you that all the other patients and the staff are talking about his case and what to do about him. Dominic suffers from delusions of ____, whereas Vincent suffers from delusions of ____
a. grandeur; reference b. control; grandeur c. persecution; control d. reference; persecution
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a. a framing effect b. functional fixedness c. the representativeness heuristic d. the availability heuristic
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