Theories and hypothesis in psycholinguistics

1. Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics 1
Abolfazl Ghanbari
Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics
Behaviourist Theory
 B.F Skinner's Verbal Behaviour (1957)
 Skinner's behavior learning approach relies on the components of classical,
which involves unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, and operant conditioning
but particularly the elements of operational conditioning. Operational
conditioning refers to a method of learning that occurs through rewards and
punishments for behavior.
 Skinner believed that language could be treated like any other kind of cognitive
behavior. According to the behaviorist theory, language learning is a process of
habit formation that involves a period of trial and error where the child tries and
fails to use correct language until it succeeds.
 Since the babblings were rewarded, this reward reinforces further articulations
of the same sort into groupings of syllables and words in a similar situation
(Demirezen, 1988).
Innateness Theory
 Noam Chomsky's innateness or nativists theory proposes that children have an
inborn or innate faculty for language acquisition that is biologically determined.
 It seems that the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain
linguistic information at birth and this natural predisposition to learn language is
triggered by hearing speech.
 Chomsky has determined that being biologically prepared to acquire language
regardless of setting is due to the child's language acquisition device (LAD), which is
used as a mechanism for working out the rules of language.
 According to Chomsky, infants acquire grammar because it is a universal
property of language, an inborn development, and has coined these fundamental
grammatical ideas that all humans have as universal grammar (UG).
Cognitive Theory
 Jean Piaget: children do not think like adults and so before they can begin to
develop language they must first actively construct their own understanding of
the world through their interactions with their environment.

2. Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics 2
Abolfazl Ghanbari
 Language is only one of the many human mental or cognitive activities and many
cognitivists believe that language emerges within the context of other general
cognitive abilities like memory, attention and problem solving because it is a part
of their broader intellectual development.
 Piaget's cognitive theory states that, children's language reflects the development
of their logical thinking and reasoning skills in stages, with each period having a
specific name and age reference.
 There are four stages of Piaget's cognitive development theory: Sensory-Motor
Period, Pre-Operational Period, Egocentrism, Operational Period
Social Interactionist Theory
 Vygotsky's social interaction theory incorporates nurture arguments in that
children can be influenced by their environment as well as the language input
children receive from their care-givers.
 The interaction theory proposes that language exists for the purpose of
communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction with adults
and older children. It stresses the importance of the environment and culture in
which the language is being learned during early childhood development because
this social interaction is what first provides the child with the means of making
sense of their own behaviour and how they think about the surrounding world.
 This tailored articulation used by care-givers to young children to maximize
phonemic contrasts and pronunciation of correct forms is known as child-directed
speech (CDS).
 Vygotsky also developed the concepts of private speech which is when children
must speak to themselves in a self guiding and directing way- initially out loud
and later internally
 Vygotsky also developed the concepts of zone of proximal development which
refers to the tasks a child is unable to complete alone but is able to complete with
the assistance of an adult.
 Another influential researcher of the interaction theory is Jerome Bruner who
elaborated and revised the details of the theory over a number of years and also
introduced the term Language Acquisition Support System (LASS), which refers to
the child`s immediate adult entourage but in the fuller sense points to the child`s
culture as a whole in which they are born.

3. Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics 3
Abolfazl Ghanbari
Usage-Based Theory
 According to Tomasello (2003), the usage-based approach to linguistic
communication may be summarized in the two aphorisms:
• Meaning is use
• Structure emerges from use
 The usage-based theory of language suggests that children initially build up their
language through very concrete constructions based around individual words or
frames on the basis of the speech they hear and use.
 children learn language from their language experiences and a language structure
emerges from language use.
 Tomasello (2003) also emphasizes the effects of frequency of use on cognitive
representations, as patterns that are repeated for communicative reasons seem
to become automated and conventionalized.
 the more often a linguistic form occurs in the input, the more often it is
experienced by the child and the stronger the child's representation of it
becomes. It will then be activated more easily when using it themselves on
subsequent occasions.
Optimality Theory
 proposed by Prince and Smolensky
 OT suggests that the observed forms of language arise from the interaction
between conflicting constraints and like other models of linguistics, contain an
input and an output and a relation between the two.
 the faithfulness constraints, which say that input and output are identical.
Faithfulness is the general requirement for linguistic forms to be realized as close
as possible to their lexical "basic forms" and violations of faithfulness lead to
differences between input and output (Archangeli & Langendon, 1997). Another
term coined by the optimality theory is markedness, which refers to the continuum
that language-universal and language-specific properties rest on, with completely
unmarked properties being those found in virtually all languages and extremely
marked properties being found quite rarely.

4. Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics 4
Abolfazl Ghanbari
The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
 The Innatist perspective is often linked to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
(Lenneberg)
 There is a specific and limited time period (i.e., “critical period”) for the LAD to
work successfully.
 The lateralization of brain function refers to how some neural functions, or
cognitive processes tend to be more dominant in one hemisphere than the other.
The medial longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct
cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum.
 The critical period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years.
Krashen’s ‘Monitor Model’
 The acquisitionl learning hypothesis: Krashen suggests that we 'acquire'
language as we are exposed to samples of language that we understand in much
the same way that children pick up their first language-with no conscious
attention to language form.
 the monitor hypothesis, second language users draw on what they have
acquired when they engage in spontaneous communication. They may use rules
and patterns that have 6een learned as an editor or 'monitor', allowing them to
make minor changes and polish what the acquired system has produced.
 The natural order hypothesis: was based on the finding that, as in first
language acquisition, second language acquisition unfolds in predictable
sequences. The language rules that are easiest to state (and thus to learn) are not
necessarily the first to be acquired.
 The comprehensible input hypothesis: is that acquisition occurs when one is
exposed to language that is comprehensible and contains i + I. The 'i' represents
the level of language already acquired, and the '+1’ is a metaphor for language
(words, grammatical forms, aspects of pronunciation) that is just a step beyond
that level.
 Krashen's affective filter hypothesis: is proposed to account for the fact that
some people who are exposed to large quantities of comprehensible input do not
necessarily acquire language successfully. (anxiety, motivation, self-esteem)

5. Theories and hypothesis in Psycholinguistics 5
Abolfazl Ghanbari
The interaction hypothesis
 conversational interaction is an essential, if not sufficient, condition for second
language acquisition.
 comprehensible input is necessary for language acquisition.
 modified interaction is the necessary mechanism for making language
comprehensible. That is, what learners need is opportunities to interact with
other speakers, working together to reach mutual comprehension through
negotiation for meaning.
Comprehensible output hypothesis
(Merrill Swain’s 1985): when learners must produce language that their interlocutor
can understand, they are most likely to see the limits of their second language ability
and the need to find better ways to express their meaning. The demands of producing
comprehensible output, she hypothesized, ‘push’ learners ahead in their development.
The noticing hypothesis
Richard Schmidt (1990, 2001) proposed the noticing hypothesis, suggesting that
noting is learned unless it has been ‘noticed’. Noticing does not itself result in
acquisition, but it is the essential starting point. From this perspective, comprehensible
input does not lead to growth in language knowledge unless the learner becomes aware
of a particular language feature. Second language learners could not begin to acquire a
language feature until they had become aware of it in the input.