1. A Review of B.F. Skinner’s
Verbal Behaviour
Noam Chomsky
Class Discussion

2. Keywords for Help
 Stimulus
 Response
 Reinforcement
 Innate
 Behaviour
 Is language nature or nurture?

3. B.F. Skinner’s Experiment
 Skinner’s experiment involves a rat being
placed in a box and it should deal with
pressing a bar to be able to get food.
 What did Skinner conclude about
human’s language from his experiment?
Skinners concluded that human’s
language, just like a rat’s behaviour, is
driven by stimulus.This means that our
language ability depends on the stimulus
in our environment.
 Opinion? Agree/Disagree with Skinner?

4. Chomsky’s Criticism on
Skinner’s Experiment
 Main idea:
Chomsky disagrees with Skinner’s idea because he thinks
that there is something innate in our mind that drives
human to acquire language, aside from the stimulus in the
environment.
 Supporting ideas:
This is supported by the fact that stimulus itself is going
back to the organism and not totally from the outside
physical world. It’s a complete retreat of psychology. We
cannot control the property object to which individual will
respond.
 Examples:
 Opinion? Agree/Disagree with Chomsky?