Research for Cognitive Development Essay:
Research:
Language
Bates, E. (1999). Natura e cultura nel linguaggio [On the nature and nurture of language]. In R. Levi-Montalcini, D. Baltimore, R. Dulbecco, & F. Jacob (Series Eds.) & E. Bizzi, P. Calissano, & V. Volterra (Vol. Eds.), Frontiere della biologia [Frontiers of biology]. Il cervello di Homo sapiens [The brain of homo sapiens]. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Trecanni S.p.A., pp. 241-265.
some theorists have
proposed that the capacity for language must be built
directly into the human brain, maturing like an arm or a
kidney
Chomsky’s version of the theory of innateness is much
stronger than the “big brain” view, and involves two
logically and empirically separate claims: that language
is innate, and that our brains contain a dedicated,
special-purpose learning device that has evolved for
language alone. The latter claim is the one that is
really controversial, a doctrine that goes under various
names including “domain specificity”, “autonomy” and
“modularity”.
According to Skinner, there are no limits to what a
human being can become, given time, opportunity and
the application of very general laws of learning.
Humans are capable of language because we have the
time, the opportunity and (perhaps) the computing
power that is required to learn 50,000 words and the
associations that link those words together.
Jean Piaget argued that logic and knowledge
emerge in just such a fashion, from successive
interactions between sensorimotor activity and a
structured world.
Proponents of the emergentist
view acknowledge that something is innate in the
human brain that makes language possible, but that
“something” may not be a special-purpose, domainspecific
device that evolved for language and language
alone. Instead, language may be something that we do
with a large and complex brain that evolved to serve
the many complex goals of human...