Question

Compare and contrast the empiricist and nativist theory on learning acquisition.

Answer 1

• One has to critically consider the empiricist position on language development which challenges the nativist theory that the the child is equipped with innate, domain-specific mental structures dedicated to learning language. Nativists like Chomsky and Pinker (2008) consider lexical rules to be too intricate simply to be passed down through the child’s environment.
• Conversely, empiricists argue that such genetic programmes are unnecessary as the child will learn all they need to know about grammar from the language of those around them.
• Empirical researchers focus primarily on environmental factors to understand how children acquire language skills from an early age. They believe that language is a learned behaviour within the child’s social context. This enables researchers to observe how children gradually acquire the rules of grammar and the complexities of word comprehension that eventually lead to the production of words and sentences.
• For the empiricist, knowledge is the product of experience and children are born with ‘general learning capacities’ which are sufficient to allow them ‘to learn the language of the community, including syntax’.Exposure to environmental stimuli such as social interactions, observations and schooling provide vital experience, stimulating intellectual development
• The foundations of the empirical approach to language acquisition can be separated into three areas. Firstly there is evolution, as most learning capacities within species are developed gradually, which must also be true for language. Secondly there are methodological implications. Experience within the child’s environment has been shown to be an evident factor which influences language acquisition.
• Finally, linking to the previous point there are major problems with accepting the idea of a biological instinct. It is difficult to prove that children possess innate linguistic knowledge of language as there is no evidence.
• In addition, empiricist researchers believe that the fragmentary acquisition of language during infancy facilitates the acquisition of more complex structures later on during the child’s developmental stages of learning. This can be explored using connectionist models, which enable theorists to test their theories regarding the cognitive architecture needed to realize the acquisition of grammar.
• Looking at Piaget’s ‘sensori motor stage’ can help elaborate on empiricism as he claimed that the main developmental task for the child is to learn the links between sensation and action, thus creating a basis for the construction of mental representations of the world, and hence thought.
• On the other hand, nativists propose that the ever-changing nature of experience does not have the sufficient stability to permit the individual to form ideas and knowledge. Nativists believe that the linguistic environment is too ambiguous and complex for the child. Therefore, believing that the child is born with a whole range of concepts and abstract knowledge already present in the mind that allow the child to make sense of an ever-changing environment.
• Empiricists focus on external environmental factors to explain the acquisition of language, nativists are more concerned with the internal, biological reasoning behind the complex rules governing linguistic syntactical knowledge.
• Chomsky (2005) states that language is a component of human biology and it is more or less on par with the systems of mammalian vision, insect navigation, and other innate features. Furthermore, Chomsky believes that the child is pre-wired with information – they only have to be exposed to relatively little language to set off triggers that act like switches. These triggers will, in turn, choose the route that the child’s own language has chosen.