- Dominant school of psychology from the 1920’s to 1960’s
- A psychological theory that is related to the development of L1 acquisition
Behaviorist Theory
- It can be traced back to job Watson’s (1924) habit formation hypothesis.
- The association of a particular response with a particular stimulus constitute a habit
- Behaviorist theory of language acquisition was fully developed and propounded by B.F. skinner in his book verbal behavior (157)
- In Classical behaviorism of Watson, the stimulus is said to elicit the response
- If stimulus occurred sufficiently and frequently then the response became automatic
- Neo-behaviorism of skinner emphasized the consequences of response
- Ivan Pavlov grounded he theory of classical conditioning
- Pavlov experiments with dog while Thorndike’s experiments with cats in puzzle boxes.
- Their claim is that all animals including human beings are born with a set of instinctive responses to external stimuli
- Theories of habit formation could be applied to language learning
- Skinner’s operant conditioning focuses on using either reinforcement or punishment to increase or decrease the likelihood of behavior
- Positive reinforcements are rewards whereas, negative ones are punishments, Learning of habit can occur through imitation or reinforcement
- This theory explained language acquisition in humans
- Behaviorism is an approach to FLA based on the assumption that behavior can be empirically studied
- Effective language behavior is the responses to appropriate stimuli
- Learning takes place when learners have the opportunity to make the appropriate response to a given stimulus
Claims
- All animals and humans have natural tendency of instinctive response to external stimuli
- Language is a part of social behavior
Criticism
- Neglects innate abilities
- Neglects Creativity
- Mixing human language with animal language
- Cannot explain how a child learns to produce grammatically correct sentences which they never anyone to say before.