How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

Language development and acquisition in children

Language acquisition is a natural developmental process and is unique to Homo sapiens in which a child acquiring his or her mother tongue as a first language.  The simplest theory of language development is that children learn language by imitating adult language. A second possibility is that children acquire language through conditioning. Noam Chomsky put forward innateness hypothesis. Piaget ...

3. MAIN THEORIES ON ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT DEL LANGUAGE. 3.1 LEARNING THEORIES: WATSON AND SKINNER OPERANT CONDITIONING By the 1920s

Does a cell protein explain Covid-19 severity

Does a protein on the surface of some of our cells explain why certain people are more at risk from covid-19? The coronavirus attaches to a receptor protein on the surface(ACE) of our cells to gain entry to them. The protein is carried by cells in the nose, lungs and gut. It is possible that variation in how much of this protein people have may help explain why some are more likely to die from ...

Operant Conditioning: An Overview

Classical, or Pavlovian, conditioning is a process by which new emotional and glandular reactions develop in response to previously neutral stimuli in the environment. But classical conditioning doesn't explain how we develop new skills or behaviors instrumental in changing our external environments. That learning process involves what is typically referred to as instrumental, or operant, condi...

Mushroom-bodies mediate hierarchical interactions

Different brain circuits mediate the acquisition of skills and habits (via operant/instrumental learning) and the acquisition of facts (via classical/Pavlovian learning). Realistic learning situations always comprise interactions of skill-and fact-learning components (composite learning). So far, these interactions have escaped thorough scrutiny. Fixed flying Drosophila melanogaster at the torq...