William Bryceson
Where the learning of sports, skills and knowledge are studied definitively, one type of learning remains in discussion, contested, and argued on how it happens: language learning.
The process of general learning can be explained by behaviourism – a psychological approach focused on observable behaviour, viewing learning as a change in behaviour (mostly due to conditioning), repetition, and responding to stimuli from the environment around them. Arthur W. Staats developed psychological behaviourism, concluding that learning may occur from being rewarded for the correct response, via repetition, or through punishment and removal of rewards for incorrect behaviour.
Take learning how to adeptly shuffle a deck of cards as an example. A skilful shuffle is learnt through a process of gradual reinforcements, positive, personal feedback and repetition, until the skill becomes natural. Through these actions, they shape the correct behaviour of shuffling the cards with ease.
An example of a variant method of behaviourism is operant conditioning, which is a learning method where a voluntary behaviour is made encouraged or discouraged, because of the consequences of the behaviour. This is a route a child can take to learn which things it should do and which it shouldn’t via punishments and rewards and works well for simple behavioural tasks. However, again, this form of psychological behaviourism cannot sufficiently explain the same learning process for language. It can’t discuss how children learn grammatical rules, or address theories such as Chomsky’s language acquisition device.
In the case of language learning, psychologists have often argued that behaviourism simplifies and neglects the complex cognitive process of language acquisition. The famous linguist Noam Chomsky published a devastating critique of B.F. Skinner’s 1957 book, Verbal Behaviour (which claimed language learning to be identical to any other task), highlighting its limitations, steering the learning process towards cognitive theories. Skinner assumes that children only learn language from their environment and through conditioning, rejecting any innate ability or built in grammatical instinct. Skinner’s approach contrasts greatly with Chomsky’s, who promotes the idea that humans are born with “universal grammar” (UG). UG is not something specific to one language, but a theory that all human languages are based on a common set of principles, hardwired into the brain – possibly via evolution, or just as an instinct part of the brain that humans are born with. This would explain why children all over the world acquire language at similar stages of development, despite hearing and being exposed to very different volumes and quality of language from their environment.
Whilst children learn to speak their native tongue, many adults learn another language in their later life. The difference in learning processes between adulthood and childhood are very prominent and psychological behaviourism is a lot more present in the learning process in adulthood. This can be attributed to a greater neural plasticity as a child, because of the vast overproduction of neurons and synapses in your brain, enabling rapid learning and adaptation to new processes. When learning something as complex as a language as an adult, difficulties of Native Language Interference crop up, where adults already have a deeply entrenched first language, and tend to filter new language through the established rules and structures of their native tongue. The process requires more response to the environment, as well as conditioning. However, the psychological impact shows incredible benefits, linking adult bilingualism to delayed dementia offset, enhanced creativity, and even to an increase of grey matter (specifically in the left inferior parietal cortex) in the brain.
Learning a new language from scratch as an adult is an incredibly impressive feat. As previously discussed, when children learn their first language, their brains act like sponges, subconsciously and effortlessly absorbing grammatical and rhythmic structures, to the point where it is instinctive. They can refine and wire their brain to adapt to different sounds to specialise in the words and sounds they are immersed in. In contrast, adults – being in a much later stage in life – must consciously build those pathways, relying on memory and logic rather than instinct. However, fascinatingly, adults’ emotional and identity frames are often already formed in their mother tongue, so when someone learns another language, many bilinguals say that they reshape parts of how they think and feel. From becoming more humorous to more reserved, such is the complexity of the learning process that it will often permanently change them as a person.
Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeKeyser, R. (2000) ‘The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22(4), pp. 499–533.
Kuhl, P. K. (2004) ‘Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(11), pp. 831–843.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967) Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley.
Mechelli, A. et al. (2004) ‘Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain’, Nature, 431(7010), pp. 757–757.
Pinker, S. (1994) The Language Instinct. London: Penguin Books.
Skinner, B. F. (1957) Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Staats, A. W. (1996) Behavior and Personality: Psychological Behaviorism. New York: Springer.
Werker, J. and Tees, R. (2005) ‘Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain’, Developmental Psychobiology, 46(3), pp. 233–251.
