Chapter 2
Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Journey
Multiple Choice Questions
1. ______________________ suggest that children have an innate ability to talk that is realized with minimal
assistance from the environment.
a. Social Interactionists
b. Cognitivists
c. Behaviorists
d. Nativists
e. None of the above
2. According to the behaviorist view, ______________________ is the most important factor in language
acquisition.
a. Cognitive development
b. Biological maturation
c. The LAD
d. Language acquisition support structure (LASS)
e. The environment
3. You observe a child reaching for his juice cup on the counter. When his grandmother approaches, he looks at her
and reaches again for the juice, saying “juice!” The behaviorist would deem his utterance a/an
______________________.
a. Autoclitic
b. Mand
c. Tact
d. Intraverbal
e. Echoic
4. The theorist most closely associated with the behaviorist view of language development is _________________.
a. Skinner
b. Chomsky
c. Staats
d. Searle
e. Piaget
5. Any behavior whose frequency of occurrence can be affected by the responses that follow it is a ____________.
a. Discriminative stimulus
b. Tact
c. Reinforcement
d. Mand
e. Operant
6. You observe a child say “car!” His mother immediately responds with, “blue car!” The mother’s response would
be considered ______________________.
a. Shaping
b. An expansion
c. Parenting
d. An operant
e. Positive reinforcement
7. If you were to observe a mother using motherese or parentese, what would it sound like?
a. She speaks in a soft voice and at a low pitch
b. She emphasizes verbs with an exaggerated intonation pattern
c. She emphasizes the function words in sentences at a higher pitch
d. She speaks quieter than normal and at a consistent pitch
e. She uses a slightly higher pitch and an exaggerated intonation pattern
8. ______________________ was/were devised by nativists to account for the production of an unlimited number
of grammatically acceptable sentences.
a. Parallel distributed processes
b. Language acquisition apparatus
c. Case grammar
d. Passive transformation
e. Transformational generative grammar
9. Interactionists explain that variations in the acquisition of morphology are directly related to the
______________________ of the inflections of the language they’re learning.
a. Emphasis
b. Functions
c. Semantics
d. Saliency
e. Pitch
10. According to the interactionist view, the child is ______________________ in the process of acquiring
language, whereas in the behaviorist view, the child is ______________________ in the process of acquiring
language.
a. Passive, active
b. Reflexive, passive
c. Active, passive
d. Active, reflexive
e. Reflexive, active
11. Research shows that ______________________ exist(s) in both humans and monkeys and fire when one is
engaged in activity, as well as when one observes another engaged in activity.
a. Mirror neurons
b. Plastic brain cells
c. Arcuate fasciculus
d. Primary motor strip
e. Wernicke’s area
12. According to Chomsky, phrase structure rules ______________________.
a. Add, rearrange or delete elements of the deep structure
b. Operate on deep structure to derive surface structure
c. Describe the underlying relationships of words and phrases in the deep structure
d. Revise the word order of a sentence
e. Transform the active sentence into the passive sentence.
13. The basic assertion of the information processing theory is that ______________________.
a. Acquisition can best be explained by principles of learning
b. Function, not abstract grammar, generates language structure
c. In order to process information, children develop language structures
d. A child is born with innate abilities to learn grammar
e. Human beings are limited in their capacity to process information
14. The competition model is an example of a ______________________.
a. Parallel processing system
b. Language acquisition device
c. Language acquisition support structure
d. Serial pattern processing
e. Nativism theory
15. The self-organizing neural network is the result of the brain’s ______________________.
a. Mirror neurons
b. Arcuate fasciculus
c. Wernicke’s area
d. Broca’s area
e. None of the above
Short Answer & Fill-in-the-Blank Questions
Please do not use abbreviations to answer the following questions.
1. The innate language reservoir in the brain that is filled with information about the rules of language structure is
called ______________________________________________________________________.
2. On the continuum of the nature-vs.-nurture debate, the theory that would be most on the “nature” end is
__________________________________________.
3. The _____________________________________ technique can be used to reinforce small steps that gradually
approximate a target behavior.
4. The __________________________________________ act is concerned with the motive or purpose underlying
an utterance.
5. On the continuum of the nature-vs.-nurture debate, the theory that would be most on the “nurture” side is
__________________________________________.
Essay Questions
1. Pick one of the following pairs of theories to compare and contrast:
a. Nativism vs. Behaviorism
b. Social interactionism vs. Cognitive interactionism
2. Describe how operant and classical conditioning are used to explain language acquisition using examples.
3. Select the language development theory with which you are most closely aligned. Describe the basic tenets of
the theory, explain why you selected it, and describe how your interactions with children in a
therapy/educational setting could be influenced by this theory.
Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Journey
TEST BANK ANSWERS