Language Acquisition – Theoretical Perspectives (Part 1 of 2 for this section; 44 minutes)
In this portion of lecture we consider nativity vs. empiricist theories and how they relate to language development.
We watch a video of The Wild Boy of Averyon, which is one of several special cases where a child was raised “in the wild” – basically abandoned – and left without any human intereaction for the first many years of his life. Therefore, he was not exposed to language during what can be considered a “critical period” of development of this cognitive domain. Why would we call this a critcal period versus a senitive period?
Although the boy was able to develop a means of communicating, he never developed the ability to use language? What is the evidence for this?
