Editing Psycholinguistics (section)

===Language acquisition===
{{Main|Language acquisition}}
Though there is still much debate, there are two primary theories on childhood language acquisition:

* the [[behaviorism|behaviorist]] perspective, whereby all language must be learned by the child; and
* the [[Innatist hypothesis|innatist]] perspective, which believes that the abstract system of language cannot be learned, but that humans possess an innate language faculty or access to what has been called "[[universal grammar]]".

The innatist perspective began in 1959 with [[Noam Chomsky]]'s highly critical review of [[B.F. Skinner]]'s ''[[Verbal Behavior]]'' (1957).<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Chomsky N, Skinner BF |year=1959 |title=A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior |journal=Language |issn=0097-8507 |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=26–58 |doi=10.2307/411334 |jstor=411334}}</ref> This review helped start what has been called the ''[[cognitive revolution]]'' in psychology. Chomsky posited that humans possess a special, innate ability for language, and that [[Syntactic Structures|complex syntactic features]], such as [[recursion]], are "hard-wired" in the brain. These abilities are thought to be beyond the grasp of even the most intelligent and social non-humans. When Chomsky asserted that children acquiring a language have a vast search space to explore among all possible human grammars, there was no evidence that children received [[Poverty of the stimulus|sufficient input to learn]] all the rules of their language. Hence, there must be some other innate mechanism that endows humans with the ability to learn language. According to the "[[innateness hypothesis]]", such a language faculty is what defines human language and makes that faculty different from even the most sophisticated forms of animal communication.

The field of linguistics and psycholinguistics has since been defined by pro-and-con reactions to Chomsky. The view in favor of Chomsky still holds that the human ability to use language (specifically the ability to use recursion) is qualitatively different from any sort of animal ability.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Hauser MD, Chomsky N, Fitch WT | title = The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? | journal = Science | volume = 298 | issue = 5598 | pages = 1569–79 | date = November 2002 | pmid = 12446899 | doi = 10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 }}</ref>

The view that language must be learned was especially popular before 1960 and is well represented by the [[Mentalism (psychology)|mentalistic]] theories of [[Jean Piaget]] and the empiricist [[Rudolf Carnap]]. Likewise, the behaviorist school of psychology puts forth the point of view that language is a behavior shaped by conditioned response; hence it is learned. The view that language can be learned has had a recent resurgence inspired by [[emergentism]]. This view challenges the "innate" view as scientifically [[Falsifiability|unfalsifiable]]; that is to say, it cannot be tested. With the increase in computer technology since the 1980s, researchers have been able to simulate language acquisition using neural network models.<ref>{{cite book | title=Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development | last1=Elman |first1=Jeffrey | last2 = Bates | first2 = Elizabeth | last3 = Johnson | first3 = Mark | last4 = Karmiloff-Smith | first4 = Annette | last5 = Parisi | first5 = Domenico | last6 = Plunkett | first6 = Kim | name-list-style = vanc | year=1998 | publisher=The MIT Press}}</ref>