form whole sentences or phrases. So they are called holophrases. When they are to months of age, children enter a two-word stage and begin to use two words together. The two-word stage exemplifies telegraphic speech .
Like telegrams (got admission, send money) it contains mostly nouns and verbs. Close to their third birthday, i.e. beyond two-and-a- half years, children’s language development gets focused on rules of the language they hear. How is language acquired?
You must be wondering: “How do we learn to speak?” As with many other topics in psychology, the question of whether a behaviour develops as a result of inherited characteristics (nature) or from the effects of learning (nurture) has been raised with regard to language. Most psychologists accept that both nature and nurture are important in language acquisition. Behaviourist B.F. Skinner believed we learn language the same way as animals learn to pick keys or press bars (refer to Chapter on Learning).
Language development, for the behaviourists follow the learning principles, such as association (the sight of bottle with the word ‘bottle’), imitation (adults use of word “bottle”), and reinforcement (smiles and hugs Bilingualism, Brainstorming, Concepts, Convergent thinking, Creativity, Decision- making, Deductive reasoning, Divergent thinking, Functional fixedness, Illumination, Images, Incubation, Inductive reasoning, Judgment, Language, Mental representation, Mental set, Multilingualism, Problem solving, Reasoning, Remote association, Syntax,