Psychology : $b A study of mental lifeWoodworth, Robert Sessions
Science
Psychology : $b A study of mental life
Woodworth, Robert Sessions
Psychology
Compare with this experiment another one no less successful, though it
turned out differently. To discover whether the song of the oriole is
fixed by nature or learned by imitation, Scott took some little ones,
just hatched, and brought them up away from older birds. After a time,
when growth had advanced to a certain stage, the birds began {94} to
sing. The elementary notes and rattles characteristic of the oriole
made their appearance, but were combined in unusual ways, so that the
characteristic song of the oriole did not appear, but a new song. When
these birds had grown up in the laboratory, other new-hatched orioles
were brought up with them, and adopted this new song; so that the
laboratory became the center for a new school of oriole music. The
experiment showed that the elements of the oriole's song were provided
by nature, while the combination of these elements was acquired by
imitation.
Probably this last is about the result one would get in the analogous
case of human speech, if a similar experiment should be tried on
children. Without an experiment, we have certain facts that point to a
conclusion. The child uses his vocal organs from birth on; and before
he reaches the age when he imitates the speech of others, he produces
various vowels and consonants, and even puts them together into simple
compounds, as "da-da" and "goo-goo." So far, deaf children do about
the same as others, affording additional evidence that so much of
speech is native. To get real speech, however, further combinations of
the speech movements must be made, and the combinations (words) must
have meaning attached to them. These higher achievements are evidently
the result of learning, since the child uses the words that it hears
spoken, and attaches the same meanings to them as people do about it.
The child comes to speak the language of those about it, without
regard to the speech of its ancestors. His "native language" is
therefore acquired, though the elements of vocal utterance are truly
native, and apparently are alike all over the world without regard to
the various languages spoken.
{95}
Is Walking Native or Acquired?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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