Abstract
Some frustration and confusion are detectable in the work of those researching the psychology of language. The suggestion is made that the lack of focus is due, in part, to the lack of a dominant paradigm or overall system within which to view recent developments. It appears possible to isolate three broad and conflicting perspectives within the contemporary Zeitgeist: an Association position with behaviorist traditions, a Process approach with origins in general cognitive theory, and a Content approach which has evolved along with the resurgence of a nativist position in linguistic theory. Several issues-empirical, theoretical, and philosophical-are discussed, each within the context of the three potential paradigms. Although no effort has been made to be prescriptive, it would appear that the Process orientation provides the most radical alternative, and it is implicit throughout the paper that the Zeitgeist is moving in this direction.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arbib, M. A. (1969). Memory limitations of stimulus-response models.Psychol. Rev. 76: 507–510.
Bever, T. G. (1968). Associations to stimulus-response theories of language. In Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Bever, T. G. (1970a) The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In Hayes, J. R. (ed.),Cognition and the Development of Language, Wiley, New York.
Bever, T. G. (1970b). The integrated study of language behavior. In Morton, J. R. (ed.),Biological and Social Factors in Language Learning, Logos Press, London.
Bever, T. G., Fodor, J. A., and Garrett, M. A. (1968). A formal limitation of associationism. In Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Bloomfield, L. (1933).Language, Holt, New York.
Blumenthal, A. L. (1970).Language and Psychology: Historical Aspects of Psycholinguistics, Wiley, New York.
Braine, M. D. S. (1963). On learning the grammatical order of words.Psychol. Rev. 70: 323–348.
Brown, R. (1970).Psycholinguistics: Selected Papers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Brown, R., and Bellugi, U. (1964). Three processes in the child's acquisition of syntax.Harvard Educ. Rev. 34(2): 133–151.
Brown, R., and Fraser, C. (1963). The acquisition of syntax. In Cofer, C. N., and Musgrave, B. S. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and Learning, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Brown, R., Fraser, C., and Bellugi, U. (1964). Explorations in grammar evaluation. In Brown R., and Bellugi, U. (eds.), The acquisition of language.Monogr. Soc. Child Develop.29: No. 1.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review ofVerbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner,Language 35: 26–58.
Chomsky, N. (1964).Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Mouton, The Hague.
Chomsky, N. (1965).Aspects of a Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Chomsky, N. (1968).Language and Mind, Harcourt, New York.
Deese, J. (1970).Psycholinguistics, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
de Saussure, F. (1916).Cours de Linguistique Generale, Paris. Translated: Baskin, W. (1959).Course in General Linguistics, Philosophical Library, New York.
De Vito, C. (1970).Introduction to Psycholinguistics, Holt, New York.
Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.) (1968).Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Dulaney, D. E. (1968). Awareness, rules and propositional control: A confrontation with S-R theory. In Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J.
Ferster, C. B. (1964). Arithmetic behavior in chimpanzees.Sci. Amer., May.
Fillenbaum, S. (1971). Psycholinguistics.Ann. Rev. Psychol.
Fodor, J. A. (1966). How to learn to talk: Some simple ways. In Smith, F., and Miller, G. A. (eds.),The Genesis of Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Fodor, J. A. (1968)Psychological Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Fodor, J. A., and Bever, T. G. (1965). The psychological reality of linguistic segments,J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 4: 414–420.
Gardner, R. A., and Gardner, B. T. (1969). Teaching sign language to a chimpanzeeScience 165: 664–672.
Gardner, B. T., and Gardner, R. A. (1971). Two way communication with an infant chimpanzee. In Schrier, A. M., and Stollnitz, F. (eds.),Behavior of Nonhuman Primates, Vol. 4, Academic Press, New York.
Gibson, E. J. (1969).Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.
Gough, P. B. (1965). Grammatical transformations and speed of understanding.J. Verb. Learn Verbal Behav. 4: 107–111.
Halwes, T., and Jenkins, J. J. (1971). Problem of serial order in behavior is not resolved by context-sensitive associative memory models.Psychol. Rev. 78: 122–129.
Hayes, C. (1951).The Ape in Our House, Harper's, New York.
Katz, J. J. (1964). Mentalism in linguistics.Language 40: 124–137.
Kellogg, W. N., and Kellogg, L. A. (1933).The Ape and the Child: A Study of Environmental Influence upon Early Training, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Kimble, G. A. (1961).Hilgard and Marquis' Conditioning and Learning, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962).The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2nd ed., 1970).
Lakatos, I., and Musgrave, A. (eds.), (1970).Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967).The Biological Foundations of Language, Wiley, New York.
Lieberman, P., and Wilson, W. A. (1969). The phonetic “code” of primates. Paper presented at the meetings of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C.
MacCorquodale, K. (1970). On Chomsky's review of Skinner'sVerbal Behavior.J. Exp. Anal. Behav. 13: 83–99.
Mandler, G. (1969). Acceptance of things past and present: A look at the mind and the brain. In MacLeod, R. B. (ed.),William James: Unfinished Business, APA Inc., Washington, D. C.
McNeill, D. (1966). Developmental psycholinguistics. In Smith, F., and Miller, G. A. (eds.),The Genesis of Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
McNeill, D. (1968). On theories of language acquisition, In Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
McNeill, D. (1970).The Acquisition of Language: The Study of Developmental Psycholinguistics, Harper and Row, New York.
Miller, G. A. (1962). Some psychological studies of grammar.Am. Psychologist 17: 748–762.
Miller, G. A. (1964). The psycholinguists: The new scientists' of language.Encounter 23: 29–37.
Miller, G. A. (1965). Some preliminaries to psycholinguistics.Am. Psychologist 20: 15–20.
Miller, G. A. (1967).The Psychology of Communication: Seven Essays, Basic Books, New York.
Mowrer, O. H. (1954). The psychologist looks at language.Am. Psychologist 9: 660–694.
Neisser, U. (1967).Cognitive Psychology, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.
Osgood, C. E. (1963). On understanding and creating sentences.Am. Psychologist 18: 735–751.
Osgood, C. E. (1968). Toward a wedding of insufficiencies. In Dixon, T. R., and Horton, D. L. (eds.),Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory, Prentice-Hall, Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J.
Osgood, C. E. (1971). Where do sentences come from? In Steinberg, D. D. and Jakobvitz, L. A. (eds.),Semantics, Cambridge University Press, London.
Osgood, C. E.. Is neo-behaviorism up a blind alley? To appear in a collection of papers by C. E. Osgood, Mouton Press, The Hague.
Osgood, C. E., and Sebeok, T. A. (1965).Psycholinguistics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington (originally published 1954).
Premack, D. (1969). Language: On the difference between training a chimp to press a lever and telling it to press the lever. Invited Address, American Psychological Association Meetings, Washington, D.C.
Premack, D. (1971). On the assessment of language competence in the chimpanzee. In Schrier, A. M., and Stollnitz, F. (eds.),Behavior of Nonhuman Primates, Vol. 4, Academic Press, New York.
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1973). The role of competence theories in cognitive psychology.J. Psych. Res. 2: 21–50.
Reber, A. S. (1967). Implicit learning of artificial grammars.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 6: 855–863.
Reber, A. S. Toward a theory of implicit learning. In preparation.
Skinner, B. F. (1957).Verbal Behavior, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.
Slobin, D. (1965). Supplementary statement to grammatical development in Russian speaking children. In Riegel, K. F., (ed.), The Development of Language Functions, Report No. 8. Language Development Program, University of Michigan.
Slobin, D. (1966). Comments on McNeill's “Developmental Psycholinguistics.” In Smith, F., and Miller, G. A., (eds.),The Genesis of Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Slobin, D. (1971).Psycholinguistics, Scott, Foresman, Glenview, Ill.
Staats, A. W. (1968).Learning Language, and Cognition, Holt, New York.
Steinberg, D. D. (1971). Introduction to psycholinguistics section. In Steinberg, D. D. and Jakobvitz, L. A. (eds.),Semantics, Cambridge University Press, London.
Suppes, P. (1969a). Stimulus-response theory of finite automata.J. Math. Psychol. 6: 327–355.
Suppes, P. (1969b). Stimulus-response theory of automata and TOTE hierarchies: A reply to Arbib.Psychol. Rev. 76: 511–514.
Suppes, P., and Atkinson, R. C. (1960).Markov Learning Models for Multiperson Interactions, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, Calif.
Sutherland, N. S. (1966). Discussion of Fodor and Garrett's “Some reflections on competence and performance.” In Lyons, J., and Wales, R. L. (eds.),Psycholinguistic Papers, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
von Humbolt, W. (1936).Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues, Berlin.
Wickelgren, W. A. (1969). Context sensitive coding, associative memory, and serial order in speech behavior.Psychol. Rev. 76: 1–15.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
By psycho-linguistics is meant the sometimes joint efforts of both psychologists and linguists to unravel the problems of language. The term generally used ispsycholinguistics, without the hyphen. However, in recent years, due largely to the elegant and persuasive presentations of Miller (1964, 1965) it has come to refer to a particular form of the scientific study of psychological and linguistic problems (see, for example, Deese, 1970). It goes almost without saying that many of the theoreticians and researchers discussed in this paper would be somewhat distressed to find themselves so labeled. In deference to those who would disparage the title and to eliminate any distortions, this paper discusses the discipline ofpsycho-linguistics rather than that ofpsycholinguistics.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Reber, A.S. On psycho-linguistic paradigms. J Psycholinguist Res 2, 289–319 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067053
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067053