Question

Which of the following best supports the innate mechanism theory?

1) Swavek, a child who was born congenitally deaf, signs only using grammar associated with his parent's native language.
2) Baby Nancy seems to prefer to listen to a stranger speak rather than listen to her mother playing piano.
3) Despite being born into a single-mother household, baby Lidia's first word was "Dada"; this suggests an innate predisposition for the word associated with father.
4) Three-year-old Rachel will often say, "we drived in Mommy's car." Her mother has only just started to learn English and will often misuse grammar rules.

Answer 1

Option 4 best supports the innate mechanism theory because it illustrates how a child applies grammatical rules that were not explicitly taught by the mother, indicating an internal, possibly innate, capacity for language acquisition.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question of how children acquire language has been debated by theorists like B. F. Skinner, who proposed a behaviorist view that language learning is a response to reinforcement, and Noam Chomsky, who introduced the concept of an innate language acquisition device (LAD) that suggests a biological predisposition for learning language. To determine which of the provided options best supports the innate mechanism theory, we must look for evidence of language development that cannot be easily explained by environmental factors or reinforcement alone.

Option 1 suggests an innate understanding of grammatical structure that is not explicitly taught. Option 2 shows a preference for human speech which could be related to innate interest in language. Option 3, while interesting, does not necessarily indicate an innate mechanism, as the word "Dada" could have been acquired through the environment. Option 4 illustrates how a child can internalize language rules that have not been explicitly taught by those around them, again suggesting internal, innate mechanisms at play.

Therefore, the example that best supports the innate mechanism theory is option 4, as it shows a child using rules of grammar in a way that hasn't been modeled by the child's primary language input, which is her mother. This suggests the possibility of an innate capacity to acquire language, aligning with Chomsky's theory.