<p>Hi there. </p>
<p>Got this essay to do and my question is "to what extent are environmental factors important in language acquisition". I'm focusing on 1st language and the nature/ nurture debate of it. Would anyone know or have any suggestions on where to find information, theories, experiments/studies, evaluation of theories etc on this topic?</p>
<p>cheers,
montage</p>
<p>my psychology textbook, "Exploring Psychology" by David G. Myers, has a fair amount on language acquisition. Some theorists include B.F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky. It also refers to studies by Janet Werker, Kuhl & Meltzoff, Petitto & Marentette, MacNeilage & Davis, Pallier, Baker, Jenny Saffran, Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport. I'd try googling a few of those names for a start.</p>
<p>What is this for? What a bizarre application question! It must be for school, no?</p>
<p>Yeah. It's for school. If anyone of you know 'IB', its for our 'Extended Essay', which is a major part of the course.</p>
<p>You could narrow down the concept of "environment", the most obvious one is the environment of parenting, parenting plays a very important role before the walking stage, study on developmental theories you could look for:
Frued's theory of human development (the stages)
Erikson's theory of psychosocial development
Piaget's theory of cognitive development
also look for examples from scholarly articles rather than your own story
be careful not to forget to quote
one key word "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"</p>