Mini Investigation:

To what extent can Skinner's reinforcement theory explain the language used by Evie and her Grandmother?

Introduction:

• My investigation is based on an early theory in child language acquisition which was proposed by Skinner. He believed that children learn language solely through their environment, imitating behaviour they see; he used the principles of reinforcement to explain language acquisition. He said that when a child’s behaviour (i.e. speaking) is positively reinforced they will repeat the behaviour. Positive reinforcement can be in the form of smiling to acknowledging the child to giving them what they want. 
• As the conversation is between Evie and her Grandmother theory suggests that Evie's language will improve/she will learn the adult form, when her Grandmother uses positive utterances/techniques. 

Collecting the Data:

• I am using a transcript between a child aged (2 years, 7 months) and her Grandmother. This is only a short recording of Evie and her Grandma and therefore it cannot reflect Evie’s language as a whole which compromises the reliability of the findings, for example if Evie had had a bad morning her language may be poorer, meaning it is not consistent with her usual level. The findings cannot be extrapolated to a wider population such as other children in different parts of the world as it is only exploring the language use of one female child. This research is ethically sound as the legal guardians of Evie gave fully informed consent to this data being used. 

Analysis:

• Evie's Grandmother says 11 positive utterances, for example“very good we’ve got five things in the picture…” “yeah that’s good” “that’s lovely” and “ah you’re smiling a nice smile”, to keep the conversation moving. Compared to only one negative utterance, “…no not that bath the house bath…” However the Grandmother quickly follows with “…oh yeah that’s it…” Suggesting that the Grandmother thinks Evie will stop co-operating if she is too negative, it could also suggest that in the past Evie has not responded to negative comments very well and therefore her Grandmother prefers to use encouraging language to shape her behaviour as this is more effective for Evie.
• Echoing can be seen as a form of positive reinforcement as it shows to the child that they said the ‘correct’ thing, (the adult form.) In this transcript the Grandmother echoes a lot of what Evie says in order to keep her talking. For example, Evie says “some more” and her Grandmother says “some more things” Although her Grandmother has added to the utterance with the plural of the noun “things” it is a way of showing Evie that she is on the right tracks and it leads her to pick out more toys to take pictures of. Instead of the Grandmother correcting Evie on mispronunciations she instead repeats the word in the following utterance, for example when Evie says, “a picture of [pit ɘv] tigger (.) picture of [pɪtɘ] tigger” she mispronounces picture twice and in the following utterance Evie's Grandmother says, “we’ll take a picture of tigger yep okay grandma’s got one so picture of wolf picture of tigger who else shall we take a picture of?” containing the word ‘picture’ four times. The next time Evie says picture she pronounces it correctly, “in the picture.” This suggests that instead of telling Evie her mistake (negative reinforcement) repeating the word in the correct form will give a child the ability to learn, which Skinner suggests is how we acquire language- through imitating.

Conclusion:

• This data displays a caregiver using positive reinforcement frequently. Although it moves the conversation forward, there is not enough evidence to suggest that it improves her language ability. 
• As this is a mini investigation I was unable to explore in depth Evie’s language, if I were to carry out a larger investigation I would hope to explore other situations in which Evie and her Grandmother are speaking to see if Evie's Grandmother always uses positive reinforcement during conversation.
• Skinner's positive reinforcement with respect to language acquisition may be able to describe many children’s language, however from exploring this data I would suggest that Evie's grandmother does not choose to use positive reinforcement to increase Evie's language ability, but because they seem to have a good relationship and therefore she will treat Evie nicely.