Psychology › Thinking, memory & biases › The cognitive revolution
Language and Chomsky's challenge to behaviorism
1957; review of Skinner 1959· Theory or model
Mixed evidenceSome support; effects smaller or less consistent than once thought.
Noam Chomsky argued that children learn language too fast, from too little input, for rewards and imitation alone to explain it.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957) treated speech as behavior shaped by reinforcement. Chomsky, a young MIT linguist, attacked it in a 1959 review: children produce sentences they have never heard and master complex grammar by about age four, with little correction. He proposed an inborn 'universal grammar', a built-in template shared by all human languages. The review became a rallying text of the cognitive revolution.
Why it matters
It made language a window on the mind and helped topple behaviorism. The debate over what is inborn versus learned still shapes linguistics, child development and AI.
The evidence
Mixed evidence. That reinforcement alone cannot explain language is widely accepted. A strong inborn universal grammar is contested: surveys of the world's languages find fewer universals than predicted, and infants pick up statistical patterns from speech (Saffran, 1996).
Open questions
AI language models learning grammar from text alone have revived the question of how much must be built in, though they train on vastly more words than any child hears.
Connections (3)
▸Language and Chomsky's challenge to behaviorism attacked the language theory of B. F. SkinnerWell replicated
The connection
Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957) explained speech as responses shaped by reinforcement. Chomsky's 1959 review argued this could not account for children producing endless new sentences or learning grammar with little correction. Skinner never formally replied, and many psychologists read the review as a knockout blow to behaviorism's account of language.
Who showed it and when
The journal Language, 1959; Chomsky was a 30-year-old MIT linguist, Skinner a famous Harvard psychologist.
The evidence
The review itself, one of the most cited documents in psychology's history; Skinner later said it missed his point.
Open questions
Some argue Chomsky caricatured Skinner's view, and modern statistical-learning research revives part of the idea that language is learned from experience.
▸Language and Chomsky's challenge to behaviorism helped launch The cognitive revolutionWell replicated
The connection
Chomsky's argument that language requires inner rules and inborn structure showed behaviorism could not explain a central human ability. His 1956 MIT talk and 1957 book Syntactic Structures gave psychologists a model of the mind as a rule-based system, energizing the new cognitive approach.
Who showed it and when
MIT symposium on information theory, September 1956; Syntactic Structures, 1957; the Skinner review, 1959. George Miller worked with Chomsky around 1960.
The evidence
Miller and other founders named Chomsky as a key influence, and the 1956 symposium is commonly treated as cognitive science's birth.
Open questions
Chomsky's influence on psychology outlasted acceptance of his specific theories; how much the revolution depended on him is debated.
▸Language and Chomsky's challenge to behaviorism was the first ability traced to Brain regions and localization of functionWell replicated
The connection
Language was the first mental ability convincingly pinned to a place. In 1861 Paul Broca found that a patient who understood speech but could only say 'tan' had damage in the left frontal lobe. In 1874 Carl Wernicke linked comprehension to the left temporal lobe. Localization of function was established.
Who showed it and when
Bicêtre Hospital, Paris, April 1861, patient Louis Victor Leborgne ('Tan'); Carl Wernicke in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), 1874.
The evidence
Broca's autopsy findings, Leborgne's brain preserved in Paris, and a 2007 MRI scan of it showing damage extended deeper than Broca described.
Open questions
Modern imaging shows language relies on wide left-hemisphere networks, not two spots; how this fits Chomsky's innate language faculty is debated.