Ling 10 4/11/13
Psycholinguistics in Schools
Individuals going into the field of school psychology will quickly realize the significance of linguistics in language development. It is essential that workers within this field are prepared to meet the tasks that they are about to come across. Furthermore, with the ever growing population of ESL students(English as Second Language) it is imperative that the school psychologist is capable of analyzing and diagnosing any problems the students may have. Having this background in Psycholinguistics will help the school psychologist break down the various cognitive elements to the student, such as pragmatics, syntax, and semantics.
Through the studies of psycholinguistics, individuals in the field of school psychology learn many theories that tie into general psychology ideology. For example, B.F. Skinners “Box” and Jean Piaget, both Behaviorists, have an investment in psycholinguistics. Within B.F. Skinner's theory, he designed a platform in which he displayed what he called “operant conditioning”. The act of stimuli affecting specific behavior of an organism. Jean Piaget can also work in cohesion with B.F. Skinner, as he created his developmental stages off of schemas(how we understand/interact within our world). Although these two focus on two separate paths, they both provide two equally useful theories to derive our thought from.
In addition to Jean Piaget and B.F. SKinner, Noam Chomsky, known as the “father of Linguistics”, adds a more cognitive based approach to this field of study. He explains that what makes humans separate from every other living organism in this world is our language acquisition abilities. This is all processed by a part of the brain that Mr. Chomsky called, the LAD(Language Acquisition Device). Although these Linguists/psychologists individually have their own theories, information can be used from each of them, because they all provide a different outlook that may be