Chomsky vs. Skinner on Verbal Behavior

This post will explore the various aspects of this monumental intellectual and historical debate through an annotated bibliographic review of the most relevant research literature over the past century.

Chomsky, N. (1959). A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26–57.

Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior is considered to be a classic in 20th century thought, and was a turning point in the shift from behaviorism to cognitivism in psychology and related disciplines. The following annotated bibliography discusses several papers cited in this classic, and several papers that cite the classic itself. This highlights the intellectual changes that took place before and after its publications.

Skinner, B.F. (1938). Behavior of Organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.

Besides Verbal Behavior itself, this is the first main reference of Skinner’s other work by Chomsky. He takes Skinner to task for never quite clarifying the ways in which operant conditioning functions through the notions of eliciting stimuli, discriminated stimuli, and “originating forces.” Chomsky considers these terms to be confused and not able to really do the work that Skinner wants them to do. Chomsky specifically mentions that things get really tricky when the discriminating stimuli are private internal events.

Skinner, B.F. (1950). Are Theories of Learning Necessary? Psych. Rev., 57, 193–216.

In this paper, Skinner argued that the contemporary learning theories of his day were essentially mislead and did not do any useful theoretical work. Skinner wanted to stick to a more data driven, positivist position. Chomsky covers multiple lines of research, which show that the simple nature of Skinner’s views does not cover the types of learning and various nuanced behaviors that had been discovered and empirically supported. He mounts a series of very hard-hitting attacks on Skinner’s limited and tightly constrained behaviorist language. Furthermore, he breaks down Skinner’s use of certain theoretical terms, which he argues is often simply just covers for “lower-status” terms such as intention, belief, etc.

Miller, N.E., Dollard, J (1962) Social Learning and Imitation. New York, pp. 82–83

This paper is one that Chomsky actually cites in minimal support of Skinner’s views on language learning. He discusses the idea that language learning can take place by “the careful arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement,” and this paper is one that actually explored that topic. Skinner’s own ideas of course had come from animal studies, so this jump to language learning in humans was a contested one. Yet while acknowledging the existence of such work, Chomsky shows how several problems have plagued such investigations and the meticulousness of the research seemed to bring its ecological validity into question.

Berlyne, O.E. (1950). Novelty and Curiosity as Determinants of Exploratory Behavior. Brit. Jour. of Psych., 41, 68–80.

Chomsky cites this paper as one that gives strong evidence for factors such as novelty and curiosity in exploratory behavior in rats. These are terms which, of course, Skinner would have contested, and possibly tried to reinterpret in his own behavioral language. But the dynamics of these factors are shown by Chomsky to be a bit more than the Skinner’s thin theoretical apparatus can handle.

Birch, H. G., Bitterman, M.E (1949). Reinforcement and Learning: The process of Sensory Integration. Psych. Rev., 56, 292–308.

One of the main ideas at hand between Chomsky and Skinner is the idea that drive reduction is necessary for learning. Chomsky cites a variety of other work, which challenges this view. In this particular paper, Birch and Bitterman give evidence that so-called sensory-sensory conditioning is a process of learning, which does not require or involve drive reduction at all.

Olds, J. (1955). A Physiological Study of Reward in D. C. McClelland, ed., Studies in Motivation New York: Appleton-Century-Crafts, Inc., pp. 134–43.

This paper is cited by Chomsky as another example of strong evidence that drive reduction is not necessary for learning. Interestingly, this work showed that direct stimulation of the brain could produce reinforcement, and concludes, “that reward need not satisfy a physiological need or withdraw a drive stimulus.” These types of experiments were the kinds that effectively put dents into Skinner’s views on learning.

Lenneberg . (1964). The Capacity for Language Acquisition. in J. A. Fodor, ed., The Structure of Language. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Chomsky cites this paper in defense of the idea that language acquisition may have a strongly innate and genetic component to it. Of course, Chomsky would become famous for his proposal of the language acquisition device (LAD). But this and other earlier work explored how certain aspects of learning, in animals and humans, could be shown to be innate and many of the behaviorist’s “blank slate” views could be discounted in certain areas of learning.

Quine, W.V.O. (1953). From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge. esp. chapters 2, 3, 7.

Skinner argued that his analysis of tact and stimulus control for verbal behavior was an improvement over the traditional analysis, which was in terms of reference and meaning. Chomsky rejects this idea and quotes Quine’s influential work on meaning and reference to show how Skinner’s reformulation of the traditional terms actually lacks substance and is at times ambiguous. Hence, these terms are not as productive or progressive theoretical moves as is presumed by Skinner and the behaviorists following in his footsteps.

Lashley, K., et al. (1951). The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior. L. A. Jeffress, ed., Hixon Symposium on Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

In aiming for a functional analysis of verbal behavior, Chomsky argues that Skinner had simply aimed too high, and attempted a degree of understanding not quite possible at the contemporary stage of knowledge about language. Chomsky cites this paper in a discussion of how, by seriously considering the data, it simply cannot be the case that the generation of an utterance is simply the stringing together of a sequence of responses. The syntactic organization is not directly represented in the physical structure of the utterance. Therefore, a “multiplicity of integrative processes” and “selective mechanisms” are at work underneath, yet are very hard to investigate.

Bruner, J.S., Goodnow, J.J., Austin, G.A. (1953). A Study of Thinking. New York.

In closing his review, Chomsky cites this paper as part of the growing recognition of the cognitive and innate views of human learning and behavior. He discusses how it must be the case that there is some biological structure to language learning in human children. Skinner’s attempts to eliminate the contribution of the speaker and “mentalistic” notions, this same move only leads to a superficial understanding of verbal behavior that will forever leave the interesting aspects of language a mystery.

Andersen, J.T. (1990). Skinner and Chomsky Thirty Years Later. Historiographia Linguistica, 17.

This paper reviews the whole Skinner versus Chomsky debate and what it means for psychology. Andersen highlights the importance of that debate and how it was really a pivotal intellectual turning point. Andersen highlights the conditions that led Chomsky’s overturning of Skinner, and he suggests that Skinner’s role and contribution to linguistics should be reconsidered because of recent changes in the field of linguistics. Andersen’s paper shows the oscillating nature of the ongoing debate between these two figures and the schools that they represent.

Richelle, M., Foster, W.S. (1976). Formal Analysis and Functional Analysis of Verbal Behavior: Notes on the Debate Between Chomsky and Skinner. Behaviorism.

Richelle and Forster review the idea that the downfall of behaviorism was essentially due to the rise of psycholinguistics, with Chomsky being the prime representative of the generativism that came out of that area of research. However, the authors challenge this uncritical acceptance of Chomsky’s critique of Skinner and the intellectual trends that unquestioningly followed it, by investigating the critique and the role that behaviorism played up until that point.

Capaldi, E. (1999). Contextualism in Psychological Research? A Critical Review. Sage.

The author critically reviews the recent trends of contextualism and relativism in psychology and propose an updated philosophy of science for the field. Contextualism is intertwined with behaviorist views and their emphasis on functional analysis. On the other hand, the tradition that Chomsky initiated, with more cognitive and innate views, being more universal and non-situational, the debate of contextualism versus other philosophies can be shown to have its roots in the debate between Chomksy and Skinner.

MacCorquodale, K. (1970). On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner.. The Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1, 83–99.

This is the classic behaviorist rebuttal to Chomsky made by Kenneth MacCorquodale. Skinner famously did not respond to Chomsky’s review, but this paper became the behaviorist response that observers and debaters needed to read. The author critically undoes many of Chomsky’s critiques, about certain terms and concepts, and he particularly attacks Chomsky’s characterizations of Skinner in the realm of verbal behavior.

Fodor, J.A. (1975). The Language of Thought. Harvard.

Jerry Fodor’s language of thought was a pivotal text in the history of cognitive psychology. He argues that thought itself has a certain kind of symbolic language to it. The influence in this type of view by Chomsky is undeniable. Fodor’s whole system of the interrelation between language and thought, and the nature of thought itself can be traced back to the influence of Chomsky, as it uses a whole style of theorizing that the behaviorists would have firmly rejected.

Tooby, J. (1992). The Psychological Foundations of Culture. Oxford.

In this paper, John Tooby adds onto Chomsky’s legacy by exploring how innate psychological mechanisms contribute to the generation, maintenance, spread, evolution, and death of culture and cultural objects and processes. In sharp contrast to a behaviorist view of culture as group level contingencies, Tooby views culture in a generative way, analogously to Chosmky’s generative grammer.

Bruner, J.S. (1964). The Course of Cognitive Growth. The American Psychologist, 19(1), 1–15.

Bruner takes a very symbolic and linguistic view of human mental development that clearly draws upon Chomsky’s nativist positions. Cognitive growth is considered to be a set of skills that are “mastered” over time. Unlike the passive view of behaviorism, Bruner takes the agent to be an active producer and developer of these skills. Chomsky’s emphasis on the contribution of the organism or speaker is the exact type of process for which Bruner argues.

Griffin, D.R. (1976). The Questions of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience. Rockefeller University Press, Oxford.

The author reviews the debate over whether or not animals have awareness of their mental experience as do humans. This debate parallels directly with the Chomsky-Skinner debate, because each of these authors brought issues of animal learning to the fore in their arguments. Whereas Skinner felt that the findings concerning rats and pigeons could be easily generalized to humans, Chomsky felt that this was more questionable. Nevertheless, Chomsky equally used ethological evidence of innate learning in certain animals to generalize to the human case for arguing his side. Therefore, the issue of the relation between animal and human learning was not divided neatly among each side, but rather each side harbored difference evidence to argue for their position.

Hayes, S.C., Barnes-Holmes, Y. (2002). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 28, 101–138.

The whole enterprise of Relational Frame Theory is to complete the project on verbal behavior began by Skinner. The proponents of RFT come from a behavioral position and argue that Skinner’s aim was correct, but his actual project failed. Therefore, RFT is meant to complete Skinner’s failed project and finally build a behaviorist account of language and higher mental processes, despite decades of these areas being taken back over by the post-Chomskyan frameworks of investigation.

Bargh, A., et al. Beyond Behaviorism: On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 925–945.

The authors aim to finally validate the Chomskyan side of the debate over 50 years later by giving the behaviorists their due, while clearly presenting all of the evidence that has been accumulated over the past few decades that falsifies many of their ideas. They argue that higher mental processes simply exhibit certain degrees of automaticity that at once, break these processes away from the control of simple stimulus and response, and yet, still keep mental processes in the overarching realm of deterministic science.