II.

INTRODUCTION

II
TOPIC #1
John Broadus Watson.
John Broadus Watson, Carl Ed Murchison
Clark University Press, 1936
Iwas born near Greenville, South Carolina, in 1878. I entered Furman University in 1894 at the age of
16, as a sub-freshman, and stayed there five years. Little of my college life interested me. Where to
go to a university? I went to the University of Chicago with $50 in my pocket. I met Dewey, I met
Angell, and I met John Manly. I entered then, and felt at once that I had come to the right place. Mr.
Angell's erudition, quickness of thought, and facility with words early captured my somewhat
backward leaning towards psychology. On the whole, my Chicago experience was most satisfactory.
At Chicago, I first began a tentative formulation of my later point of view. I never wanted to use
human subjects. I hated to serve as a subject. I didn't like the stuffy, artificial instructions given to
subjects. I always was uncomfortable and acted unnaturally. With animals I was at home. I felt that,
in studying them, I was keeping close to biology with my feet on the ground. More and more the
thought presented itself: Can't I find out by watching their behavior everything that the other
students are finding out by using O's? I still believe as firmly as ever in the general behavioristic
position I took overtly in 1912. I think it has influenced psychology. Strangely enough, I think it has
temporarily slowed down psychology because the older instructors would not accept it
wholeheartedly, and consequently they failed to present it convincingly to their classes. The
youngsters did not get a fair presentation, hence they are not embarking wholeheartedly upon a
behavioristic career, and yet they will no longer accept the teachings of James, Titchener, and
Angell. I honestly think that psychology has been sterile for several years. We need younger
instructors who will teach objective psychology with no reference to the mythology most of us
present-day psychologists have been brought up upon. When this day comes, psychology will have a
renaissance greater than that which occurred in science in the Middle Ages. I believe as firmly as
ever in the future of behaviorism--behaviorism as a companion of zoology, physiology, psychiatry,
and physical chemistry.(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
The life and works of John B. Watson—A review of Modern perspectives on John B. Watson and
classical behaviorism.
Peter Harzem
The Behavior Analyst 18 (2), 377, 1995
Not many who have seen the great movie, Amadeus, will forget its final scene in which Mozart's body
is tipped from a rickety carriage into a pauper's grave. And they will remember the rattle of the
wheels as the carriage makes its way, in rain and mud, to its destination. The scene is a poignant
representation of the ways each age in history has treated some of its geniuses. The century that is
about to end saw this done to John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) who was born into dire poverty in
a small town in South Carolina, and who rose twice to great heights in two different professions, only
to be assailed each time: first by the intrigues of jealousy and of unwholesome academic politics, and
second by fate, when Rosalie, his second wife, whom he truly and deeply loved, died. After this,
Watson's remaining years became, by all evidence, years of marking time, waiting-waiting, it would
seem, for the end. It was in those years that Watson withdrew to his small farm in Connecticut,
drank a goodly amount, put on excessive weight, and, in short, let himself go. The true and full story
of this great thinker's life has not been told.
Whatever happened to little Albert?
Ben Harris
American psychologist 34 (2), 151, 1979
Examines JB Watson and R. Rayner's 1920 conditioning of the infant Albert B. Using published
sources, the present article reviews the study's actual procedures and its relationship to Watson's
career and work. A history of psychologists' accounts of the Albert study is also presented, focusing
on the study's distortion by Watson himself, general textbook authors, behavior therapists, and most
recently, a prominent learning theorist. The author proposes possible causes for these distortions and
analyzes the Albert study as an example of myth making in the history of psychology.(98 ref)
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
In 1920, John Watson and Rosalie Rayner claimed to have conditioned a baby boy, Albert, to fear a
laboratory rat. In subsequent tests, they reported that the child’s fear generalized to other furry
objects. After the last testing session, Albert disappeared, creating one of the greatest mysteries in
the history of psychology. This article summarizes the authors’ efforts to determine Albert’s identity
and fate. Examinations of Watson’s personal correspondence, scientific production (books, journal
articles, film), and public documents (national census data, state birth and death records) suggested
that an employee at the Harriet Lane Home was Albert’s mother. Contact with the woman’s
descendents led the authors to the individual they believe to be “Little
Albert.”

Cherry, Kendra, John B. Watson Biography (1878-1958) About.com.Psychology,2013

Murphy, G. (1949) Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology (Rev.ed). New York: Harcout, Brace.
Watson, J.B (19701930). Behaviorism, New York: W.W. Norton.
Topic#2
Noam Chomsky
Howard Lasnik, Terje Lohndal
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2017
Noam Avram Chomsky is one of the central figures of modern linguistics. He was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. In 1945, Chomsky enrolled in the University of
Pennsylvania, where he met Zellig Harris (1909–1992), a leading Structuralist, through their shared
political interests. His first encounter with Harris’s work was when he proof-read Harris’s book
Methods in Structural Linguistics, published in 1951 but completed already in 1947. Chomsky grew
dissatisfied with Structuralism and started to develop his own major idea that syntax and phonology
are in part matters of abstract representations. This was soon combined with a psychobiological view
of language as a unique part of the mind/brain.

Chomsky's nativism: A critical review

David C Palmer
The Analysis of Verbal Behavior 17, 39, 2000
Is grammar innate? Noam Chomsky holds that it is, or, more accurately, that the hypothesis that it is
innate is the only coherent and plausible one that has yet been proposed to account for the
acquisition of language. Extrapolating to broader issues, he has championed a retreat from
behaviorism and empiricism to cognitivism and rationalism, from approaches that seek to determine
the relationship between an organism's behavior and the environment to those that wish to discover
the organism's" essential nature," of which behavior is an incomplete expression. His arguments,
which are detailed, polemical, and persuasive, are evidently inspiring to a thriving school of linguists
and to many laymen with an interestin language and philosophy. It is important to assess his
position carefully, not only because he con-cludes that little is to be gained by pursuing the analysis
of verbal behavior with the assumptions and methodology of radical behaviorism but because he
claims to have achieved considerable success with very different assumptions and methodology.
Success in explaining complex behavior deserves our attention whatever the approach.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Nativism Revisited: A review of Eric H. Lenneberg's Biological Foundations of Language1
Daryl J Bem, Sandra L Bem
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 11 (4), 497, 1968
In 1957, BF Skinner published his account of how a behavioral functional analysis might be extended
to the domain of ver-bal behavior. Although the point was missed by some critics of his Verbal
Behavior, Skinner did not claim to have actually performed the kind of detailed analysis outlined. As
he stated in the opening pages:" The emphasis is upon an orderly arrangement of well-known facts,
in accordance with a formula-tion of behavior derived from an experimental analysis of a more
rigorous sort. The present extension to verbal behavior is thus an exercise in interpretation rather
than a quantitative extrapolation of rigorous experimental results"[p. 11]. Lenneberg's Biological
Foundations of Language is a similar document:" My theory of language development is essentially
an interpretive commentaryon observable facts.... Most of its tenets are merely special instances of
the general premises [listed earlier]... and may, therefore, be considered as fairly common biological
phenomena... This book must be understood as a discussion rather than a presentation of the
biological foundations of language. The exact founda-tion, s are still largely unknown"[p. viii and p.
379]. Both works, in short, constitute plausibility arguments forparticular views of verbal behavior.
They specifically address the same phenomena when they attempt to account for an individual's
ability to produce and understand novel sentences in his native language.
Syntax acquisition
Stephen Crain, Rosalind Thornton
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 3 (2), 185-203, 2012
Every normal child acquires a language in just a few years. By 3 ‐or 4 ‐years ‐old, children have
effectively become adults in their abilities to produce and understand endlessly many sentences in a
variety of conversational contexts. There are two alternative accounts of the course of children's
language development. These different perspectives can be traced back to the nature versus nurture
debate about how knowledge is acquired in any cognitive domain. One perspective dates back to
Plato's dialog ‘The Meno’. In this dialog, the protagonist, Socrates, demonstrates to Meno, an
aristocrat in Ancient Greece, that a young slave knows more about geometry than he could have
learned from experience. By extension, Plato's Problem refers to any gap between experience and
knowledge. How children fill in the gap in the case of language continues to be the subject of much
controversy in cognitive science. Any model of language acquisition must address three factors, inter
alia: 1. The knowledge children accrue; 2. The input children receive (often called the primary
linguistic data); 3. The nonlinguistic capacities of children to form and test generalizations based on
the input. According to the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, the main task of linguistics is to explain
how children bridge the gap—Chomsky calls it a ‘chasm’—between what they come to know about
language, and what they could have learned from experience, even given optimistic assumptions
about their cognitive abilities. Proponents of the alternative ‘nurture’approach accuse nativists like
Chomsky of overestimating the complexity of what children learn, underestimating the data children
have to work with, and manifesting undue pessimism about children's abilities to extract information
based on the input. The modern ‘nurture’approach is often referred to as the usage ‐based account.
We discuss the usage‐based account first, and then the nativist account. After that, we report and
discuss the findings of several studies of child language that have been conducted with the goal of
helping to adjudicate between the alternative approaches to language development.

H Lasnik, T Lohndal - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2017 - oxfordre.com

DC Palmer - The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 2000 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
S Crain, R Thornton - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews …, 2012 - Wiley Online Library

Topic#3
BROFENBREENNER'S ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS THEORY LITERATURE REVIEW
 American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner was critical of previous theories of child
development. He argued that studies of children in unfamiliar laboratory environments with one
other person, usually a stranger, were ecologically invalid (See Mary Ainsworth’s 1970 experiment of
the ‘Strange Situation’). Bronfenbrenner (1974) claimed most earlier studies were ‘unidirectional’,
meaning that the laboratory studies observed the influence of A on B (e.g. a stranger/mother with a
child), rather than looking at the possible influence of the child on the stranger/mother, or any other
third party’s influence. Bronfenbrenner divided the person's environment into five di fferent systems:
the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the chronosystem.
Bronfenbrenner recognized there are multiple aspects of a developing child’s life that
interacts with and affects the child. His work looked beyond individual development, taking into
account wider influencing factors and the context (or ecology) of development. He proposed the
‘Ecological Systems Theory’ based on these dynamic interactions that the environments have on the
developing child. Bronfenbrenner’s (1974) perspective has some resemblance to the works of Albert
Bandua’s social learning theory and Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in which the environment is
explicitly or implicitly considered as a crucial mechanism in development. Bronfenbrenner (1977)
suggested that the environment of the child is a nested arrangement of structures, each contained
within the next. He organized them in order of how much of an impact they have on a child. He
named these structures the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and the
chronosystem. Because the five systems are interrelated, the influence of one system on a child’s
development depends on its relationship with the others. The microsystem is the first level of
Bronfenbrenner's theory, and are the things that have direct contact with the child in their immediate
environment, such as parents, siblings, teachers and school peers.The mesosystem encompasses the
interactions between the child’s microsystems, such as the interactions between the child’s parents
and teachers, or between school peers and siblings.The exosystem is a component of the ecological
systems theory developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner in the 1970s. It incorporates other formal and
informal social structures, which do not themselves contain the child, but indirectly influence them as
they affect one of the microsystems.The fifth and final level of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems
theory is known as the chronosystem. This system consists of all of the environmental changes that
occur over the lifetime which influence development, including major life transitions, and historical
events.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory is useful when it comes to the development of immigrant children.
A limitation of the Ecological Systems Theory is that there is limited research examining the
mesosystems; mainly the interactions between neighborhoods and the family of the child (Leventhal
& Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Therefore, it is unclear the extent to which these systems can shape child
development. For instance, it is not true to say that all people who grow up in poverty-striken areas
of the world will develop negatively. Similarly, if a child’s teachers and parents do not get along,
some children may not experience any kind of negative effect from this if it does not concern them.
As a result, people need to take care not to make broad assumptions about individuals using this
theory.

References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of childhood.
Child development, 45(1), 1-5.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American
psychologist, 32(7), 513.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Developmental ecology through space and time: A future perspective.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Evans, G. W. (2000). Developmental science in the 21st century: Emerging
questions, theoretical models, research designs and empirical findings. Social development, 9(1),
115-125.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature-nurture reconceptualised: A bio-ecological model.

Psychological Review, 10(4), 568–586.

Topic#4
Cooley and Mead's intersectionism theory
Charles Horton Cooley, was a symbolic interactionist who taught at the University of
Michigan, believed that we are who we are because of, our perceptions of how others view us, our
perceptions of how others judge us, and our response to how we think we are being judged. Others
are like a mirror. We look into that mirror and it reflects back to us who we are. In other words as
we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours,
and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like
them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance,
manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.
George Herbert Mead, another symbolic interactionist who taught at the University of
Chicago, added that play is critical to the development of the self. He believed that we learn to take
on the roles of others in our play, and this is very important as it helps us put ourselves in other
shoes, to try to understand how someone else feels and thinks and to anticipate how that person will
act.

Free Cooley and mead's theories as essay. Example Essays. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022,
from https://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/58798.html?
fbclid=IwAR2RA9p6B4663vWidGPoYtJo5RS5q4YH65r6SIrks73nq06yOLq97n
cxJ64

Topic#5
Holdaway's Theory of Literacy Development
Don Holdaway is the inventor of the Shared Book approach to education and the author of The
Foundations of Literacy. Most state curriculum materials, teacher education courses, and inservice
courses have embraced his concepts. His open-mindedness and love for children and their liberty as
learners struck interviewees. After educating Maori and other Polynesian youngsters in inner-city
schools, Don Holdaway published The Foundations of Literacy. When it came to learning to read and
write, these youngsters with a culture distinct from that of the school were frequently seen as
failures. Traditional literacy education was punishing to them.
He emphasized the significance of family story-reading time. Holdaway studied the cycle of behaviors
typical of bedtime storybook sharing time and designed a teaching technique that could be employed
with a class of young children based on this and his expertise of spoken language development. The
"shared book experience" was developed as a result. Holdaway and his New Zealand colleagues
created a cycle of teaching and learning activities to help youngsters build their reading skills over
the first few years of school. That cycle, particularly the daily input session with its predictable
structure, should be extremely recognizable to instructors who employ shared book experiences on a
regular basis.
Author William Holdaway is a pioneer in the field of "shared hook experience," which entails selecting
and producing texts to be shared in a larger format. The widespread adoption of the shared book
strategy has resulted in a significant increase in book publishing. His thoughts on the teacher's role in
selecting high-quality material are especially pertinent. The concepts lay the groundwork for the
transformation of education and the protection of children in a world of stress and conflict.

Tele Caster Follow. (n.d.). Chap. 5 theories of literacy development. Share and Discover Knowledge
on SlideShare. Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.slideshare.net/tele1957/chap-5-
theories-of-literacy-development
Education Resources Information Center. ERIC. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from
https://eric.ed.gov/

Topic#6
Vgotsky’s Theory
The continuous process of human recognition has been explained by different schools of psychology.
Among them, social constructivism emphasizes the importance of social environment, culture and
social interaction with others, in this process. This study aims to highlight the role of using effective
techniques and strategies that allow the possibility to study with the help and interaction with others
in the pre-school age. The knowledge and application of the scaffolding technique within the Zone of
Proximal Development helps accelerate the cognitive development of the child, making the learning
process more dynamic and the child more active. The idea of dialog is very important and every child
should feel as an integral part of social interaction. The efficient use of these techniques shows an
optimization of the child’s achievement. The process of transforming spontaneous concepts into
scientific ones, is facilitated and accelerated. It is important for the help to be offered in an individual
way, when and where needed. Also, it is required that the educators and teachers be trained for the
successful use of these psychological mechanisms.

According to Vygotsky, although the biological factors constitute the necessary preconditions for the
natural elementary processes to appear and develop, the sociocultural factors are also important.
The following questions need to be addressed Does the curricula and philosophy on which it is
based, offer the chance to use the socio-cultural constructivism theory in preschool classes? Do
teachers know the advantages of this learning model? Are teachers capable to make the necessary
social adjustments in order to optimize the understanding and possession of different concepts and
behaviors by children? From the observations made in several preschool educational institutions in
our city Elbasan, it is observed that not all teachers know the main concepts of this model. Even in
cases when they have the necessary knowledge about these concepts, they face difficulties in the
efficient practical use of the specific instruments which help children accelerate their psycho-social
development. It is necessary to know researches done about this model, the results of the studies,
and their application when practicing education. Also important are the suggestions and necessary
techniques which teachers and educators need to know in order to use them efficiently.

https://www.gowriensw.com.au/thought-leadership/vygotsky-theory#:~:text=Vygotsky's%20social
%20development%20theory%20asserts,an%20independent%20journey%20of%20discovery.
https://www.verywellmind.com/lev-vygotsky-biography-2795533

III

CONCLUSION
Early literacy development may be hampered by poverty, difficulties with hearing, speech and
language, vision, and learning, among other factors. Without a question, literacy and language
development are important aspects of a child's entire development. It encourages your child's
capacity for expression, comprehension, and communication of feelings. Additionally, it fosters your
child's capacity for thought and aids in their ability to form and sustain relationships.

Recommendations
Include reading and books in daily rituals, such as a child's bedtime routine. Keep in mind that small
children might not have the attention span necessary to sit through lengthy novels; reading only a
portion of a book is still beneficial. When reading to children, use all verbal expression techniques,
such as singing, talking about the books' contents, and reading. Describe the child's life in relation to
the book's stories .As your baby gets older, read aloud while pointing out the words and asking them
questions while they read or allowing them tell stories will keep kids interested in what they are
reading.

REFERENCES
I.

Cherry, Kendra, John B. Watson Biography (1878-1958) About.com.Psychology,2013

Murphy, G. (1949) Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology (Rev.ed). New York: Harcout, Brace.

Watson, J.B (19701930). Behaviorism, New York: W.W. Norton.

H Lasnik, T Lohndal - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2017 - oxfordre.com

DC Palmer - The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 2000 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

S Crain, R Thornton - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews …, 2012 - Wiley Online Library

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of childhood.
Child development, 45(1), 1-5.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American
psychologist, 32(7), 513.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Developmental ecology through space and time: A future perspective.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Evans, G. W. (2000). Developmental science in the 21st century: Emerging
questions, theoretical models, research designs and empirical findings. Social development, 9(1),
115-125.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature-nurture reconceptualised: A bio-ecological model.

Psychological Review, 10(4), 568–586.

https://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/58798.html?
fbclid=IwAR2RA9p6B4663vWidGPoYtJo5RS5q4YH65r6SIrks73nq06yOLq97ncxJ64.COM

Tele Caster Follow. (n.d.). Chap. 5 theories of literacy development. Share and Discover Knowledge
on SlideShare. Retrieved November 24, 2022, from https://www.slideshare.net/tele1957/chap-5-
theories-of-literacy-development

Education Resources Information Center. ERIC. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2022, from
https://eric.ed.gov/.COM

https://www.gowriensw.com.au/thought-leadership/vygotsky-theory#:~:text=Vygotsky's%20social
%20development%20theory%20asserts,an%20independent%20journey%20of%20discovery.

https://www.verywellmind.com/lev-vygotsky-biography-2795533