nativistic theory

in linguistics, the theory that human beings are born with an innate knowledge of language that enables them to structure and interpret the data they encounter as language learners. Although certain theories about the origins of human language in prehistory have been termed nativistic (see language-origin theory), the term is now mainly associated with Noam Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition in young children. See language acquisition device; language universal.

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Psychology term of the day

November 24th 2024

commonality analysis

in multiple regression, a technique by which the known variance in an outcome or response variable is separated out into the parts that can be uniquely attributed to each individual predictor variable and the parts that are common to any two or more variables.