The Competition Model is a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition and sentence processing developed by Elizabeth Bates and Brian MacWhinney. The Competition Model posits that the meaning of language is interpreted by comparing a number of linguistic cues within a sentence, and that language is learned through the competition of basic cognitive mechanisms in the presence of a rich linguistic environment. It is an emergentist theory of language acquisition and processing, serving as an alternative to strict nativist and empiricist theories. According to the Competition Model, competitive cognitive processes operate on a phylogenetic scale, an ontogenetic scale, and a synchronic scale, allowing language acquisition to take place across a wide variety of chronological periods.
Famous quotes containing the words competition and/or model:
“Mothers seem to be in subtle competition with teachers. There is always an underlying fear that teachers will do a better job than they have done with their child.... But mostly mothers feel that their areas of competence are very much similar to those of the teacher. In fact they feel they know their child better than anyone else and that the teacher doesn’t possess any special field of authority or expertise.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)