which psychologist argued that language development reflects operant conditioning?
Behaviour operates on the environment to bring about favorable consequences or avoid adverse ones. These same ideas of operant conditioning can also be applied to language acquisition because Skinner believed that language could be treated like any other kind of cognitive behaviour. According to the behaviourist theory, language learning is a process of habit formation that involves a period of trial and error where the child tries and fails to use correct language until it succeeds.