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Noam Chomsky argued against the limitations of behaviorism, which he considered a short-sighted approach due to its exclusive focus on observable behavior. He contended that for psychology to offer meaningful insights into behavior, it must reintegrate the study of internal mental processes and functions into its scope.

Noam Chomsky's Critique of Behaviorism

A psychologist proposes that a child learns to speak a language solely through a process of hearing words, repeating them, and receiving rewards (like praise or attention) for correct utterances. Which of the following statements best represents Noam Chomsky's fundamental critique of this purely behavioral explanation?

A psychologist argues that explaining a complex skill like language acquisition solely in terms of observable rewards and punishments is fundamentally flawed. They contend that any valid explanation must also account for the mind's inherent, unobservable structures that enable the generation of new, grammatically correct sentences. This argument represents a direct critique of the core principles of which psychological perspective?

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