Stimulus Packaging

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

The Poverty of the Stimulus.

A phrase used to describe the idea that
we “know” far more about the linguistic
environment we swim in than is “exemplified"
by the language we hear around us.”

The grammar a person ends up with is
vastly underdetermined by linguistic
experience. Although children hear
many utterances, the language they hear is

incomplete,
noisy, and
unstructured.
the data they are exposed
to is impoverished.

Less than what is necessary to account
for the richness and complexity of the
grammar they attain. (see pg 348)

WHAT THIS (may) MEAN:
By analogy:

Something like innate rules and structures
are within each of us that receives the data
of our individual daily experience coming in
noisy and unstructured (like my classes, say),
happen stance and unplanned (like my classes, say).
constellated & digressive & divergent (like my
classes, say),

AND YET is transformed into a richness
and complexity of (say) one’s personal deep
grammar that generates one’s frame of
mind-set, attitude, outlook, world view,
Way of Operating, Processing,
Communicating: “Language-ing”.

The Poverty of Stimulus.

A frog’s egg can be “stimulated” by a horsehair
and it's tweak will start the internal grammar that
produces a (haploid) individual. Not exactly an
“immaculate” conception—but not spermatazoic,
either.

Might be described as the “poverty of stimulus.”
It don’t take MUCH because the innate inner
“grammar” is programmed to kick in.

Let’s hope Something Like That

(our noisy,
unstructured,
unplanned,
classroom
environmental
emergent autopoetic
chaos & anarchy )

is never the less a stimulus package
(impoverished, sure) rich enough to
generate a personal plethora of insight
and meaning provided one is scanning to
Make Some Sense of One’s Own

as opposed to

the dense-pack information “rich”
linear lesson-plans on-task, cover-
the-ground, GetRDone Else institutional
learning we are Used/Abused To—
not that there’s anything wrong with
THAT: it's measurable, assessable,.
purposive & driven by predictable
aims, objectives, goals: convenient
and conventional.

STIMULUS PACKAGING

Impoverished (do more with less)
Enriched (do less with more)

Do you see the DIFFERENCE?
(Is it a difference for you that
makes a difference?)

Do you see the RELATIONSHIP
Can you say? Tell?
What if you were Helen Keller?

(Feel free to push Reply or Reply-to-All
if this has any stimulus value toward
sustaining relevant-to-class conversation)

xxxooo, Sam