TEDtalk: Patricia Kuhl - The Linguistic Genius of Babies
Language has a critical age for learning. After the age of 7, the skill at acquiring a new language drops off considerably.
The first critical period of development is when babies learn which sounds are used in their language. At age 6-8 months, babies can discriminate the sounds of all the languages. However by the age 10-12 the babies are better at discriminating sounds in their own languages, but worse at sounds not in their language. It seems that babies are sensitive to the distribution (statistics) of sounds in their own language. Bilingual people must keep 2 sets of statistics in mind at the same time.
If babies are exposed to someone speaking another language for a month (12 sessions) during this vital period, they can distinguish the sounds of that language too, and as well as those who were monolingual in that language. The same was not true of those only listening to or seeing a TV. A human being had to be involved.
I wonder if years later this exposure is relevant or not, if it is not continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment