A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 million English speakers

Children learn language more easily than adults, though when and why this ability declines have been obscure for both empirical reasons (underpowered studies) and conceptual reasons (measuring the ultimate attainment of learners who started at different ages cannot by itself reveal changes in underl...

Celý popis

Uložené v:
Podrobná bibliografia
Vydané v:Cognition Ročník 177; s. 263 - 277
Hlavní autori: Hartshorne, Joshua K., Tenenbaum, Joshua B., Pinker, Steven
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.08.2018
Elsevier Science Ltd
Predmet:
Ability
Acquisition
Adults
Age
Age differences
Attainment
Children
Children & youth
Computer applications
Critical period
Early second language learning
English as a second language learning
English language
Grammar
L2 acquisition
Language
Language acquisition
Learning
Mathematical models
Native language acquisition
Second languages
Syntax
L2 acquisition
Language acquisition
Critical period
ISSN:0010-0277, 1873-7838, 1873-7838
On-line prístup:Získať plný text
Tagy: Pridať tag
Žiadne tagy, Buďte prvý, kto otaguje tento záznam!
Popis
Shrnutí:Children learn language more easily than adults, though when and why this ability declines have been obscure for both empirical reasons (underpowered studies) and conceptual reasons (measuring the ultimate attainment of learners who started at different ages cannot by itself reveal changes in underlying learning ability). We address both limitations with a dataset of unprecedented size (669,498 native and non-native English speakers) and a computational model that estimates the trajectory of underlying learning ability by disentangling current age, age at first exposure, and years of experience. This allows us to provide the first direct estimate of how grammar-learning ability changes with age, finding that it is preserved almost to the crux of adulthood (17.4 years old) and then declines steadily. This finding held not only for “difficult” syntactic phenomena but also for “easy” syntactic phenomena that are normally mastered early in acquisition. The results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition, but the age of offset is much later than previously speculated. The size of the dataset also provides novel insight into several other outstanding questions in language acquisition.
Bibliografia:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.04.007