Page "Language acquisition" Paragraph 25

Language acquisition has been studied from the perspective of developmental psychology and neuroscience, which looks at learning to use and understand language parallel to a child's brain development.

It has been determined, through empirical research on developmentally normal children, as well as through some extreme cases of language deprivation, that there is a " sensitive period " of language acquisition in which human infants have the ability to learn any language.

This plasticity is whittled down as a child becomes exposed to the specific sounds and structure of his or her language environment, and so, the child quickly becomes a native speaker of that language.

As Christophe Pallier noted, " Before the child begins to speak and to perceive, the uncommitted cortex is a blank slate on which nothing has been written.

In the ensuing years much is written, and the writing is normally never erased.

After the age of ten or twelve, the general functional connexions have been established and fixed for the speech cortex.

" According to the sensitive or critical period models, the age at which a child acquires the ability to use language is a predictor of how well he or she is ultimately able to use language.

However, there may be an age at which becoming a fluent and natural user of a language is no longer possible.

Our brains may be automatically wired to learn languages, but this ability does not last into adulthood in the same way that it exists during development.

By the onset of puberty ( around age 12 ), language acquisition has typically been solidified and it becomes more difficult to learn a language in the same way a native speaker would.

At this point, it is usually a second language that a person is trying to acquire and not a first.