Talk:Language acquisition/Archive 2

Too much theory, not enough data

This article covers alot of the theories of how children learn languages, but it doesn't give any data on when they start speaking or what language skills they acquire in what order. What is the average age at which children start pronouncing recognizable words? When do they start forming sentences? At what average age have they completely learned the phonology of their language? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.248.55.199 (talk) 25 October 2006

Well the field is already all theory... Mdoff 20:26, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

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I am surprised no mention has been made in this article of the work of Fiona Cowie:

Cowie, F. (1997), 'The Logical Problem Of Language Acquisition', Synthèse 111, pp.17-51.

Cowie, F. (2002), What's Within. Nativism Reconsidered (Oxford University Press).

Or that of Geoffrey Sampson:

Sampson, G: The 'Language Instinct' Debate (Continuum, 2004, ISBN 0-8264-7385).

Rosa Lichtenstein 07:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

It is more than four five years later, but I need to second the assertion: This article is too much theory, not enough data. In fact, I would go further and argue that this page is about theories of language acquisition and not about about language acquisition as such. I don't think the page needs to mention more or more recent theories (although such theories exist). I think it needs to explain the understandings about human language acquisition that are broadly accepted, as well as less universally accepted but well-known facts/assertions. Examples of the latter might include the importance of input, with competing explanations from a nativist or a cognitivist point of view. Cnilep (talk) 03:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Bad Grammar

A sentence is ungrammatical in one paragraph.

See "Vocabulary". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.30.71.244 (talk) 6 February 2010

Biased and Inaccurate

The article, in its current form, shows an obvious bias against Generative Grammar, one of the principal schools of research on child language acquisition.

Moreover, the subsection 'Generative Grammar' contains some outright falsehoods:

"Chomsky's generative grammar ignores semantics and language use, focusing on the set of rules that would generate syntactically correct strings. This led to a model of acquisition which attempted to discover grammar from examples of well-formed sentences, ignoring semantics or context."

These statements are simply false, and indicate that the author is unqualified to write on the topic.

In reality, Generative Grammar is deeply concerned with the semantic interpretation of syntactic structures. Heim & Kratzer's (1998) book _Semantics in Generative Grammar_ is among the most widely used textbooks.

As for Generative models of language acquisition, a classic in the field, Wexler & Culicover's (1980) book _Formal Principles of Language Acquisition_ (MIT Press), provides detailed arguments that successful language acquisition requires the child to make inferences, based on context, about speakers' intended meanings.

Both the Heim/Kratzer book and the Wexler/Culicover book assume that the reader already has a firm foundation in Generative Linguistics. For absolute beginners, an excellent introduction is Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin's (1999) textbook, An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics).

William.snyder (talk) 01:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Update

I edited the section on Generativism in order to eliminate outright falsehoods (see previous note), clarify the content, and increase the number of citations to contemporary literature. William.snyder (talk) 22:14, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Toddlers and language acquisition

Toddlers Understand Complex Grammar, Study Shows.

Caroline Rowland of the University of Liverpool's Child Language Study Center said in a statement. "More recent research, however, has suggested that even at 21 months, infants are sensitive to the different meanings produced by particular grammatical construction, even if they can't articulate words properly."

For this article, perhaps we need to emphasis the cognitive aspect of toddler's language acquisition. Komitsuki (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Animal communication comparison

The article states: "While many forms of animal communication exist, they have a limited range of nonsyntactically structured vocabulary tokens that lack cross cultural variation between groups."

I definitely don't think this is true for cetaceans, because songs vary from pod to pod (although I don't know whether they have syntax). I also think the claim might not be true for chimps, but I'm not sure. Attys (talk) 20:13, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Impact of recent student edits

This article has recently been edited by students as part of their course work for a university course. As part of the quality metrics for the education program, we would like to determine what level of burden is placed on Wikipedia's editors by student coursework.

If you are an editor of this article who spent time correcting edits to it made by the students, please tell us how much time you spent on cleaning up the article. Please note that we are asking you to estimate only the negative effects of the students' work. If the students added good material but you spent time formatting it or making it conform to the manual of style, or copyediting it, then the material added was still a net benefit, and the work you did improved it further. If on the other hand the students added material that had to be removed, or removed good material which you had to replace, please let us know how much time you had to spend making those corrections. This includes time you may have spent posting to the students' talk pages, or to Wikipedia noticeboards, or working with them on IRC, or any other time you spent which was required to fix problems created by the students' edits. Any work you did as a Wikipedia Ambassador for that student's class should not be counted.

Please rate the amount of time spent as follows:

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Please also add any comments you feel may be helpful. We welcome ratings from multiple editors on the same article. Add your input here. Thanks! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Roosevelt University PSYC 336 Project

Bibliography

We are currently working to update this article by adding a section on pre-lingual deafness. The following is a bibliography of some of the sources from which we are retracting information.

• Auer Jr., E.T. (2008). "Estimating When and How Words Are Acquired: A Natural Experiment on the Development of the Mental Lexicon". Journal Of Speech, Language & Hearing Research: 750–758. Retrieved 18 September 2012. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• geers, a.e. (2002). "Factors Affecting the Development of Speech, Language, and Literacy in Children with Early Cochlear Implantation". Language, Speech, And Hearing Services In Schools: 172–83. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
• Miller, P (2009). "Learning with a Missing Sense: What Can We Learn from the Interaction of a Deaf Child with a Turtle?". American Annals Of The Deaf. 1 (154): 71–82. Retrieved 18 September 2012.
• kinley, a.m. (2000). "The Effectiveness of Cochlear Implants for Children with Prelingual Deafness". Journal Of Early Intervention. 4 (23): 252–63. Retrieved 18 September 2012. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Epottala (talk) 17:49, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello there! I'm Mr. Stradivarius, an administrator here on Wikipedia, and I watch a lot of the articles on language acquisition and language education. Early language acquisition and deafness aren't really my speciality, but I think I can offer you some useful advice about the sources above. From my reading, it looks like you shouldn't rely too much on the first three sources you've listed here, as they are experiments made by the authors of the articles, and therefore count as primary sources. The fourth source you list, Kinley & Warren 2000, looks like a good source to use, as it is a literature review and therefore counts as a secondary source. In general, Wikipedia should be based on secondary sources, not primary ones. Before you start writing, it would be a very good idea to read the policy on primary and secondary sources, the guidline on sourcing medical articles, and (though it is not official policy) the page on scientific standards, particularly the sourcing section. Let me know if you have any questions about any of this. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{(have a chat)} 05:17, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Group, please continue to look for secondary sources as information. Where is your outline? Neuropsychprof (talk) 14:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Smallman12q

• The tone is a bit off. This isn't an essay...so material should be presented objectively and neutrally
  • "While some are fortunate enough to be bilingual, others struggle to communicate on a daily basis." can be deleted
  • "Negative emotions are prominent towards language acquisition in the deaf community." What does this mean? How do negative emotions influence language acquisition by the deaf community?
  • "Due to recent advances in technology, cochlear implants allow deaf people to understand others more efficiently. " What do you mean by "to understand others more efficiently"? To hear them?
  • "Studies found numerous results while analyzing neurocognitive processes. " What results?
• This needs expansion, sourcing, and wikilinks. You should provide specifics.

Smallman12q (talk) 23:13, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Our group is not familiar with the process of editing. As we learned more about Wikipedia, we took your feedback into account by adding more adequate information. Please continue to watch our contributions so that we can stay on track. It will be updated by 2pm tomorrow evening. Dizeob3 (talk) 22:37, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Hpilla15

• This is a good start, however, I think there could be some more detail or expansion of certain topics such as the research on modality- specific cognition
• I think it would be useful to include more detail in how the cochlear implants work in relation to the brain-- what parts of the brain does it activate or work with, etc.
• Some of the wording was also a bit confusing, so it was not always clear to follow, particularly the first paragraph.

Hpilla15 (talk) 04:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello, The first paragraph is going to be changed completely. The format lacks factual information which is a huge requirement. Also, the main focus is the comparison of cochlear implants to the function of the brain. It will be updated with correct information as soon as possible. Dizeob3 (talk) 22:37, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments

I would say try to make the section fit in with the rest of the language acquisition page better. Try to stick with information about the subject and not have it sound so much like an essay as smallman12 says. More detailed explanations would probably help and maybe breaking up the section to focus on specific parts of the information. It might also be helpful to edit the introduction to mention your section so that it doesn't just come out of nowhere.

Pmisner2009 (talk) 16:48, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I see how the material is hard to follow because there are missing sections. The essay format will be completely eliminated in the final assignment. My group and I are working on incorporating the other feedback to make changes for the better. Dizeob3 (talk) 22:37, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Critique 3

The information you added to the article so far seems to be good, however, it needs more explanation and integration into the overall article. As it stands now,the structure and wording of your additions is a little choppy, and seems to jump from thought to thought without elaborating on them. For example:

"Negative emotions are prominent towards language acquisition in the deaf community. Sign language and hearing aids help to establish skills in settings such as school or work."

This information is good, but needs to be further explained. Why are negative emotions prominent toward language acquisition? How do sign language and hearing help in school or work? I also could not find your outline to compare to what you have written, so I would post that and come up with a concrete plan of what you are going to add to this section. This will really help you get your thoughts in order, and help with the flow of your section. Lastly, I would be sure to go through what you have written and add links to other Wikipedia pages for some terms in your additions. Good luck! Tjm66680 (talk) 14:40, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

We greatly appreciate your feedback! "Negative emotions...." as well as the rest of the section will be replaced with more factual information. The focus is how cochlear implants impact the brain. However, we will still compare the deaf to the rest of society. Dizeob3 (talk) 22:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Language Acquisition/Prelingual Deafness Critique

The first few sentences could use some rephrasing and restructuring. Your section contains no links to any of the terms used within your article. The voice of the written material could use some uniformity, not only within the section on language acquisition but also uniformity to the entire wikipedia article. I feel you section could be elaborated upon a bit. Good work otherwise. Keep it real.

"While some are fortunate enough to be bilingual.."- This in no way relates to the rest of the section

"Researchers continue to analyze the deaf in order to make necessary changes for the future."- Perhaps cite an example of some of the research being conducted.

"Sign language and hearing aids help to establish skills in settings such as school or work. Development of words is comparable to the rest of society, but it is repeated at a slower rate."- Syntactical issues. Needs some polishing up.

User:funky3cold3medina User talk:funky3cold3medina 10:50, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Our article section is in the process of being edited based on feedback provided. Therefore, your suggestions are extremely important to us and we tend to change all of those sentences. We will have our article updated accordingly by 2pm tomorrow. Thank you! Dizeob3 (talk) 22:42, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Critique 4

This article could use a little work on the article reformatting, also you might want to think about adding a section on language acquisition relating to multilingualism.

We are in the process of restructing the article as well as adding more factual information. It would be ideal to add a paragraph connecting language acquisition and multingualism. However, our group plans to focus on specific aspects due to limited amount of time. Thank you for your feedback. Dizeob3 (talk) 22:43, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Instructor comments

Group, you're quite behind in your progress on this project. I'm guessing part of the problem is in locating secondary sources of information. I will send this group some info. Please divide up the readings and make a concrete plan for having a more thorough, well-written section by 11/13/12. Neuropsychprof (talk) 05:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

CN-tags in chunking section

Some one has marked a few sentences in the Chunking section with the cn-tag, however all claims are in the source mentioned in that section. Therefore, I am removing them 88.114.154.216 (talk) 06:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Section Adjustment

The recently added section on language acquisition of prelingual deafness is being moved. We feel that it would be a better fit within the prelingual deafness article. We appreciate all of the feedback, and will take it into account with the development of the new section. A link will be provided on this article. We welcome any feedback on the new section. An updated bibliography is now posted on the talk page, and an outline will be posted shortly.Epottala (talk) 19:54, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Why didn't you put it into the prelingual deafness article? Lova Falk talk 20:24, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposed revision to the Social Interactionism section

One of the theories used to explain language development is the social-interactionist theory. The social interactionist theory focuses on the idea that children’s domain-general social-cognitive abilities, underlying abilities that influence performance in a wide range of situations along with the social environment interplay and influence language development. In other words, humans are born with the ability to be specially prepared to acquire language, and that critical periods exist for acquiring language. Along with this predetermined ability, the environment plays a role as well, specifically by the presentation of languages by the child’s parents, or people around them. In general, young infants respond to human speaking and have a response to infant directed speech, which is speech that adults usually use with babies that have a specific prosody, or rhythm. Along with this is the idea that adults are born with a device, called the “Language Acquisition Support System,” or the “LASS,” which engages adults in infant directed speech when conversing with a child or infant. Child-directed speech is seen as a negotiation between the caregiver and the infant, while the infant may not have to respond with complete linguistic units or constituents like an adult. As the child matures physically and produce utterances that are more adult-like, the negotiation becomes more balanced in the aspect of syntax and phonology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cplatek (talk • contribs) 23:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi! Please state your sources! Also, the sentence starting with "The social interactionist theory focuses on..." is simply too long and thus hard to understand. Lova Falk talk 18:03, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Language Acquisition Throughout Early Childhood

Language Acquisition Throughout Early Childhood Language acquisition is simply defined as the ability of human beings to learn, develop, and produce words to communicate (National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2011). Language is a crucial piece in the development of life for human beings. Language for humans is far different than any other means of communication between other animals. The human language uses sounds as well as rules to those sounds and meanings (Bjorkland, 2011). The acquisition of language begins in early life, before an infant is born, in the late trimester (Mampe, et al, 2009). While the infant cannot speak language, the brain is developed enough to be receptive to sounds outside the womb. Throughout the development of language, one will learn, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics (Bjorkland, 2011). These aspects of language will be discussed further in this essay. The first three years of a child’s life is the most crucial time period for development of language. Language development is done best through environments that are surrounded by sounds, sights, and intense exposure to the human language. Beginning with day one, infants communicate their needs through crying. Biologically, crying allows for the vocal cords to develop so that eventually words can be spoken (National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2011). During early infancy (prior to 3 months), infants will use a “cooing” sound to communicate pleasure. Infants react to loud sounds, smiles when they recognize a caregiver, has different cries for different needs as well as a number of other abilities to communicate (National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2011). Typically around months 4-6, infants are laughing and develop the abilities to play “peek a boo”. By month 7, children are continuing to develop and are able to babble, use gestures and can respond to simple requests like, “come here” (National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2011). While children typically do not speak their first words until 10-12 months, prior to this, they are sponges soaking up all sounds they hear, allowing their receptive vocabulary to be much greater (Bjorklund, 2011). Receptive vocabulary is all words that one can recognize and understand. This means, a young infant may understand a word, but may be unable to produce it (Houston-Price, Mather & Sakkalou, 2007). For example, a caregiver may use the word, “more” and the infant can understand what “more” means, however, they may not be able to produce the sounds used for the word, “more”. Around 10-12 months, a child will increase their vocabulary by 8-11 words per month. Then by 18 months, children experience what is coined a “word spurt”. A word spurt means children are learning approximately 22 to 37 words per month after 18 months. The age in which the word spurt begins varies by age, but typically begins by age 2 (Bjorklund, 2011). By age 6, children possess a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. By age 18, humans have developed a vocabulary of 60,000 words and 100,000 by adulthood (Bjorklund, 2011).

Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics & Pragmatics Language development may be categorized into the learning of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; all of these interact and relate with one another. Phonology is the sounds of language and how they are organized to form words. Phonemes are the actual sounds in the word. For example, /stu/ has 3 phonemes- s sound, t sound, and u sound (Taylor et al, 2011). Phonological development is focused on the appearance of each phoneme in speech of children with typical and atypical language development. It is also centered upon the relationships between babbling and later phonological competence (Zanobini, 2012). Phonological development may be assessed by the number of acquired consonants, number of phonological error patterns, and phonological mean length of utterance (MLU). To test the number of acquired consonants all syllable initial consonants produced by the child are surveyed. A consonant may be considered acquired if the consonant was attempted at least 3 times with a percentage of correct production of at least 75%. To test the number of phonological error patterns, all typical and unusual phonological error patterns produced by the child are analyzed. These error patterns are considered as a result of the child’s undeveloped sound system. Typical error patterns, commonly found in normal development, can contain cluster reduction and part of the cluster is omitted (for example, “cay” for “clay”). Unusual error patterns are found in impaired speech but are rare in normal language development. We measure the MLU to gain insight into the child’s whole-world complexity. The MLU reveals the length of the child’s words and the number of correct consonants; it is properly defined as the mean length of the child’s word productions, in addition the number of correct consonants in each production. The MLU is calculated by averaging the score over numerous meaningful words, usually 25 or more (Van Noort-Van Der Spek, 2010). Children develop phonology usually around certain ages. From birth to three months, cries are produced, coos and gurgles, and there is reflexive sound making which produces a glottal catch and vowels (such as ah or uh). Around the age of 3-6 months, babbling begins. Therefore, infants produce double syllables (consonant, vowel consonant), nasal sounds and puts lips together to say sounds like “m.” Self-initiated vocal play is presented but often stops when an adult enters the room. Around 6-9 months, infants uses m, n, t, d, b, p, y in babbling multiple syllables. They also use a large variety of sound combinations including non-English sounds. Intonation may be heard as well. From 9-12 months, they vocalize during play, uses consonants and vowels in most sounds, and their first word is usually heard. From 1-1.5 years, the child uses sentence-like intonations, accurately imitates some words and have basically unintelligible speech with the exception of a few words. Once the child is 1.5 to 2 years, words are increasing in frequency, they ask questions by raising intonation at end of phrase, and some words are produced with CVC structure. From 2-2.5 years, approximately 70% of speech is intelligible and they may omit final consonants, reduce consonant blends or substitute one consonant for another. Until the age of 3, there are still some substitutions and distortion of consonants but 80% of speech is intelligible. Consonants p, m, n, w, h are mastered. From 3-3.5 years, phonological processes disappear. Consonant assimilation, diminutization, doubling , final consonant deletion, prevocalic voicing, reduplication, unstressed syllable deletion and velar fronting vanish. By 4 years of age, intelligibility of connected speech is pretty good. The consonants b, d, k, g, f, y are finally mastered. From 4-4.5 there should be few omissions and substitutions of consonants. Until the child is 5, most of the consonant sounds are used consistently and accurately; however, they may not be mastered in all contexts. Between 5-7, all the consonants are mastered (Gard, Gilman, Gorman). Morphology is defined as the knowledge of word formation or the structure of the word. In the english language words are not the smallest unit, the smallest units of language that still hold meaning are known as a morpheme. There are two types of morphemes, free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morphemes can appear alone, such as “sat”,” jump”, “dog”, or “happy”. Bound morphemes can not appear alone they can only attach to a free morpheme, and change the meaning of the word. Words such as “dog” (free morpheme) can be joined with “s” (bound morpheme) becoming dogs, making the noun plural. Morphemes can make nouns plural, changing the tense of verbs, and adding suffixes and prefixes. Once a child learns how to use morphemes they use them even when it is not appropriate, such as, “I runned to the store.” At the age of 2 children learn that adding “ed” to verbs makes them plural, which is true but not with irregular verbs. The term overregularization is when you apply rules where they are not appropriate ( Bjorklund). By the age of 3 children learn how to not overregularize (Marcus, 1995; Marcus et al., 1992). John Berko created the “wug test” as a way to test children to see if they understood morphological rules (1958). In the wug test kids are shown objects with made up names. For example they could show a made up object and say this is a “wug”. The kids are now shown two “wugs” and told now there are two of them, there are two ______? If the kids understand the rules for making things plural they will say wugs. Adding to morphology is syntax which is the knowledge of sentence structure , and how words can turned into sentences (Bjorklund). Social-Interactionist Theory One of the theories used to explain language development is the social-interactionist theory. The social interactionist theory focuses on the idea that childrens’ domain-general social-cognitive abilities, underlying abilities that influence performance in a wide range of situations along with the social environment interplay and influence language development. In other words, humans are born with the ability to be specially prepared to acquire language, and that critical periods exist for acquiring language. Along with this predetermined ability, the environment plays a role as well, specifically by the presentation of languages by the child’s parents, or people around them. In general, young infants respond to human speaking and have a response to infant directed speech, which is speech that adults usually use with babies that have a specific prosody, or rhythm. Along with this is the idea that adults are born with a device, called the “Language Acquisition Support System,” or the “LASS,” which engages adults in infant directed speech when conversing with a child or infant. Child-directed speech is seen as a negotiation between the caregiver and the infant, while the infant may not have to respond with complete linguistic units or constituents like an adult. As the child matures physically, he/she can produces utterances that are more adult-like, the negotiation becomes more balanced in the aspect of syntax and phonology.

Physiology of Language Development Many different areas of the brain may be linked to certain aspects of language. PET and fMRI technology and imaging has allowed for some conclusions to be made about where language may be centered. In oral language, auditory input is sent from the medial geniculate nucleus in the thalamus to primary auditory and auditory association areas, the latter pertaining to phonological representations of words. For written language, the primary visual area contains information of a ventral "what" projection and a dorsal "where" projection. The “what” projection in this case is used to identify the symbol of the whole word and the “where” projection is used to recognize the meaning of the word placement given adjacent contextual cues. The ventral projection includes the fusiform gyrus which may contain orthographic representations of words, which are the abstract mental representations of the spelling of words (Buchwald & Rapp 2006). The dorsal projection includes the superior parietal lobe, which may be important in aspects of reading that involve spatial attention. Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are two important parts of the brain involved with language. Wernicke’s area is in the temporal lobe and is associated with receptive language and auditory comprehension. This area also may be responsible for the integration of spoken and written word forms that give rise to meaning or semantics. Through the arcuate fasciculus, Wernicke’s area is connected with Broca’s area which includes brain regions for speech production or articulatory word forms involving segmented phonology and syntactic processing and is located in the frontal lobe (Booth & Burman, 2001). Broca’s area is associated with expressive language and speech production. In previous experiments, a transcranial magnetic stimulation was hooked up to a person’s motor cortex to observe face movements and increased lip movements were recorded. This led to a hypothesis that the parts of the motor cortex may be correlated to facial movements during speech. Infants are particularly important to study because we can catch the learning disability at it’s start. Some neuroscience techniques that are used to study infants include the EEG/ERP (electrical field changes), MEG (magnetic field changes), fMRI (hemodynamic changes), and the NIRS (also hemodynamic changes). “Infants must begin life with brain systems that allow them to acquire any and all languages to which they are exposed, and can acquire language as either an auditory-vocal or a visual-manual code, on roughly the same timetable,” (Petitto and Marentette, 1991). Depending on whether the infant utilizes the auditory-vocal or the visual-manual code can be related to growing areas of the brain. An auditory-vocal code correlates to substantial growth in the temporal lobe which is where auditory comprehension along with auditory association cortex resides. A visual-manual code would correlate more to the Occipital Lobe in which visual association cortex resides. It is important to recognize that language acquisition can be viewed as an innate ability that infants are genetically predisposed to which in turn allows for the recognition of a domain-general cognition aspect holding true to explain the stage-like fashion in which every individual graduates towards acquiring that specific language. In addition, “Event-related potential (ERP) and dichotic listening experiments suggest that the left hemisphere is differentially sensitive for speech from birth,” (Mehler and Christophe, 1995). It would make sense that experiments and tests have found the left hemisphere to become more activated when variable pertaining to language were manipulated. A variable might include the meaning of a word. Studies have shown that at about 20 months of age, activation of the left temporal lobe and parietal lobe were associated with word meanings.

It is important to note that there exists a critical period of which language acquisition must occur. This critical period ends at puberty and by then it would be of great difficulty to acquire the full access of any particular language. Lateralization of the brain is a strong component of this critical period. It has been seen that the brains of post-pubescent language learners are less lateralized. For example, specific parts of language such as “Judging English syntactic constructions or responding to the placement of closed function words in sentences” are only seen in early language learners of English (Weber-Fox and Neville, 1996). Unfortunately the easiest way to study the critical period of language acquisition is by following up on people who have been deprived of learning a given language until or after puberty. However by using all of the advanced technology that allows us to observe brain activity pertaining to language, we can accurately predict learning disabilities faced by deprivation of language acquisition during the critical period. All of this data that links certain parts of the brain to many aspects of language can be useful in the medical setting. For example, when problems arise such as the inability to produce expressive speech it will be easier to target the specific area of where the language disability is residing. Therefore research into the neurocognitive field of language acquisition is increasingly important to accommodate the needs of medical professions dealing with speech impediments and Speech Language Pathologists.

Reference Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). Language Development. Children's thinking: cognitive development and individual differences (4th ed., pp. 382-390). Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth. Berko,J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150-177. Houston-Price, C., Mather, E., & Sakkalou, E. (2007). Discrepancy between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabulary and infants' behaviour in a preferential looking task. Journal Of Child Language, 34(4), 701-724. doi:10.1017/S0305000907008124 Mampe et al. Newborns' Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language. Current Biology, November 5, 2009; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064 Marcus, G.F., Pinker, S., Ullman,M., Hollander, M., Rosen, T. J., & Xu, F. (1992). Overregularization in language acquisition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57 (Serial No. 228). National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (2011). Speech and Language Developmental Milestone. Retrieved from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/pages/speechandlanguage.aspx Speech and Language Development Chart (2nd Ed.) Addy Gard, Leslea Gilman, and Jim Gorman, Pro-Ed. Taylor, J. H., Plunkett, K., & Nation, K. (2011). The influence of consistency, frequency, and semantics on learning to read: An artificial orthography paradigm. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, And Cognition, 37(1), 60-76. doi:10.1037/a0020126 Van Noort-Van Der Spek, I. L., Franken, M. P., Wieringa, M. H., & Weisglas-Kuperus, N. (2010). Phonological development in very-low-birthweight children: An exploratory study. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 52(6), 541-546. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2009.03507.x Zanobini, M., Viterbori, P., & Saraceno, F. (2012). Phonology and language development in Italian children: An analysis of production and accuracy. Journal Of Speech, Language, And Hearing Research, 55(1), 16-30. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0228) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whee8009 (talk • contribs) 22:53, 21 December 2012 (UTC)