Talk:Critical period hypothesis

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How is this possible to know?
>"A more general problem is that, as Pinker (1995) notes, almost every sentence anybody voices is an original combination of words, never previously uttered..."

How could Pinker, or anyone else for that matter, know whether that be the case or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.255.174.106 (talk) 21:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Simple reasoning suffices. Several considerations can be taken into account, such as the fact that language evolves, so the pronunciations of words and the words themselves will change over time. Lexical obsolescence would preclude the possibility of repeating utterances after a given time. More broadly than that, though, is the simple array of linguistic data available. If I were to say something genuinely absurd like "The inside-out elephant riding a kitten twerked into the sunset," it's statistically probable that that is the first time that specific utterance has ever been produced. Since the form of utterances is also context and state-dependent on the individual, it also stands to reason that any given utterance will likely differ from all others, the exception being idiomatized phrasings and common exchanges. In short, it seems like a trivial observation, one that can be taken at relative face value. Hovikk (talk) 05:21, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Creation of page
The article on second language acquisition is becoming rather long, and although this (fundamental) aspect of linguistics is covered in some detail on the SLA page, at critical period and language acquisition, there was no dedicated page.

The introductory paragraph is the only section new to this article. Everything else is ripped straight from other pages. It's currently one hell of a mess, so I hope others will step in! Jsteph 11:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Further to this, I have ripped out the section on Krashen's Monitor Theory and set up a new article for it; I couldn't see how it was directly relevant to the CPH. Jsteph 05:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Rating
The article is very informative, but reads more like an article from a scientific lexicon than like a general lexicon article. Several literature that is claimed to be representative is discussed. While I am not completely unfamiliar with this topic as a general linguist and could confirm some parts of the article, without further looking up literature I cannot tell whether it is representative. It would be good to have this confirmed by an expert from the respective area of research, that is, cognitive linguistics.

It would probably be advisable not to start with the literature, but with several theories existing, and to mention scientists if necessary and works only if absolutely necessary. A clean-up between the main and the history section might be good. Maybe a whole restructuring of the article might be advisable.

Anyway, there are no actual serious problems with any of the content, and the article is clearly much more useful than most within WP languages. Structure is bad, but that doesn't impede the interested reader from acquiring the knowledge provided. Rated as C Class. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:09, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Licensing
I noticed that the section, "Experimental and Observational Studies" of the article was too long and technical to have been written specifically for Wikipedia, and sure enough, when I googled it, this article came up. It is licensed under the GNU free documentation license, so I don't think that it is permited to be used on Wikipedia, which is licensed under the Creative Commons. I'm no expert, so someone should probably reconcile this. Rhinocerous Ranger (talk) 02:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's pretty likely that the PDF file is just copied from Wikipedia. If you look at the original edit, it is different from the PDF link you provided in several places. I haven't checked the history to see if I can find the exact version that PDF is taken from, so I can't be sure, but it looks like it's not just a simple cut and paste job. This doesn't guarantee the original source though, of course - I think it might be a good idea to check it up. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 15:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Also see the comments from the page creator above. The original article here was a cut and paste job from several different Wikipedia articles. The only one that looked suspicious was second language acquisition, but actually it seems to be legit. See the original SLA article contribution and User talk:Visviva for comments on its ownership. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 21:25, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Cut and paste from second language acquisition
There was still lots of info about the critical period hypothesis over at second language acquisition that was just too long for it to be there. I've cut and pasted it into this article for now. Unfortunately, that means this article will need lots of cleaning up... I plan to come back here and do that when I'm finished getting the SLA article more stable, but it might take a while! — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 21:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Missing Citations
I'll remove some of the citation tags (based on google scholar, PubMed etc). Please check I'm getting the correct refs. Starting placeholder.
 * Some of them might be buried in the history of the Second language acquisition article. I've been going through the history and adding the sources back in for that article too. This applies particularly to the "Other directions of research" section which I moved here from that article. I spotted Tarone, Bigelow and Hansen there - there may be others. See this version for example. It looks like this still won't get the majority of the sources though. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 23:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: I went through the particular version that I linked, and I couldn't find any more sources. I'm not sure if there are any more in other versions. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 23:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: I went through the particular version that I linked, and I couldn't find any more sources. I'm not sure if there are any more in other versions. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 23:32, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, judging from the abstract of the article you linked to, I would say you have the correct Scherag, Demuth, Rösler, Neville and Röder reference. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 12:49, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I've added the Scherag et. al (2004) reference to the article and removed the broken citation templates. — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 12:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

RDBrown, thank you so much for your work on this, it is much appreciated! — GypsyJiver  ( drop me a line ) 01:36, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Clarification needed
Because statistics can often be confusing and misleading, I'd like clarification on this line. Is this 5% out of all adult bilinguals or only of adult bilinguals who have mastered a second language? In other words, there are: This group (#1) is 5% out of all adult bilinguals (1-4) or are they 5% out of only the adult biliguals who have mastered their 2nd language (1 & 3 only). For An Angel (talk) 20:25, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * five percent of adult bilinguals master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood
 * 1) Adult bilinguals who began learning their 2nd language in adulthood and were still able to master it.
 * 2) Adult bilinguals who began learning their 2nd language in adulthood and were not able to master it.
 * 3) Adult bilinguals who began learning their 2nd language in childhood and were able to master it.
 * 4) Adult bilinguals who began learning their 2nd language in childhood and were still not able to master it.

CPH - Second-language acquisition
I would like to expand this section. My main additions would be:


 * - Acknowledging the debate over the timing of the critical period with respect to SLA.
 * - The theory that only pronunciation is influenced by the critical period, and not the processes of learning new morphemes, vocabulary, or syntax.
 * - CPH theories explaining the loss of memory plasticity with age (specifically a decrease in use of procedural memory and increased reliance on declarative memory). Plasticity theories often go down one of two roads: "use it then lose it" or "use it or lose it."
 * - The level of automaticity when an L2-user speaks their L2 versus their L1.
 * - Critics of the CPH-SLA and why they doubt the hypothesis. The usual reason is that there are other, more important factors influencing L2-proficiency such as time and effort put in to learning, or willingness to assimilate with the language's culture.

I have already begun to write most of these additions in my sandbox. As long as I keep the language simple and clear, is there a possibility of having too much detail?

Bibliography:

Birdsong, David, ed. (1999). Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis. Mahwah (NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN: 0-8058-3084-7.

Li, Ping (2013). "Chapter 7: Successive Language Acquisition. " In Grosjean, Francois; Li, Ping. The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-4443-3279-7.

Loewen, Shawn; Reinders, Hayo (2011). Key Concepts in Second Language Acquisition. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 46. ISBN: 978-0-230-23018-7.

Meisel, Jurgen M (2010). "Chapter 12: Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism: Effects on grammatical development." In Kail, Michele; Hickmann, Maya, eds. Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN: 978-90-272-5314-9.

Paradis, Michel (2004). "Chapter 2: Implicit and explicit language processes." In Paradis, Michel. A Neurolinguistic Theory of Bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN: 90-272-4127-9.

Thank you, CRHeck (talk) 14:53, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Update: Additions to be made to Second-Language Acquisition section (in bold below):

The theory has often been extended to a critical period for second-language acquisition (SLA), although this is much less widely accepted. Certainly, older learners of a second language rarely achieve the native-like fluency that younger learners display, despite often progressing faster than children in the initial stages. David Singleton[11] states that in learning a second language, "younger = better in the long run," but points out that there are many exceptions, noting that five percent of adult bilinguals master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood—long after any critical period has presumably come to a close. '''There is much debate over the timing of the critical period with respect to SLA, with estimates ranging between 2 and 13 years of age (Cite Loewen + Paradis). '''

While the window for learning a second language never completely closes, certain linguistic aspects appear to be more affected by the age of the learner than others. For example, adult second-language learners nearly always retain an immediately identifiable foreign accent, including some who display perfect grammar (Oyama 1976). '''A possible explanation for why this foreign accent remains is that pronunciation, or phonology, is susceptible to the critical period (Cite Singleton). The pronunciation of speech sounds relies on neuromuscular function. Adults learning a new language are unlikely to attain a convincing native accent since they are past the prime age of learning new neuromuscular functions, and therefore pronunciations. Writers have suggested a younger critical age for learning phonology than for morphemes and''' syntax. Singleton (1995) reports that there is no critical period for learning vocabulary in a second language '''because vocabulary is learned consciously using declarative memory (Cite Singleton + Paradis). The attrition, or loss, of procedural memory with age results in the increased use of declarative memory to learn new languages, which is an entirely different process from L1 learning (Cite Paradis). The plasticity of procedural memory is argued to decline after the age of 5. The attrition of procedural memory plasticity inhibits the ability of an L2-user to speak their second language automatically. It can still take conscious effort even if they are exposed to the second language as early as age 3. This effort is observed by measuring brain activity. L2-users that are exposed to their second language at an early age and are everyday users show lower levels of brain activity when using their L1 than when using their L2. This suggests that additional resources are recruited when speaking their L2 and it is therefore a more strenuous process.'''

'''The critical period hypothesis in SLA follows a "use it then lose it" approach, which dictates that as a person ages, excess neural circuitry used during L1 learning is essentially broken down (Cite Birdsong). If these neural structures remained intact they would cost unnecessary metabolic energy to maintain. The structures necessary for L1 use are kept. On the other hand, a second "use it or lose it" approach dictates that if an L2-user begins to learn at an early age and continues on through his life, then his language-learning circuitry should remain active. This approach is also called the "exercise hypothesis" (Cite Birdsong). '''

Some writers have argued that the critical period hypothesis does not apply to SLA, and that second-language proficiency is determined by the time and effort put into the learning process, and not the learner's age (Cite Loewen + Birdsong). Robertson (2002)][12] observed that factors other than age may be even more significant in successful second-language learning, such as personal motivation, anxiety, input and output skills, '''and the learning environment. A combination of these factors often leads to individual variation in second-language acquisition''' experiences.

On reviewing the published material, Bialystok and Hakuta (1994) conclude that second-language learning is not necessarily subject to biological critical periods, but "on average, there is a continuous decline in ability [to learn] with age." — Preceding unsigned comment added by CRHeck (talk • contribs) 03:50, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

CRHeck (talk) 04:04, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

CRHeck It is time to make the changes to the main space. I do not think there is too much detail. specific suggestions: One of your sentences starts "there is much debate over the timing..." and although you give a source you haven't clarified what is the nature of the debate. You indicated it could be any where between two and 13 years but are there reasons for this variability? Marentette (talk) 23:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal: Critical period
If nobody is against it, I'll merge this article into the article linked above in some days. Llaanngg (talk) 23:11, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

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