Thursday, February 17, 2011

Critical Period - another TED talk, but it's great! Really!


Yes, its yet another TED talk, but its a fabulous summary of recent research on language acquisition and the critical period. Patricia Kuhl summarizes work in her lab about babies and language acquisition and exactly when the critical period window is "open" and when it shuts. I love how she summarizes what's happening cognitively in babies' minds: "They are taking statistics about the languages they hear." Also, I love her slides - great examples of data representation.

This talk might be a great to show in combination with a discussion about the Genie case study, and your bi or tri-lingual kids in class could come up with great examples of phonemes that mono-lingual kids in your class won't even be able to hear.

posted by Rob McEntarffer

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