Critical Period and Language Acquisition Essay

Part of the reason why Genies oddball fascinated psychologists and linguists so deeply was that it presented a unique opportunity to adopt a hotly contested debate about nomenclature development. Nativists conceptualise that the capacity for language is innate, while empiricists suggest that it is environmental vari adequate to(p)s that play a key role. Essentially, it boils down to the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Do genetic science or environment play a greater role in the development of language? Nativist Noam Chomsky suggested that the acquisition of language could not be to the full explained by learn alone. Instead, he proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. formerly exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a singular pace. Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like many other human behaviors, the ability to formulate language is subject t o what are known as hypercritical pointednesss.A critical period is a limited span of time during which an being is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills. According to Lenneberg, the critical period for language acquisition lasts until around age 12. After the fire of puberty, he argued, the organization of the brain becomes set and no longer able to learn and utilize language in a amply useable manner. Genies case presented researchers with a unique opportunity. If given an enriched information environment, could she overcome her deprived childhood and learn language even though she had missed the critical period? If she could, it would suggest that the critical period guessing of language development was wrong. If she could not, it would indicate that Lennebergs theory was correct.Genies Language ProgressDespite scoring at the level of a one-year-old upon her initial assessment, Genie quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She sta rted by learning single words and eventually began put two words in concert much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language. After a year of treatment, she even started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through natural language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin puttingthem together in novel ways. Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable(p) to apply grammatical rules and use language in a meaningful way. At this point, her progress leveled off and her acquisition of new language halted. objet dart Genie was able to learn some language after puberty, her softness to use grammar (which Chomsky suggests is what separates human language from animal communication) offers evidence for the critical period hypothesis. Of course, Gen ies case is not so simple. Not simply did she miss the critical period for learning language, she was also horrifically abused. She was malnourished and deprived of cognitive stimulation for most of her childhood. Researchers were also never able to fully determine if Genie suffered from pre-existing cognitive deficits. As an infant, a pediatrician had identified her as having some type of mental delay. So researchers were leftfield to wonder whether Genie had suffered from cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of mental retardation.