What is Critical Period

Hypothesis?
There is a period of growth in which full native competence is
possible when acquiring a language.

This period is from early childhood to adolescence.

Acquisition theories say that adults do not acquire languages as well

as children because of external and internal factors, not because of a
lack of ability.

Example:
Older learners rarely achieve a near-native accent. Many people
suggest this is due to them being beyond the critical period.
 According to Catherine E. Snow and Marian,

The critical period hypothesis holds that first

language acquisition must occur before
cerebral lateralization is complete, at about
the age of puberty.

One prediction of this hypothesis is that

second language acquisition will be relatively
fast, successful, and qualitatively similar to
first language only if it occurs before the age
of puberty.
 The CPH also is the subject of long standing
debate in linguistics and language acquisition
over the extent to which the ability to acquire
language is biologically link to the age.
If language input does not occur until after
this time the individual will never achieve a
full command of language especially
grammatical system.
The critical period hypothesis claim that an
optimal period of language is ending at
puberty.
 Historical Background
The critical period hypothesis was first proposed
by neurologist, Wilder Penfield and co author,
Lamar Roberts in 1959.
The main study is the neuroscience of language.
Wilder said that any child up to age 9 can learn
multiple languages.
It was then popularized by Eric Lenneberg in
1967 with his famous book Biological
Foundations of Language.
Eric said that children have certain amount of
time to acquire language and language
acquisition is a biologically constrained learning.
 Another well known person who also
supports the critical period hypothesis would
be Noam Chomsky.
He believes that children are born with an
inherited ability to learn any human language.
Every child has a language acquisition device
(LAD) which encodes the major principles of
language and its grammatical structures into
the childs brain.
 Relationship of CPH in SLA
We have Johnson & Newport in 1989 who performed a study on 46
native Chinese and Korean speakers who arrived in the US between the
ages of 3 and 39 AND who lived in US between 3 and 26 years by the
time of testing to compare their English proficiency.
Tested on a wide variety of structures of English grammar, using a
grammaticality judgment task.
The results of testing show a clear and strong relationship between age
of acquisition and performance on the test of English grammar.
Test analyses demonstrated a clear & strong advantage for earlier
arrivals over the later arrivals.
Test performance was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty.
After puberty performance was low but highly variable & unrelated to
age of arrival.
Critical period affects phonology, morphology and syntax AND not the
semantic and vocabulary processing in second language acquisition.
 What is Brain Lateralization?
The term brain lateralization refers to the fact that the two halves of the
human brain are not exactly alike. Each hemisphere has functional
specializations: some function whose neural mechanisms are localized
primarily in one half of the brain.

In humans, the most obvious functional specialization is speech and

language abilities. In the mid-1800s, Paul Broca (a French neurosurgeon)
identified a particular area of the left hemisphere that plays a primary role
in speech production.

Shortly afterwards, a German neurologist, Carl Wernicke, identified

another part of the left hemisphere primarily concerned with language
comprehension.
The Critical Period for Language Acquisition:
Evidence from Second Language Learning
 The critical period hypothesis states that the first few years of life is the
crucial time in which an individual can acquire a first language if presented
with adequate stimuli.

If language input does not occur until after this time, the individual will
never achieve a full command of languageespecially grammatical;
systems.
In second-language acquisition, the strongest empirical evidence for
the critical period hypothesis is in the study of accent, where most
older learners do not reach a native-like level.

However, under certain conditions, native-like accent has been

observed, suggesting that accent is affected by multiple factors, such
as identity and motivation, rather than a critical period biological
constraint.
 Further Supportive Studies
1. The story of Genie, a 13 year girl, who was a victim of child abuse.
She has been kept strapped to a potty chair & wearing diapers.
She appeared to be entirely without language when she was found at her
age of 13.
Her father judged her retarded at birth and isolate her, and so till she was
found at the age of 13.
Linguist conducted an experiment on her and it was proved that she was
unable to acquire language completely & could only make infant like
sounds and no words and sentences.
2. Isabella under training and care
She is a girl who was incarcerated with her deaf mute mother until the
age of 6 years ( pre- pubescent).
She also had no language skills but unlike Genie, she quickly acquired
normal language abilities through systematic specialist training.
Sources:
http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/brain.html

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/critical-period-
hypothesis

https://www.jstor.org

https://www.slideshare.net/pokray/critical-period-hypothesis-
2?from_m_app=android

https://www.slideshare.net/chitra101/my-critical-period-
hypothesis-cph?from_m_app=android