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A comment on Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children: study. Parent comment

Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Saturday May 11, 2019 @04:54PM (#19888340)
There was never any evidence to support the critical period theory. It was poor statistics from the very beginning.
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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by sjy on Saturday May 11, 2019 @10:44PM (#19889800)
The authors of the study under discussion explicitly claim (in the abstract even) that "the results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition." You should address that argument (or cite the other "recent articles" that refute it), rather than simply dismissing it as poor statistics.
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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Sunday May 12, 2019 @12:37AM (#19890181)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3723803/

http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/March_2002_EBook_editions.p...

^ Basically the above study, sponsored by the NIH, found that when you correct for all relevant factors the critical period signal not only disappears but becomes anti-correlated: kids have a HARDER time in all aspects of language learning than adults, when the same level of interest and effort is applied.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by dragonwriter on Sunday May 12, 2019 @12:46AM (#19890203)
So we've not only confirmed that children have an advantage, but we've identified the nature of the advantage: it's easier for them to muster both interest and effort, to the extent that this outweighs the disadvantages they have outside of those areas.
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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Sunday May 12, 2019 @07:30PM (#19895293)
Yeah but there’s nothing physiological or neurological there, which is what the critical period hypothesis is predicting. It’s just the reality of childhood in an immersion environment.
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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by dragonwriter on Sunday May 12, 2019 @08:21PM (#19895521)
> Yeah but there’s nothing physiological or neurological there

That's, IMO, an unwarranted (and, taken strictly, almost implausible) assumption. (Especially on the interest side.)

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