Critical period hypothesis

with cases
 What is CPH?

• 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, and that first-language acquisition
relies on neuroplasticity. (Lennenberg)
• Brown defines it as a biological timetable during which both first and
second language is more successfully accomplished.

• Ellis defines it as a period during which "target-language competence

in an L2 can only be achieved if learning commences before a certain
age is reached”
 Historical background
• first proposed by Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield and co-author
Lamar Roberts in their 1959 book Speech and Brain Mechanisms
• popularized by Eric Lenneberg in 1967 with Biological Foundations of
Language
• (Chomsky and LAD? )
 Historical background
• Lenneberg theorized that the acquisition of language is an innate
process determined by biological factors which limit the critical period
for acquisition of a language from roughly two years of age to puberty
- After lateralization (a process by which the two sides of the brain
develop specialized functions), the brain loses plasticity
- Lateralization of the language function is normally completed at
puberty, making post adolescent language acquisition difficult
- There are maturational constraints on the time a first language can be
acquired. If language acquisition does not occur by puberty, some
aspects of language can be learnt but full mastery cannot be achieved
• Chomsky believes that children are born with an ability to learn any
human language
-they have a ‘language acquisition device’ (LAD) which encodes the
major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the
child’s brain
-there is a critical period during which the human mind is able to learn
language; before or after this period language cannot be acquired in a
natural fashion.
 Studies and cases that support CPH and their
findings
Genie
- found at age thirteen
- attempts were made to teach her language, but although she progressed to the
two-word and three-word stages like most children, her lack of morphology was
never remedied
- She never used the demonstratives ‘there’ or ‘it’ although there were attempts
at the definite article ‘the’
- demonstrates that after the critical period, pragmatic skills can still be
developed but the structural knowledge of language is lost
- suggests that a child must be exposed to language during the critical period,
and that after puberty language acquisition cannot reach its normal end point
 Victor of Aveyron
- 18th century, France
- Lived in the woods alone for most of his life
- Taken in by a doctor - Itard (Jean Marc Gaspard Itard)
- Doctor worked with him for 5 years
- His most common utterances were simplified versions of “lait” (milk)
and “oh, Dieu” (oh, God). He did associate specific actions with
meanings, acquiring a kind of pantomimic language. He was also able
to sympathize with and understand human emotions: Itard relates in
his notes a scene where Victor senses the housekeeper’s grief upon
losing her husband; seeing her tears, Victor gathers the extra plate
and cutlery from the table he has just set and “puts it sadly back in
the cupboard, never to lay it out again.” (Itard, 1806)
 Johnson and Newport (1989)
• Looked into the relationship between the effects of maturation and
the ability of an individual to acquire a second language
• They aimed at either disproving or verifying the existence of age-
related effects on second language acquisition of grammar by
establishing a correlation between age of first exposure to a language
and level of morphosyntactic accuracy in that language
• 46 native Chinese and Korean speakers who had arrived in the US
between the ages of 3 to 39 and had learned English as a second
language were asked to determine the grammaticality of a variety of
English sentences in order to determine their knowledge of English
morphosyntax
• Subjects were divided into 4 groups depending on their age of arrival
• Their overall performance on this grammaticality judgment test was
then examined for correlations between age of arrival and test score
Findings:
- Data showed correlation between subjects’ age of arrival and their
performance
- -ages 3-7 consistent with the performance of native speakers
- 8-10 highly overall, but lower than their younger counterparts
- 11-15 drop in scores compared to younger groups, but higher than
17-39 group
- “Success in learning a language is almost entirely predicted by the age
at which it begins”
 Thompson (1991)
• study investigated factors associated with the acquisition of L2
pronunciation and methodological problems associated with the study of
foreign accents
• 36 native speakers of Russian, who immigrated to the US between the
ages of 4 and 42
• Each of them was given three types of speaking tasks:
1 - reading a list of 20 sentences which were intentionally “seeded” with
English sounds
2 - reading a 160-word passage which had not been seeded
3 - speaking spontaneously for one minute about their activities on the
day of the experiment.
• The speech samples were then examined both by a group of native English
speakers who had little or no knowledge about or exposure to foreign languages
and linguistics, and by a group who was familiar with linguistics and had had
frequent exposure to the Russian language. The judges were asked to rate the
samples on a scale from 1 (no foreign accent) to 5 (heavy foreign accent).
Findings
- Subjects who came to the U.S. between the ages of 4 and 10 years were judged
to have a slight foreign accent. Results suggest that factors which affect the
acquisition of L2 pronunciation depend on type of primary exposure to L2, and
that perception of a foreign accent depends on language samples presented for
judgment and on the linguistic experience of listeners. The study also raises the
possibility that the acquisition of fully accentless speech in L2 may not be possible
if L1 is maintained at a high level of proficiency, no matter how young the age at
which the individual started to acquire the second language.
-“the age at which [the immigrants] arrived in the U.S. was the best indicator of
the accuracy of their pronunciation in English”
Study against CPH and findings
• Long (1990) claims that the existence of a critical period in second language
acquisition is totally false
• White and Genesee (1996), tried to determine whether highly proficient
adult acquirers of a second language were indeed at a nativelike level
They conducted a study on highly proficient adult to determine whether
acquirers of a L2 were indeed at a nativelike level, tested 89 speakers of
English as L2
They used a grammaticality judgment task, a question formation task, and
an interview task in which they were evaluated on their performance in terms
of pronunciation, morphosyntax, fluency, choice of vocabulary, and overall
nativeness
 Findings
-Several of the subjects demonstrated an ability to achieve near-native
levels of competence despite their age of first exposure taking place after
the purported critical period
- White and Genesee also found that “the performance of [these] near-
native subjects on the grammaticality judgment task, both in terms of
their accuracy and their speed, was indistinguishable from that of the
native speakers, as was their performance on the written production task”
- White and Genesee do not deny the commonly held belief that a negative
correlation exists between age of acquisition and ultimate attainment in a
second language
- They challenge the notion that a critical period exists in the domain of
second language acquisition which bars nativelike proficiency when
language is learned after its closing
• Many empirical studies on CPH (Dong, 2003; Wang, 2003; Shu, 2003;
Lu, 2004; Liu, 2005; Xin & Zhou 2006; Zhao & Zou, 2008) have been
found in Chinese EFL context
• Wang (2003) and Liu (2005) studies show that there does not really
exist a so-called optimum age for Chinese learners
They propose that a strong motivation, proper learning strategies and
intense efforts are decisive factors in successfully learning a foreign
language.
 Conclusion
• Even though there are studies in favor of the existence of CPH, there
are too many variables with strong factual support that explain
second language acquisition differences in learners
• Along with CPH, learner factors like age, motivation, anxiety, culture,
aptitude, cognitive style, learning style are also important in language
acquisition
• More modern studies for better answers?
Additional reading and links
• https://riojournal.com/articles.php?id=20696
• http://web.mnstate.edu/houtsli/tesl551/LangAcq/page6.htm
• https://zenodo.org/record/901393
• http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/language-de
velopment/language-acquisition-device
/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93HymGXC_wM Oxana Malaya
• https://cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0103-mcdermott.html Victor of Aveyron
• https://
historyofyesterday.com/the-famous-savage-boy-of-france-a5c03453f0ea
Victor of Aveyron
• https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1991.tb00683.x Thompson
study
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Chapman
• https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14215171 Peter the Wild Boy
• https://doi.org/10.2307/2739199 Rewriting the Savage: The
Extraordinary Fictions of the "Wild Girl of Champagne"
• http://
www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Marie-Ang%C3%A9lique_Mem
mie_Le_Blanc

• https://www.history.com/news/6-famous-wild-children-from-history
 References

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3. Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding second language acquisition 2nd Edition-Oxford applied linguistics. Oxford university press.
4. Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York, New York: Wiley and Sons.
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