It is increasingly common for children to start learning a new language at an early age in an almost urgent task because we think that children are sponges and after a certain age, mastering a new language becomes an almost titanic task.
which is called Around this point, neuroscientist David Bueno has sparked quite an interesting debate by pointing out that “language learning is concentrated from six months to five years”. This is a period in which the brain is particularly prone to absorbing the sounds and structures of its environment, so it is a priority when it learns a second language. But the window is not that narrow.
plasticity A reality in children, as various neuroscientific studies point out. For example, a study published Neuron noted that there is a balance between neuronal excitability and inhibition that opens different learning windows that are subsequently ‘closed’ by different molecular brakes.
This is something that happens especially in the first year of life, since by six months babies are able to distinguish the contrast of any word, regardless of language. But between six and twelve months, experts call sensory deprivation.
This semester is very important Because linguistic experience physically changes perception and children greatly improve their ability to distinguish the sounds of their native language, but at the same time they lose the sensitivity to recognize foreign language sounds. But the most interesting thing is to see how the brain needs human interaction to keep these connections alive.
For example, one randomized trial exposing nine-month-old American infants to in-person Mandarin sessions with native speakers successfully reversed Mandarin word loss. But when the same experiment was tried using video or audio recordings, the effect was null. This tells us that the child’s brain needs social and face-to-face components to integrate language.
in spain We have as a reference study conducted by the University of Barcelona, where children were exposed to both Catalan and Spanish. Here it was found that, at only four months of age, infants already distinguish the two languages despite their rhythmic similarities, undergoing a complex perceptual development in their first year that accommodates the processing demands of two parallel phonetic systems.
The problem is, if we assess a bilingual child’s vocabulary in a single language, it is likely that he will lag behind a monolingual in the same age range.
The door is not closed With age, since the ability to learn the grammar of a new language remains almost intact until the age of 17 and a half. A steady decline in this ability is recorded from late adolescence onwards, meaning that, although language learning is logically better the younger you are, the door is not closed in the long term.
Picture | Vika Glitter
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