Critical Periods in Language Development
Friday, November 9, 2001
Standard Club, 320 S. Plymouth Court, Chicago, IL
Registration 8:00 am to 9:00 am  Symposium 9:00 am to Noon

About the Symposium

How do nature and nurture interact to shape a child’s brain development? Are there certain periods during which specific types of learning, such as language acquisition, are more easily accomplished?

For the past thirty years, our understanding of brain development has been largely based on research involving animal models.  With recent technological advances, such as non-invasive brain imaging, we have been able to address the existence of critical periods in the context of human development.  In this symposium, the effects of a child’s experiences on the visual, auditory, and language systems of the brain will be discussed.

Behavioral research demonstrates that children learn second languages more easily than adults.  Can this fact be explained by the existence of critical periods in language development or by differences in input and attitudes toward learning?  To address this question, studies of language acquisition by hearing individuals learning English as a second language and by deaf individuals learning sign language will be examined.

Specificity and Plasticity in Brain Development
Helen Neville, Ph.D.

Recent technology allows us to directly examine the effects of experience on the brain development of young children and adults.  Employing behavioral, electrophysiological and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in her research, Dr. Neville compares brain organization and behavior in normally functioning adults with those who have had altered sensory experience (i.e., deaf or blind individuals) and/or altered language experience (i.e., bilinguals or those who acquired signed rather than spoken language). The results show that there are marked effects of experience on the development of the visual, auditory and language systems of the brain.  Furthermore, some systems retain the ability to change throughout life, whereas others are dependent on and modified by experience only during limited and variable sensitive time periods.  Dr. Neville will discuss the many factors that influence these different patterns of developmental neuroplasticity.

In addition, Dr. Neville will present studies of brain organization and behavior in infants and children.  These studies show the effects of a child’s age and experience on development of the visual, auditory, and language systems of the brain. Taken together, the results suggest that the mature pattern of cerebral organization is determined by multiple, specific sensitive periods as well as lifelong adaptive processes. The implications of these results for the design and implementation of programs of education and intervention will be discussed.

Dr. Neville is director of the Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon and is professor of psychology and neuroscience there. She also is director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and associate director of the Institute for Neuroscience at the University. She is associate editor of the journals Cognitive Neuroscience and Developmental Science. Dr. Neville was awarded the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award and Claude Pepper Award by the National Institutes of Health and serves on the Advisory Board of “Birth to Three,” a parent information and services organization. Along with her students, she conducts several outreach programs on human brain development for teacher/caregiver groups and schools around Eugene, Oregon.

Critical Periods in the Acquisition of First and Second Languages
Elissa L. Newport, Ph.D.

Children often become more proficient than their parents in a second language, as well as in many other cognitive and motor skills.  An important research question has been to ask whether this is due to their different experiences and attitudes about language learning, or rather whether there is truly a sensitive time period for language learning in children, during which the human brain is inherently more able to learn the complexities of language from the same input.

Dr. Newport’s research investigates the nature of learning in children as compared with adults, as well as the final outcome of language acquisition in two specific groups of learners: hearing individuals learning English as a second language, and deaf individuals learning sign languages around the world.  She has shown that there is indeed a sensitive period for learning both signed and spoken languages.  Those who are first exposed to a language early in life are substantially more proficient in mastering the structure of that language, even when input and attitudes toward learning language are matched.  She has also shown that children, unlike adults, exhibit certain types of learning processes that permit them to acquire languages readily even when their exposure to the language is imperfect or inconsistent (i.e., when they learn from parents who are not fluent in the target language). In the most dramatic cases (in field studies of young sign languages), children's extraordinary learning capacities can result in new languages being formed or expanded.

Dr. Newport is the George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Psychology and chair of the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, where she has been on the faculty since 1988. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Claude Pepper Award from the National Institutes of Health for her research.  Currently, she serves on the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Newport conducts research on language learning in infants, young children, and adults, both in the laboratory and in field studies of developing sign languages around the world.

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