5 ms·

Imagine if scientists could one day figure out how to expand the linguistic critical period into adulthood, we could all be polygots.

by kanobo 6y ago

recuter 6y ago
I'm a polyglot and half my languages were learned as an adult. I really think you just need to immerse yourself for a few months. It feels so so strange to me that the science is apparently still out on that.
- lgessler 6y ago
  That doesn't change the fact that during the critical period people are muuuuch better at acquiring language than after. Moreover, while people are fairly equal in their ability to acquire a language during the critical period, there is _much_ more variance in ability, all else being equal, after the critical period. The science isn't still out on that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - recuter 6y ago
    Maybe they are just much better at not being so easily discouraged. And as for the study: By the end of the training, those participants were 13% better on average.. There's a general feeling that people can't learn the sound patterns of a new language in adulthood, but our work historically has shown that's not true for everyone," Chandrasekaran said. "In this study, we are seeing that tVNS reduces those individual differences more than any other intervention I've seen." "In general, people tend to get discouraged by how hard language learning can be, but if you could give someone 13% to 15% better results after their first session, maybe they'd be more likely to want to continue." Sounds like placebo to me. ROMANES EUNT DOMUS.
    - plutonorm 6y ago
      The stimulation is imperceptible
    - lgessler 6y ago
      I think it's hard to bring this study to bear on the critical period hypothesis in toto since its scope is narrow in both time and grammatical breadth (just sound production, and no other parts of comprehension or production), so we should maybe leave that aside. You're right that the critical period hypothesis is still not settled, but let's go back to your proposal, that anyone who's immersed and motivated enough will be able to acquire nativelike proficiency. While we're in the realm of anecdotes (since you make reference to your own experience), I witnessed several peers of mine in a months-long language immersion program fall behind others in the program by quite a margin, with (IMO) little hope of nativelike proficiency even with months more of intensive classes, despite apparent motivation (sometimes much more than the better performers) and 24/7 immersion in the target language. Going beyond anecdotes now, let's consider results from the literature against the assumption that if only adults could not be so easily discouraged they would be able to attain more nativelike proficiency. In that case, we'd expect at least a few places in time and space to have second language learners who do a phenomenal job of acquiring the target language, yet as far as I know that's never been found in the literature. Birdsong[0] reports that the range of attested rates of nativelike proficiency in L2 learners is between 5% and 25%. Moreover, there's a wealth of literature that documents in detail the specific ways in which language acquisition mechanisms falter beginning around age 6[1], which is in line with the suggestion that nativelike proficiency becomes progressively harder with age. Neither of these results pushes your suggestion beyond plausibility, of course, but it does seem to me like the preponderance of evidence is on one side. If you know of any studies with findings that support the idea that motivation can be a decisive factor in acquiring nativelike proficiency in a second language I'd be really interested to see them. [0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/(1999)%20-%20CONFOUNDED%20AGE%20LINGUISTIC%20AND%20COGNITIVE%20FACTORS%20IN%20.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/(... [1]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2OKj08pwUAAAAA:2lw0ukUSquDhgXDK1nwsNKgpr8iKG3wYlGc4Noj-JuTEx8asUfPrsGA1aitlrALTGaplVv7Uvh2xACytBdIf48CTqvb7pqlmnPBp6ELe3kdHzQdCTlc https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2...
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    Variance in language-learning ability after the so-called “critical period” can be to large extent explained by increase in its optionality. As a child you really have no option but to learn your first language. The entire environment around you screams “learn the language” every hour of every day. People around you are incessantly encouraging you to learn it. When you’re an adult, it’s very optional for obvious reasons. In fact, certain social dynamics might actively discourage one from learning a new language. (Bear in mind the difference between first- and higher-order volition. The former does not readily lend itself to conscious control and is probably impossible to measure—merely spending large amounts of time on learning a language is not a reliable indicator.)
  - ordu 6y ago
    > That doesn't change the fact that during the critical period people are muuuuch better at acquiring language than after. I don't know about direct comparison of abilities of an adult and a child. The trouble is: child does nothing but learning, not just language, but he/she has a lot of daily practice. At the same time adult learning a language could spend a few hours per week learning, forgetting about the language at all other times. This difference itself might explain differences in outcome, there is no need to invent one more reason like "critical period" for the explanation. To learn language child needs ~3 years. Give me 3 years of learning language for 5 hours per day, I'll learn it no worse than a child or even better.
- kanobo 6y ago
  Oh interesting, what's your native language and did you only know one language before adulthood? There are studies that have shown that the likelihood of being a polygot is influenced by having a multilingual childhood.
  - moconnor 6y ago
    Not OP but I moved to Germany as a single language speaker (well, some French from school that I was never much good at) in my mid 20s. Language classes for a few months and immersion made me pretty fluent over a year or two. Adults can learn languages just fine with motivation and immersion, I think. My children who were born here later on already speak better German than I do. Of course, I work in English and they go to German school, so it’s not exactly like-for-like. But their English accent is better than my German one and they’ve a LOT less experience there than I do in German.
- hervature 6y ago
  I too find it strange. The most obvious explanation to me is that adults simply don't have the time, energy, or money to devote to consistent practice with a fluent speaker where ones effort is being tested in some way like children. And no Duolingo doesn't count as.
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    > consistent practice with a fluent speaker where ones effort is being tested in some way like children I agree with the total time and deliberate practice aspect but in my opinion you are underestimating one extra factor for adult learning. As an adult if you practice a new language with natives (outside the context of a formal lessons) the majority of people will be a lot more accomodating of mistakes and mispronunciation simply because of the social pressure of wanting to 'save face' and not trying to demotivate the person who is learning. There are maybe a handful of close friends who will be brutally honest enough to correct you, in the same way they would correct an infant. For the most part as an adult it is more common that you end up practicing with an 'excessively tolerant' feedback loop from other language natives.
    - brutt 6y ago
      Use app.
    - wincy 6y ago
      I tried being “brutally honest” with an Indian coworker about her English. She started to studiously avoid me, and I realized I’d made a huge misstep following the “golden rule” so to speak. If I learn a new language I want people to constantly correct me. I have another coworker who is Eastern European and she has explicitly told me “point out EVERY mistake I make. Be brutal, I want to learn perfect English.” So I do. It seems like she really is getting less of an accent from it. It’s pretty cool to see. People are nice and don’t point out mistakes because some people don’t want this. It’s taboo on both sides, at least in the corporate US world. So they never learn to speak fluently just enough to get by.
  - raducu 6y ago
- smabie 6y ago
  I think people are different. I spent two years in Tanzania, and managed to pick up maybe only ~1000 words of Swahili while my girlfriend became completely fluent. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough, but what I can say is that simply immersing yourself for a couple months doesn't cut it. Funnily enough, a friend of mine spent 2 years in Japan with his wife and he never learned anything while she ended up fluent (just like my gf). Maybe men are worse at learning new languages? Or maybe they care less?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  I work for a foreign language instruction company. Our entire business is based on being able to teach adults languages. And they aren't easy languages, our largest program is Chinese. We've been at it since the 80s.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ "Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch" Maybe some possibilities for language, too.
laurieg 6y ago
It is definitely possible to learn a language as an adult. The main barriers adults face are a lack of time to practice, a lack of motivation and already being fluent in a language to "run away" into. Learning a language is tough, most native speakers have simply forgotten how much of a struggle it was in their younger years.

Imagine if scientists could one day figure out how to expand the linguistic critical period into adulthood, we could all be polygots.

by kanobo 6y ago

Imagine if scientists could one day figure out how to expand the linguistic critical period into adulthood, we could all be polygots.

recuter 6y ago

I'm a polyglot and half my languages were learned as an adult. I really think you just need to immerse yourself for a few months. It feels so so strange to me that the science is apparently still out on that.

lgessler 6y ago
That doesn't change the fact that during the critical period people are muuuuch better at acquiring language than after. Moreover, while people are fairly equal in their ability to acquire a language during the critical period, there is _much_ more variance in ability, all else being equal, after the critical period. The science isn't still out on that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- recuter 6y ago
  Maybe they are just much better at not being so easily discouraged. And as for the study: By the end of the training, those participants were 13% better on average.. There's a general feeling that people can't learn the sound patterns of a new language in adulthood, but our work historically has shown that's not true for everyone," Chandrasekaran said. "In this study, we are seeing that tVNS reduces those individual differences more than any other intervention I've seen." "In general, people tend to get discouraged by how hard language learning can be, but if you could give someone 13% to 15% better results after their first session, maybe they'd be more likely to want to continue." Sounds like placebo to me. ROMANES EUNT DOMUS.
  - plutonorm 6y ago
    The stimulation is imperceptible
  - lgessler 6y ago
    I think it's hard to bring this study to bear on the critical period hypothesis in toto since its scope is narrow in both time and grammatical breadth (just sound production, and no other parts of comprehension or production), so we should maybe leave that aside. You're right that the critical period hypothesis is still not settled, but let's go back to your proposal, that anyone who's immersed and motivated enough will be able to acquire nativelike proficiency. While we're in the realm of anecdotes (since you make reference to your own experience), I witnessed several peers of mine in a months-long language immersion program fall behind others in the program by quite a margin, with (IMO) little hope of nativelike proficiency even with months more of intensive classes, despite apparent motivation (sometimes much more than the better performers) and 24/7 immersion in the target language. Going beyond anecdotes now, let's consider results from the literature against the assumption that if only adults could not be so easily discouraged they would be able to attain more nativelike proficiency. In that case, we'd expect at least a few places in time and space to have second language learners who do a phenomenal job of acquiring the target language, yet as far as I know that's never been found in the literature. Birdsong[0] reports that the range of attested rates of nativelike proficiency in L2 learners is between 5% and 25%. Moreover, there's a wealth of literature that documents in detail the specific ways in which language acquisition mechanisms falter beginning around age 6[1], which is in line with the suggestion that nativelike proficiency becomes progressively harder with age. Neither of these results pushes your suggestion beyond plausibility, of course, but it does seem to me like the preponderance of evidence is on one side. If you know of any studies with findings that support the idea that motivation can be a decisive factor in acquiring nativelike proficiency in a second language I'd be really interested to see them. [0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/(1999)%20-%20CONFOUNDED%20AGE%20LINGUISTIC%20AND%20COGNITIVE%20FACTORS%20IN%20.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/(... [1]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2OKj08pwUAAAAA:2lw0ukUSquDhgXDK1nwsNKgpr8iKG3wYlGc4Noj-JuTEx8asUfPrsGA1aitlrALTGaplVv7Uvh2xACytBdIf48CTqvb7pqlmnPBp6ELe3kdHzQdCTlc https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44488300.pdf?casa_token=YS2...
- strogonoff 6y ago
  Variance in language-learning ability after the so-called “critical period” can be to large extent explained by increase in its optionality. As a child you really have no option but to learn your first language. The entire environment around you screams “learn the language” every hour of every day. People around you are incessantly encouraging you to learn it. When you’re an adult, it’s very optional for obvious reasons. In fact, certain social dynamics might actively discourage one from learning a new language. (Bear in mind the difference between first- and higher-order volition. The former does not readily lend itself to conscious control and is probably impossible to measure—merely spending large amounts of time on learning a language is not a reliable indicator.)
- ordu 6y ago
  > That doesn't change the fact that during the critical period people are muuuuch better at acquiring language than after. I don't know about direct comparison of abilities of an adult and a child. The trouble is: child does nothing but learning, not just language, but he/she has a lot of daily practice. At the same time adult learning a language could spend a few hours per week learning, forgetting about the language at all other times. This difference itself might explain differences in outcome, there is no need to invent one more reason like "critical period" for the explanation. To learn language child needs ~3 years. Give me 3 years of learning language for 5 hours per day, I'll learn it no worse than a child or even better.
kanobo 6y ago
Oh interesting, what's your native language and did you only know one language before adulthood? There are studies that have shown that the likelihood of being a polygot is influenced by having a multilingual childhood.
- moconnor 6y ago
  Not OP but I moved to Germany as a single language speaker (well, some French from school that I was never much good at) in my mid 20s. Language classes for a few months and immersion made me pretty fluent over a year or two. Adults can learn languages just fine with motivation and immersion, I think. My children who were born here later on already speak better German than I do. Of course, I work in English and they go to German school, so it’s not exactly like-for-like. But their English accent is better than my German one and they’ve a LOT less experience there than I do in German.
hervature 6y ago
I too find it strange. The most obvious explanation to me is that adults simply don't have the time, energy, or money to devote to consistent practice with a fluent speaker where ones effort is being tested in some way like children. And no Duolingo doesn't count as.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > consistent practice with a fluent speaker where ones effort is being tested in some way like children I agree with the total time and deliberate practice aspect but in my opinion you are underestimating one extra factor for adult learning. As an adult if you practice a new language with natives (outside the context of a formal lessons) the majority of people will be a lot more accomodating of mistakes and mispronunciation simply because of the social pressure of wanting to 'save face' and not trying to demotivate the person who is learning. There are maybe a handful of close friends who will be brutally honest enough to correct you, in the same way they would correct an infant. For the most part as an adult it is more common that you end up practicing with an 'excessively tolerant' feedback loop from other language natives.
  - brutt 6y ago
    Use app.
  - wincy 6y ago
    I tried being “brutally honest” with an Indian coworker about her English. She started to studiously avoid me, and I realized I’d made a huge misstep following the “golden rule” so to speak. If I learn a new language I want people to constantly correct me. I have another coworker who is Eastern European and she has explicitly told me “point out EVERY mistake I make. Be brutal, I want to learn perfect English.” So I do. It seems like she really is getting less of an accent from it. It’s pretty cool to see. People are nice and don’t point out mistakes because some people don’t want this. It’s taboo on both sides, at least in the corporate US world. So they never learn to speak fluently just enough to get by.
- raducu 6y ago
smabie 6y ago
I think people are different. I spent two years in Tanzania, and managed to pick up maybe only ~1000 words of Swahili while my girlfriend became completely fluent. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough, but what I can say is that simply immersing yourself for a couple months doesn't cut it. Funnily enough, a friend of mine spent 2 years in Japan with his wife and he never learned anything while she ended up fluent (just like my gf). Maybe men are worse at learning new languages? Or maybe they care less?
moron4hire 6y ago
I work for a foreign language instruction company. Our entire business is based on being able to teach adults languages. And they aren't easy languages, our largest program is Chinese. We've been at it since the 80s.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848041/ "Valproate reopens critical-period learning of absolute pitch" Maybe some possibilities for language, too.

laurieg 6y ago

It is definitely possible to learn a language as an adult. The main barriers adults face are a lack of time to practice, a lack of motivation and already being fluent in a language to "run away" into. Learning a language is tough, most native speakers have simply forgotten how much of a struggle it was in their younger years.