First Language Acquisition in Adolescence

Evidence for a Critical Period for verbal Language Development

By: Gina M. Grimshaw, Ana Adelstein, M. Philip Bryden and G. E. MacKinnon

Reviewed by Azira Syahirah, Universiti Industri Selangor

First-language acquisition in adolesence: Evidence for a Critical Period for verbal

language Development about two true stories. It is about Genie and E. M’ s case, both of
them are learning language during adulthood, not during their childhood. This case told
about how both of the person learning their language and why they are learning late at
adulthood, not during when they are children.

Children are successfully better learning language more than adults. This theory is
proposed by Lenneberg. He proposed a mechanism for the critical period based on an
initial state of equip potential followed by the gradual establishment of left-hemisphere
language specialization. This is called as childhood aphasia.

Second-language acquisition is one of the evidence in support of the critical period.

According to Johnson & Newport, 1989, 1991, although adults demonstrate and initial
advantage over children, long-term mastery of the second language decrease with
increasing age of acquisition. This relationship exist both for language-specific and
universal syntactic structures.

Another evidence to support the critical period are extreme deprivation. The only well-
documented case of Genie, a young girl who was kept locked in her room and had no
contact with any human between the ages of the 20 months and 13 years. She will beat if
she make any vocalization sound. She learned language after received intensive
educational and the therapeutic intervention. She had particular difficult with verb tense,
word other, preposition, and pronouns. She had difficulty to learn language because of
her tragic background during her childhood. Genie’ s case is a weak version.
Deaf children of hearing parents is one of the evidence in support of the critical period.
These children have great difficulty learning spoken language and they just will learn
sign language after they enter residential school for the deaf. This finding seems to
support a weak form of the critical period hypothesis, that children are better language
learners than adult, but does not support to claim that language must be learned in
childhood.

The case report about E.M., he is deaf since birth. He came to Canada when he was 19
years old. He was fitted with binaural hearing aids that corrected his hearing loss to35
dB, a level that allows him to hear spoken conversation. E.M. spend 6 months his family
and 6 months with his relative in Canada who do not know this homesign language.

E.M has great difficulty with articulation and seldom speak spontaneously. After 48
months, E.M still relying heavily on gesture for communication.

The similarities between Genie and E.M are striking , given the great differences in their
history. E.M did not experiences the severe abuse and deprivation that Genie did, he have
the benefit of intensive educational remediation when he started to learn language. Genie
and E.M were exposed to different languages in different context and yet both seem to
suffer from similar linguistic impairment when he started to learn language.

They are two possible hypothesis about why the critical period may more seriously
constrain the development of verbal as opposed to manual languages. E.M hearing aids
do not fully correct his hearing loss, and he therefore experiences impoverished auditory
input. A second possibility is that homesign provide a better foundation for the
acquisition of manual as opposed to verbal language. Certainly signers do not face the
same physical challengers to language perception and production that E.M does.But
further, they are parallels between the syntactic structures of homesign and ASL that
made allow the acquisition of ASL to more closely resemble late acquisition of a second
as opposed to of first language.
As the conclusion, the cases here of linguistic isolation in the context of cognitive and
emotional development. E.M’s case is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a
critical period for first-language acquisition that ends at puberty, if not before.
Unfortunately that came address the nature of the critical period. Although critical period
hypothesis have usually been associated with ideas of biological determinism, this need
not be the case. We have provided the observation that first-language acquisition in
puberty is atypical many ways. These may reflect a loss of neural plasticity. Or the
development of cognitive processes that inhabit language acquisition, or some interaction
between the two. It is likely that language acquisition involves a set of innate constraints
that dictate the processing of linguistic input as is it provided by the environment. These
constraint normally at early in childhood producing oredictable patterns of language
development. However, as the individuals develop, neural and cognitive structures
change, both throw maturation and environmental stimulation resulting in associated
changes in the constraints on language ecquisition.