The cognitive basis of the child advantage in language learning : a memory-based approach
(2017)
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- Abstract
- Why do children appear to learn languages more easily than adults? This lingering question, better known as the sensitive period hypothesis, has generated much research interest. A central aspect of language development is the acquisition of new words. During novel word acquisition, learners need to discover novel lexical units from fluent speech, associate them with a meaning, and memorize them for the long-term. It is still not fully understood whether and how word-learning differs between children and adults. Due to a neurologically based maturational change at the level of the frontal and medial-temporal circuit, adults have access to a different set of learning and memory processes than children, which make them more explicit/attention-driven learners. Children in contrast have only limited memory and attention capacities. It forces them to focus on smaller linguistic units that constitute the formal properties of language (i.e., phonemes or syllables). These are potentially more stable for representation and retention in long-term memory. Children also have a well-developed implicit or procedural memory system. Implicit learning is important for many aspects of languages, also for learning novel word-forms. Here, we postulate that learning certain aspects of language can be hindered by cognitive abilities, such as executive functions or attentional control, and aided by implicit learning mechanisms. The observations in the present work support this idea at the level of word-learning and offer a promising memory framework to investigate language learning across life.
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Smalle, E. (2017). The cognitive basis of the child advantage in language learning : a memory-based approach. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/69245