Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language

Johnson, Jacqueline S.; Newport, Elissa L.

doi:10.1016/0010-0285(89)90003-0

Cited by 2,146 publications

(1,854 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Second, it will be important to repeat these experiments with children, to determine if they apply the same learning algorithms as adults for these variables, given precisely the same input. There are a number of ways in which children and adults have been shown to differ as language learners, though they do behave similarly in many ways as well (Johnson & Newport, 1989;Newport, 1990). One way in which the behavior of our adult participants differs from that reported in the developmental literature is that our learners generalize in all of the three language behaviors tested.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language

Wonnacott

Newport

Tanenhaus

2008

Cognitive Psychology

227

218

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Adult knowledge of a language involves correctly balancing lexically-based and more languagegeneral patterns. For example, verb-argument structures may sometimes readily generalize to new verbs, yet with particular verbs may resist generalization. From the perspective of acquisition, this creates significant learnability problems (Baker 1979), with some researchers claiming a crucial role for verb semantics in the determination of when generalization may and may not occur (Pinker, 1989). Similarly, there has been debate regarding how verb-specific and more generalized constraints interact in sentence processing (Trueswell et al 1993;Mitchell 1987) and on the role of semantics in this process (Hare et al 2003). The current work explores these issues using artificial language learning. In three experiments using languages without semantic cues to verb distribution, we demonstrate that learners can acquire both verb-specific and verb-general patterns, based on distributional information in the linguistic input regarding each of the verbs as well as across the language as a whole. As with natural languages, these factors are shown to affect production, judgments and real-time processing. We demonstrate that learners apply a rational procedure in determining their usage of these different input-statistics and conclude by suggesting that a Bayesian perspective on statistical learning may be an appropriate framework for capturing our findings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language

Wonnacott

Newport

Tanenhaus

2008

Cognitive Psychology

227

218

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“…However, a major problem for the interpretation of these results is that no formal assessment of language proficiency was conducted. Since there is a general negative correlation between age of acquisition and proficiency (Johnson and Newport, 1989), these two variables are confounded in this experiment. Kim et al's conclusion was that age of acquisition is a major factor in the cortical organization of second language processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for the first factor, a large literature suggests that linguistic abilities are sensitive to the age of exposure to language. People who learn a language later, particularly after late infancy or puberty, do not generally achieve the same level of proficiency as young learners (Birdsong, 1999;Johnson and Newport, 1989). The causes of these age effects on language performance are controversial, with explanations ranging from the postulation of a biologically based "critical period" for language acquisition, to an emphasis on differences between infant and adult learning contexts (Lenneberg, 1967).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of age of acquisition and language usage in early, high‐proficient bilinguals: An fMRI study during verbal fluency

Perani

Abutalebi

Paulesu

et al. 2003

Human Brain Mapping

387

241

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Abstract:We assessed the effects of age of acquisition and language exposure on the cerebral correlates of lexical retrieval in high-proficient, early-acquisition bilinguals. Functional MRI was used to study Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who acquired either Spanish or Catalan as a first language in the first years of life. Subjects were exposed to the second language at 3 years of age, and have used both languages in daily life since then. Subjects had a comparable level of proficiency in the comprehension of both languages. Lexical retrieval with the verbal fluency task resulted in the well-established pattern of left hemispheric activation centered on the inferior frontal region. The effect of age of acquisition was assessed by dividing the subjects into two groups, on the basis of the language acquired first (Catalan-born or Spanish-born bilinguals). Functional comparisons indicated that less extensive brain activation was associated with lexical retrieval in the language acquired earlier in life. The two groups were also different in language usage/exposure, as assessed with a specific questionnaire; in particular, the exposure to the second language (Spanish) was less intensive in the case of Catalans. This was reflected in a significant interaction, indicating a more extensive activation in Catalans during production in Spanish. Overall, these results indicate that, during a production task, both age of acquisition and language exposure affect the pattern of brain activation in bilinguals, even if both languages are acquired early and with a comparable level of proficiency.

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“…Participants were screened for proficiency with a picture naming/translation task (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980, normed for L2 by Sholl, Sankaranarayanan & Kroll, 1995) and a sentence grammaticality judgment task (Johnson & Newport, 1989). In the picture-naming task, participants saw 80 pictures on the computer screen and gave the English name for what appeared in the line drawing.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monolingual and bilingual recognition of regular and irregular English verbs: Sensitivity to form similarity varies with first language experience

Basnight-Brown

Chen

Shu

et al. 2007

Journal of Memory and Language

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We used a cross-modal priming procedure to explore the processing of irregular and regular English verb forms in both monolinguals and bilinguals (Serbian-English, Chinese-English). Materials included irregular nested stem (drawn-DRAW), irregular change stem (ran-RUN), and regular past tense-present tense verb pairs that were either low (guided-GUIDE) or high (pushed-PUSH) in resonance, a measure of semantic richness. Overall, semantic richness of irregular verbs (nested and irregular change) and of regular verbs (high and low resonance) was matched. Native speakers of English revealed comparable facilitation across regularity and greater facilitation for nested than change stem irregulars. Like native speakers, Serbian, but not Chinese bilinguals matched for proficiency, showed facilitation due to form overlap between irregular past and present tense forms with a nested stem. Unlike native speakers, neither group showed reliable facilitation to stem change irregulars. Results demonstrate the influence of first language on inflectional processing in a second language.Keywords semantic density; language transfer; morphological facilitation; cross modal priming; regular past tense formations; irregular past tense formations; mastery of inflection in a second language There is a long-standing debate in the word recognition literature as to whether native speakers of a language process irregular (e.g., ran-run) and regular (e.g., walked-walk) verb forms by common (single) or different (dual-route) mechanisms. Those who advocate a single processing system argue that processing of all words benefits from the extent to which words that are similar in form tend to be similar in meaning (

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Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language

Cited by 2,146 publications

References 13 publications

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language

Acquiring and processing verb argument structure: Distributional learning in a miniature language

The role of age of acquisition and language usage in early, high‐proficient bilinguals: An fMRI study during verbal fluency

Monolingual and bilingual recognition of regular and irregular English verbs: Sensitivity to form similarity varies with first language experience

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