The Critical Period Hypothesis for L2 Acquisition: An Unfalsifiable Embarrassment?

Abstract

This article focuses on the uncertainty surrounding the issue of the Critical Period Hypothesis. It puts forward the case that, with regard to naturalistic situations, the hypothesis has the status of both “not proven” and unfalsified. The article analyzes a number of reasons for this situation, including the effects of multi-competence, which remove any possibility that competence in more than one language can ever be identical to monolingual competence. With regard to the formal instructional setting, it points to many decades of research showing that, as critical period advocates acknowledge, in a normal schooling situation, adolescent beginners in the long run do as well as younger beginners. The article laments the profusion of definitions of what the critical period for language actually is and the generally piecemeal nature of research into this important area. In particular, it calls for a fuller integration of recent neurolinguistic perspectives into discussion of the age factor in second language acquisition research.

The Neurocognitive Underpinnings of Second Language Processing: Knowledge Gains From the Past and Future Outlook

“…Whether there is a critical period for language learning, or in fact one for any human skill, is a longstanding and fundamental question in human development. Understanding language as a biological system governed by maturational stages in an organism's lifespan during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli, Penfield and Roberts (1959) proposed a critical period for language development, later popularized by Lenneberg (1967) in his book Biological Foundations of Language. The notion of a critical period for language learning was adopted by research on L2 learning in the 1980s (instigated by Johnson & Newport's, 1989, classical study) and has remained a popular, yet highly disputed, research topic ever since (e.g., Berken et al, 2017;Birdsong, 2018;DeKeyser, 2013;Singleton & Lesniewska, 2021;Steinhauer, 2014). Behavioral studies focused on the timing of the critical period, the shape of the function that relates age of acquisition (AoA) to ultimate L2 attainment, and the existence of multiple, separate critical periods for different aspects of language.…”

Nihonggo No Benkyou: The Case of Filipino ESL Teachers in Graduate School

“…graduate students) are less receptive to foreign or new language learning than child L2 learners because (Vanhove, 2013) because they claim that the brain reaches its adult values until puberty and that there will be a loss of brain plasticity and its reorganizational capacities (Gursoy, 2011). Although these claims have been argued by contemporary linguists and justified that the late starters do better than the early starters, since they are able to acquire as much second language knowledge as the earlier starters within a considerably shorter period, and thus, progress faster than younger starters (Singleton & Leśniewska, 2021). Despite the inconsistencies, the studies on CPH have provided great insights to language teachers in understanding age differences and contextual factors of their students.…”

Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility

“…Although there have not yet been systematic studies of replicability in developmental psychology (but see Black & Bergmann, 2017; Byers‐Heinlein et al, 2020), there are numerous examples of classic findings that have remained controversial over decades, or which have explicitly failed to replicate. These include: when and whether there is a critical period for language acquisition (Bialystok & Kroll, 2018; Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Hartshorne et al, 2018; Singleton & Leśniewska, 2021), the relative importance of pretend to play in children's development (Lillard et al, 2011; Lillard et al, 2013; Weisberg, 2015), whether bilingualism affects executive function (Dick et al, 2019; Paap, 2019), and whether toddlers can succeed at ‘implicit’ theory of mind tasks (Kulke, Rei, et al, 2018; Kulke, von Duhn, et al, 2018; Baillargeon et al, 2018; Burnside et al, 2018; Dörrenberg et al, 2018; Poulin‐Dubois & Yott, 2018; Powell et al, 2018; Wiesmann et al, 2018).…”