First-Language Acquisition in Adolescence: Evidence for a Critical Period for Verbal Language Development

Grimshaw, Gina M.; Adelstein, Ana; Bryden, M.P.; MacKinnon, Gregory

doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1943

Cited by 75 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Increased activity of prefrontal region as an indication of maturation and diminished activity in irrelevant brain regions are proposed as the neurobiological explanation of the behavioral changes associated with adolescence (9). These findings are in accord with the studies on language acquisition that show that the ability to learn new languages declines some time after the age of 12 (31).…”

Section: Corpus Callosum and Cerebellum Development During Adolescencesupporting

confidence: 74%

The adolescent brain: Changes and challenges of development

Pejović-Milovančević¹,

Krgovic²,

Mitkovic-Voncina³

2017

Med podmladak

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Adolescence is a period between childhood and adulthood, characterized by specific physical and psychological development. It is a transitional developmental period, rather than a single snapshot in time. Traditional neurobiological and cognitive explanations of adolescent development of behavior have failed to account for the changes in behavior observed during adolescence. Magnetic resonance imaging studies have discovered that myelinogenesis continues from childhood to adulthood in the brain's region-specific neurocircuitry, which remains structurally and functionally vulnerable to impulsive habits. The maturation of the adolescent brain is influenced by heredity, environment, and sex, and they play a crucial role in myelination. Furthermore, one of the measures extracted out of MRI studies is also the thickness of cerebral cortex, a part that harbors synapses. It is the complexity of these synapses that allows humans to generate and understand complex thoughts and feelings in the real world, including the ability to solve analogies. And it is the complexity of those connections, remaining under construction during adolescence, that may be responsible for immature and impulsive behavior and neurobehavioral excitement during the adolescent life. 9 SAŽETAK Adolescencija je period fizičkog i psihološkog razvoja, koji se odvija između detinjstva i perioda odraslog života. To je više prelazni razvojni period nego što je izolovan trenutak u vremenu. Tradicionalna neurobiološka i kognitivna objašnjenja razvoja adolescenta nisu uspela da obrazlože promene u ponašanju koje se primećuju tokom adolescencije. Naučne studije su otkrile da se mijelogeneza nastavlja u specifičnim neuronskim mrežama mozga od detinjstva do zrelosti. Sazrevanje adolescentnog mozga je pod uticajem nasleđa, okruženja i pola, koji igraju presudnu ulogu u mijelinizaciji. Složenost razvoja sinapsi omogućava ljudima stvaranje i razumevanje kompleksnih misli i oseća-nja, uključujući i sposobnost rešavanja analogija u realnom svetu. I sama kompleksnost ovih veza, koje nastavljaju razvoj tokom adolescencije, može da bude odgovorna kako za nezrelo i impulsivno ponašanje, tako i za neurobihejvioralno uzbuđenje tokom adolescentnog života

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Section: Corpus Callosum and Cerebellum Development During Adolescencesupporting

confidence: 74%

The adolescent brain: Changes and challenges of development

Pejović-Milovančević¹,

Krgovic²,

Mitkovic-Voncina³

2017

Med podmladak

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“…2. Mental rotation and modification of a single object's location in space involve the PFC-coordinated activity in both the ventral and the dorsal visual cortices (Cohen et al 1996, Harris et al 2000, Schendan and Stern 2007, and are therefore assigned the PCT score of two. However, these tasks are still limited to a single object and, consequently, assigned a NOB score of one.…”

Section: Mental Rotation and Modification Of A Single Object's Locatimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since mental manipulations involve one piece at a time, these tasks are limited to a single object and, consequently, assigned a NOB score of one. Mental rotation involve the PFC-coordinated activity in both the ventral and the dorsal visual cortices (Cohen et al 1996, Harris et al 2000, Schendan and Stern 2007, and are therefore assigned the PCT score of two.…”

Section: Copying Stick and Block Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Linguistically deprived children: meta-analysis of published research underlines the importance of early syntactic language use for normal brain development

Vyshedskiy¹,

Mahapatra²,

Dunn³

2017

RIO

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We analyzed all published reports of individuals not exposed to syntactic language until puberty: two feral children, who grew up without hearing any language, and eight deaf linguistic isolates, who grew up communicating to their families using homesign or kitchensign, a system of gestures which allows them to communicate simple commands but lacks much in the way of syntax. A common observation in these individuals is the lifelong difficulty understanding syntax and spatial prepositions, even after many years of rehabilitation. This debilitating condition stands in stark contrast to linguistic isolates' performance on memory as well as semantic tests: they could easily remember hundreds of newly learned words and identify previously seen objects by name. The lack of syntactic language comprehension in linguistic isolates may stem from inability to understand words and/or grammar or inability to mentally synthesize known objects into novel configurations. We have previously shown that purposeful construction of novel mental images is the function of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) ability to dynamically control posterior cortex neurons (Vyshedskiy et al. 2017 posterior cortex territory that needs to be recruited by the LPFC and b) the number of disparate objects that have to be combined together by the LPFC in order to answer the test question. According to our analysis, linguistic isolates performed well in all tests that did not involve the LPFC control of the posterior cortex, showed decreasing scores in tests that involved greater recruitment of the posterior cortex by the LPFC, and failed in tests that involved greatest recruitment of posterior cortex necessary for mental synthesis of multiple objects. This pattern is consistent with inadequate frontoposterior connections in linguistic isolates. We discuss implications of these findings for the importance of early syntactic language exposure in formation of frontoposterior connections.

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“…To distinguish the former case from the latter, sometimes a distinction is made between a critical period and a sensitive period, respectively, but I will be using critical period as a blanket term for both phenomena. Critical periods have been observed for a range of perceptual-cognitive capacities, including song learning in birds (George et al 1995), auditory localization in barn owls (Knudsen and Knudsen 1990), whisker representations in the mouse barrel cortex (Erzurumlu and Gaspar 2012), and human language acquisition (Grimshaw et al 1998). In animal models, evidence for the critical period is often obtained from experiments in which individual organisms are deprived of a certain type of stimulus during a developmental phase.…”

Section: Neural Correlates and The Critical Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates without reduction: the case of the critical period

Khalidi

2017

Synthese

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Researchers in the cognitive sciences often seek neural correlates of psychological constructs. In this paper, I argue that even when these correlates are discovered, they do not always lead to reductive outcomes. To this end, I examine the psychological construct of a critical period and briefly describe research identifying its neural correlates. Although the critical period is correlated with certain neural mechanisms, this does not imply that there is a reductionist relationship between this psychological construct and its neural correlates. Instead, this case study suggests that there may be many-to-many psychological-neural mappings, not just one-to-one or even one-to-many relations between psychological kinds and types of neural mechanisms.

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First-Language Acquisition in Adolescence: Evidence for a Critical Period for Verbal Language Development

Cited by 75 publications

References 25 publications

The adolescent brain: Changes and challenges of development

The adolescent brain: Changes and challenges of development

Linguistically deprived children: meta-analysis of published research underlines the importance of early syntactic language use for normal brain development

Neural correlates without reduction: the case of the critical period

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