![]() ![]() Infants’ responses to the basic building blocks of speech provide an experimentally accessible porthole through which we can observe the interaction of nature and nurture in language acquisition. To explore these topics, this review focuses on research in my laboratory on the youngest language learners-infants in the first year of life-and on the most elementary units of language-the consonants and vowels that make up words. ![]() The ultimate goal is to alter the trajectories of learning to maximize language and literacy skills in all children. In the next decade neuroscientists, educators, biologists, computer scientists, speech and hearing scientists, psychologists, and linguists will increasingly work together to understand how children’s critical “windows of opportunity” for learning work, what triggers their inception, and how learning can be encouraged once the optimal period for learning has passed. The implication of these findings is that children’s learning trajectories regarding language are influenced by their experiences well before the start of school. Moreover, by the age of 5, prior to formal schooling, our studies show that brain activation in brain areas related to language and literacy are strongly correlated with the socio-economic status (SES) of the children’s families. For example, measures of phonetic learning in the first year of life predict language skills between 18 and 30 months of age, and also predict language abilities and pre-literacy skills at the age of 5 years. ![]() The results also challenge educational scientists to incorporate these findings about the social brain into teaching practices.īehavioral and brain studies on developing children indicate that children’s skills, measured very early in infancy, predict their later performance and learning. These data are challenging brain scientists to discover how brains actually work – how, in this case, computational brain areas and social brain areas mature during development and interact during learning. However, new data also indicate that children require a social setting and social interaction with another human being to trigger their computations skills to learn from exposure to language. For example, research shows that young children rely on what has been called “statistical learning,” a form of implicit learning that occurs as children interact in the world, to acquire the language spoken in their culture. In the arena of language development our studies show that children’s early learning is complex and multifaceted. The data indicate that the opportunity to learn from complex stimuli and events are vital early in life, and that success in school begins in infancy.ĭevelopmental studies suggest that children learn more and learn earlier than previously thought. ![]() Evidence relating socio-economic status (SES) to brain function for language suggests that SES should be considered a proxy for the opportunity to learn and that the complexity of language input is a significant factor in developing brain areas related to language. There is evidence that children’s early mastery of language requires learning in a social context, and this finding also has important implications for education. In the arena of language, the neural signatures of learning can be documented at a remarkably early point in development, and these early measures predict performance in children’s language and pre-reading abilities in the second, third, and fifth year of life, a finding with theoretical and educational import. Noninvasive, safe functional brain measurements have now been proven feasible for use with children starting at birth. The last decade has produced an explosion in neuroscience research examining young children’s early processing of language that has implications for education. ![]()
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