My second daughter provides this review of Patricia Kuhl's TED talk: The linguistic genius of babies:
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One of the TED talks I have watched recently was by Patricia Kuhl on the linguistic genius of babies. Research has found that young children have a greater ability to learn other languages. There is a critical period in which the brain in more open to learning other languages. Young children to the age of seven are geniuses for learning other languages but after that there is a decline and it becomes more difficult to learn other languages.
Scientist do not dispute this theory but the do not have any idea why it is that babies learn languages so easily. It seems that babies learn and take statistics on what sounds they hear and then work on those sounds.
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Here is the TED Talk:
1 comment:
One thing that I found interesting about this video is the part where they compared babies who listened to a new in person to those who listened to via audio only or watched it on tv and found out that those who just heard the language or watched on tv didn't learn it like those who listened to it in person. That ties in with what I have read in news reports.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-03/health/babies.watch.TV_1_baby-einstein-brainy-baby-researchers?_s=PM:HEALTH
http://www.raisesmartkid.com/pre-natal-to-1-year-old/2-articles/22-the-effects-of-tv-on-baby
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