Linguistic ability and early language exposure

Rachel I. Mayberry (), Elizabeth Lock and Hena Kazmi
Additional contact information
Rachel I. Mayberry: School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University
Elizabeth Lock: Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Hena Kazmi: School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Western Ontario, Elborn College

Nature, 2002, vol. 417, issue 6884, 38-38

Abstract: Abstract For more than 100 years, the scientific and educational communities have thought that age is critical to the outcome of language learning1,2, but whether the onset and type of language experienced during early life affects the ability to learn language is unknown. Here we show that deaf and hearing individuals exposed to language in infancy perform comparably well in learning a new language later in life, whereas deaf individuals with little language experience in early life perform poorly, regardless of whether the early language was signed or spoken and whether the later language was spoken or signed. These findings show that language-learning ability is determined by the onset of language experience during early brain development, independent of the specific form of the experience.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/417038a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:417:y:2002:i:6884:d:10.1038_417038a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/417038a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().