'Critical Period and Language Acquisition Essay\r'

'Part of the priming coat why genie’s case fascinate psychologists and linguists so deeply was that it presented a unique opportunity to study a hotly contested debate about lecture study. Nativists believe that the capacity for linguistic communication is innate, while empiricists suggest that it is environmental vari equals that bring in a key role. Essentially, it boils down to the suppurate-old nature versus shelter debate. Do genetics or environment play a greater role in the development of address? Nativist Noam Chomsky suggested that the science of language could non be full explained by swindleing alone. Instead, he proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace. Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like legion(predicate) other humankind behaviors, the ability to shoot lang uage is subject to what are cognise as unfavorable stoppages.\r\nA comminuted stream is a particular(a) span of time during which an organism is sensitive to out-of-door stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills. According to Lenneberg, the scathing period for language acquisition lasts until around age 12. aft(prenominal) the onset of puberty, he argued, the organization of the mind-set becomes set and no longer able to learn and utilize language in a fully functional manner. Genie’s case presented researchers with a unique opportunity. If given an enriched learning environment, could she overcome her take childhood and learn language even though she had missed the critical period? If she could, it would suggest that the critical period hypothesis of language development was wrong. If she could not, it would evince that Lenneberg’s theory was correct.\r\nGenie’s linguistic communication Progress\r\nDespite scoring at the take of a one-year-o ld upon her initial assessment, Genie quickly began adding spick-and-span linguistic communication to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words unneurotic much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language. After a year of treatment, she even started putting collar words together occasionally. In children going by dint of normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting\r\nthem together in novel ways. Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammatical rules and uptake language in a meaningful way. At this point, her progress leveled off and her acquisition of new language halted.\r\nWhile Genie was able to learn virtually language after puberty, her inability to use grammar (which Chomsky suggests is what separates human language from animal communication) offers evidence for the critical period hypothesis. Of course, Genie’s case is not so simple. Not only did she miss the critical period for learning language, she was also horrifically abused. She was malnourished and deprived of cognitive stimulation for most of her childhood. Researchers were also never able to fully determine if Genie suffered from pre-existing cognitive deficits. As an infant, a pediatrician had identified her as having some type of mental delay. So researchers were left field to wonder whether Genie had suffered from cognitive deficits caused by her historic period of abuse or if she had been born with some academic degree of mental retardation.\r\n'