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katja z wrote:With the caveat that you shouldn't wait too long with your first one, or you might never learn any !

Nah, I'm super smart. I reckon I could pick up my first language at 40!

Incidentally, I was a fairly late bloomer when it came to language, I didn't start speaking until I was 5. But me being able to pick it up fairly well was most likely due to luck than intelligence though

katja z wrote:Although in the light of your remark about "use it or lose it", this critical period might be more about reserving a portion of your brain (metaphorically speaking)for tasks connected with language rather than about developing any positive linguistic skills as such.

Could be! I don't know enough about it to know, but I like lateral thinking like that.

katja z wrote:

Yeah I've noticed the "ear for languages" thing too, and it's certainly interesting. I wonder if it's a result of a loosely formed concept class for their own language's phonemes (so phonemes from other languages can slip in easily), or whether they have exposure to other languages at a young age and so have the basic skills needed to pick it up..

Do you mean that this remarkable ability could be a consequence of a failure to streamline your neural connections?

Yep, a lot of our creative and novel behaviors come about as a result of poor stimulus control, and the behavior can overgeneralise to other situations. Problem solving is an example of poor stimulus control, where we apply solutions from one situation to a completely novel problem. So I don't see why the same concept couldn't be applied to language.

katja z wrote:But, with all that we can learn, I'd be surprised if we couldn't (re)train the ear to hear new distinctions (again), just like painters get very good with colours, or oenologists with taste, etc - I don't think we need to assume early exposure to other languages as the determining factor.

Probably true, and I think I had this discussion with some a while back.. Oh no, I think I was discussing teaching people perfect pitch. Same idea though, I imagine.

katja z wrote:

katja z wrote:ETA: Just a thought, what about the critical period for sign language in deaf people? Has any work been done on that? I'll do some googling tomorrow, here in Mitteleuropa it's so late that it's already early ...

I'm sure that it is the case: http://www.unisci.com/stories/20021/0104026.htm

Thanks! Interesting stuff. Of course, all of this is a bit indirect, but I imagine it would be difficult to get funding for a serious experiment on growing up wholly without language, with a reasonable sample size and everything. A modest proposal: Maybe there is a way to get test subjects. If more evil atheists went vegetarian ...

You don't know how much I'd love to enter an ethics approval submission that asked for 20 children taken from their mothers without socialisation, so I could raised them from birth in a controlled environment... Partly because it'd be funny to see what their reaction would be, but partly because if they approved it then I could carry out a really interesting experiment...

katja z wrote:I've found this bit especially interesting:

The new study shows consistent activation of the right angular gyrus among native signers and some, but not consistent, activation of that brain region among late signers.

So some late signers do manage to use precisely the same brain areas as native signers; the article doesn't say it explicitly, but presumably this is connected with reaching native-like fluency.

I think the comment there says that the late signers used the same areas of the brain, but the "some" refers to the activation rather than the amount of people who use it. That is, the difference between the two groups is that the late signers don't show consistent activation of that brain region (as opposed to some late signers using that brain region, and some not).