The Critical Period in Second Language Acquisition

Introduction

During 1950s, behaviorist theory of Language learning was in vogue and many researches were
conducted in support of the theory so that it could be implemented in teaching-learning process.
Behaviorism, therefore, became an integral part of the L2 teaching-learning process but later
many researches came into existence and criticized Skinner’s theory of language learning. These
limitations of behaviorism led teaching-learning process to another approach known as
cognitivist theory of language learning which came into existence after the publication of Noam
Chomsky’s article Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. According to Chomsky,
behaviorism does not account for language learning as there are innumerable structures in a
language and these structures cannot be learnt only through imitation and repetition. It is often
observed that children do speak sentences, which they have never heard before, and this shows
their cognitive ability to learn languages. Cognitivist, therefore, turned towards the contribution
of human mind in learning languages and they concluded that all learning, whether L1 or L2 is a
part of their cognitive development. Many theories supported this assumption and ‘Critical
Period Hypothesis’ (CPH) is one of them. CPH claims that L1 learning takes place in this critical
period, and after this period, successful learning cannot occur.

What is a critical period in language acquisition?

Ethologists studying the origin of species-specific behavior first used the notion of critical
period. Critical period is a time after which successful language learning cannot take place. It
was found that the certain species (rats, goslings) there were periods in which a particular kind of
stimulus had to be present if the baby was to develop normal behavior. The question was raised
whether there were critical periods in human maturation also. The American Psychologist Eric
Lenneberg (1921-75) argued that such a period existed in the case of language acquisition. When
we talk about critical period in humans, it is the ability to learn mother tongue/ L1 or first
language develops within a fixed period, from birth to puberty. During this critical period,
language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this
period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and for some individuals never fully achieved. Age
is a significant factor in Second Language (L2) acquisition too. The younger a person is when
exposed to a Second Language, the more likely he/she is to achieve native like competence. L2
acquisition abilities gradually decline with age, and there are “sensitive periods” for the native
like mastery of certain aspects of the L2. The sensitive period for phonology is shortest; other
aspects of language, such as morphology, syntax and semantics, have larger windows. This
critical period affects language learning in many ways and in order to examine these issues, the
following can be taken into consideration.

• Neurological considerations
• Psychomotor considerations
• Cognitive considerations
• Affective considerations
• Linguistic considerations

Neurological considerations

The study of the function in the brain in the process of language acquisition has been one of the
most interesting areas of inquiry in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). How neurological
(brain) development does affect second language success? Does the maturation of the brain at
one point spell the doom of language acquisition ability? Some scholars have singled out the
lateralization of the brain as the key to answering such a question. There is evidence in
neurological research that as the human brain matures certain functions are assigned –or
‘lateralized’ to the left hemisphere of the brain and certain other functions to the right
hemisphere. Now some questions often crop up are- how language is lateralized, when
lateralization takes place and how that lateralization process affects language acquisition.

Eric Lenneberg and some others suggested that, lateralization is a slow process that begins round
the age of 2 and is completed around puberty and it has been found that children up to the age of
puberty who suffer injury to the left hemisphere are able to relocalize linguistic functions to the
right hemisphere to ‘relearn’ their first language/L1 with little impairment. Thomas Scoval
(1969) also suggested that the plasticity of the brain enables children not only their L1/first
language but also a second language. Lenneberg (1967) contented that, lateralization is complete
around puberty. Stephen Krashen (1973) believed that the development of lateralization might be
complete around age 5. According to Scoval, if lateralization is not completed until puberty, one
can still construct arguments for a critical period based on lateralization. In a comprehensive
review of research findings, one neurolinguistic aspects of the CPH, Walsh and Diller (1981)
concluded that different aspects of a Second Language are learned optimally at different ages:-

Lower-order processes such as pronunciation are dependent on early maturing and less
adaptive macro neural circuits, which makes foreign accents difficult to overcome after
childhood. Higher-order language functions, such as semantic relations, are more
dependent on late maturing neural circuits, which may explain why college students can
learn many times the amount of grammar and vocabulary that elementary school students
can learn in a given period.

This conclusion lends support for a neurologically based critical period, but principally for the
acquisition of an authentic (native like) accent and not very strongly at all for the acquisition of
communicative fluency and other “higher-order” processes.

Psychomotor considerations

This consideration of ‘speech muscles’ in second language acquisition or accent is an issue

closely related to neurological considerations. For example, when we look at athletes, musicians
and others who have accomplished in a set of skills requiring muscular dexterity have almost
always begun to develop that skill in childhood, probably before the age of puberty. In the
articulation of human speech, a tremendous degree of muscular control is required to achieve the
fluency of native speaker of a language. At birth, the speech muscles are developed only to the
extent that the larynx can control the sustained cries. These speech muscles gradually develop
and control of some complex sounds in certain languages (in English the /r/ and /l/ are typical)
sometimes is not achieved until after age 5 though virtually complete phonemic control is present
in most 5 year old children. Children who acquire a second language after the age of 5 may have
a physical advantage in that phonemic control of a second language is physically possible yet
that mysterious plasticity is still present. If it is indeed true, and it appears to be true, that starting
a physical skill at a young age is advantageous, the same should be clearly true of language with
respect to pronunciation of a language. It is no wonder that children acquire authentic
pronunciation, which adults generally do not, since pronunciation involves the control of so
many muscles.
Research on the acquisition of authentic control of phonology of a foreign language supports the
notion of critical period. The evidence thus far indicates that persons beyond the age of puberty
do not generally acquire authentic pronunciation of the second language. Such a critical period
may have little to do with the lateralization of the brain though, and much to do with the child’s
neuromuscular plasticity. Therefore, muscular coordination may be of minimal significance in
establishing criteria for overall successful acquisition of a second language.

Cognitive considerations

The previous considerations are related to the cognitive domain of human behavior. Human
cognition develops rapidly throughout the first 16 years and less rapidly after adulthood. Jean
Piaget outlines the course of intellectual development in a child through various stages: the
sensorimotor stage (0-2), the optimal stage from (2-7) and the operational stage from (7-16)
years with a crucial change from around the concrete operational stage to the formal operational
stage around the age of 11. The most critical stage of the first and second language acquisition
appears to occur at puberty (Piaget).

Sensory-Motor Stage (0-2)

In this stage, a child explores the world through its basic senses, i.e., in the period infants ‘think’
by means of their senses and motor actions. As every parent will attest, infants continually touch,
manipulate, look, listen to, and even bite and chew objects. According to Piaget, these actions
allow them to learn about the world and are crucial to their early cognitive development .

Pre-Operational Stage (2-7)

In this period, a child starts framing ideas. Child’s memory and imagination start playing role in
internalizing actions and that is why the child can imagine future and reflect on the past. With the
development of imagination and memory, it becomes better in speech communication and
numerical abilities. In this period, children are not able to differentiate fantasy from reality and,
therefore, cartoon characters are real people. They are also not able to understand the
conversation of matter, i.e., they are not able to understand that something does not change even
though it looks different or they do not understand that shape it not related to quantity.
 For example, if we keep coins in two sets (10 coins in each set), one set in a long line and other
in a pile. Now ask a child of the age to find out which of the sets has more number of coins, he
will indicate towards long line while there is no more coins in the set.

One more example can be taken here. If we take same amount of water in two different bottles,
one less wide but long another wide and bigger. Now ask a child of the age to find out in which
bottle, there is more quantity of water. The child generally indicates towards less wide but long
bottle.

Concrete Operational Stage (7-11) In this age, they become able to represent ideas and event
more flexibly and logically. Their logical or reasoning ability develop in the age but on the
concrete level. In the stage of cognitive development, children understand the conversation of
matter, yet their rules of thinking are very basic. Piaget calls the period ‘concrete operational
stage’ because children mentally operate on concrete objects or events. They are not yet able to
systematically about the representations of objects or events. Manipulating representation is
more abstract skill that develops later during adolescence.

Formal Operational Stage (11 and beyond)

In this stage, abstract reasoning develops in a child. A child is able to think about hypothetical
situations and, therefore, the child can make hypothesis and can test it in systematic ways
organizing the facts and representing them in a sequence. In this age, a teacher can pose
hypothetical problems to students such as “what if the world had never discovered oil?” or
“what if the sun lost all of its energy?” .

In this process of cognitive development, Jean Piaget describes two terms, which are very
necessary in the development of cognition. The two terms are ‘assimilation’ and
‘accommodation’. Assimilation is the process of modifying incoming information to fit the
child’s knowledge and accommodation is the process of modifying child’s knowledge to include
new knowledge.

Ausubel (1964) says, adults learning a second language could profit from certain grammatical
explanations and deductive thinking that obviously would be pointless for a child. Whether
adults do in fact, profit from such explanations depends on context and other pedagogical
variables. We often observe that children do learn second languages will without the benefit or
hindrance of format operational thought. Young children are generally not aware of the societal
values and attitudes placed on one language or another. Now according to Anecdotal, some
adults who have been successful language learners have been very much aware of the process
they were going through even at the point of utilizing self-made paradigms and other fabricated
linguistic devices to facilitate the learning process. Therefore, if it is true that mature cognition is
a liability to successful second language acquisition, clearly some intervening variables are
allowing some persons to be quite successful second language learners after puberty.

Affective (emotional) considerations

Human beings are emotional creatures. At the heart of all thought and meaning and action is
emotion. It is only logical then, to look at the affective (emotional) domain for some of the most
significant answers to the problems of contrasting the differences between first language and
second language acquisition. The affective domain includes many factors such as empathy, self-
esteem, extroversion, inhibition, anxiety, attitudes, love, affection etc. some of these factors are
seemed far removed from language learning but when we consider the nature of language, any
affective factor can be relevant to second language learning.

A case in point is the role of egocentricity in human development. Very young children are very
egocentric. The world revolves about them and they see all events as focusing on themselves.
Small babies at first do not even distinguish a separation between themselves and the world
around them. A rattle held in a baby’s hand, for example, is simply an inseparable extension of
the baby as long as it is grasped; when the baby drops it or loses sight of it, it ceases to exit. As
children grow older, they become more aware of themselves, more self-conscious as they seek to
both define and understand their self-identity. In preadolescence, children develop inhibition
about their self-identity, fearing to expose too much self-doubt. At puberty, these inhibitions are
heightened in the trauma of undergoing critical physical, cognitive, and emotional identity.

Adolescents must acquire a totally new physical, cognitive, and emotional identity. Their egos
are affected not only in how they understand themselves but also in how they reach out beyond
themselves, how they relate to others socially, and how they use the communicative process to
bring on affective equilibrium. Alexander Guiora, a researcher in the study of personality
variable in second language acquisition suggested that the language ego may account for the
difficulties that adults have in learning a second language. The child’s ego is dynamic and
growing and flexible through the age of puberty, and thus a new language at this stage does not
pose a substantial “threat” or inhibition to the ego and adaptation is made relatively easily as
long as there are not undue confounding socio-cultural factors such as, for example, a damaging
attitude toward a language or language group at a young age. However, the simultaneous
physical, emotional, and cognitive changes of puberty give rise to a defensive. The language ego
clings to the security of the native language to protect the fragile ego of the young adults. The
language ego, which has now become a part and parcel of self-identity, is threatened. But in the
case of children, they are less frightened because they are less aware of language forms, and the
possibility of making mistakes in those forms- mistakes that one really must make mistake in an
attempt to communicate spontaneously- does not concern them greatly. Therefore language
learning becomes easier and faster for children than adults in the case of second language
acquisition.

Linguistic considerations

Let us see some of the linguistic considerations in first and second language learning in children
and adults. It is clear that children learning second languages simultaneously acquire them by the
use of similar strategies and the key to success is in distinguishing separate contexts for the
second languages. Children generally do not have problems with ‘mixing up languages’
regardless of the separateness of contexts for use of the languages. Wallace Lambert (1962) says
that children who are bilinguals may be slightly superior because they have a language asset,
which are more facile at concept formation and have a greater mental flexibility.

Now when we look at adults’ second language linguistic process, they are more difficult to pin
down. Many studies were carried out but much of adult second language acquisition in western
culture is tempered and shaped by classroom variables, textbooks, methods and that it is difficult
to conclude much about the natural process. Adults do approach a second language
systematically and attempt to formulate linguistic rules based on whether linguistic information
available to them- information from both the native and second languages.
Evidence supporting ‘critical period hypotheses’

The tragic Case of ‘Genie’ bears directly on the critical period hypothesis. Genie was discovered
at the age of 13 ½ in 1970, having been brought up in conditions of inhuman neglect and extreme
isolation. She was severely disturbed and underdeveloped and had been unable to learn language.
In the course of her treatment and rehabilitation, great efforts were made to teach her to speak.
She had received next to no stimulation between the ages of 2 to puberty, so the evidence of the
language learning ability would bear directly to Lenneberg Hypothesis. However, after several
psycholinguistic tests it was concluded that Genie was using her right hemisphere for language,
and that this might be her beginning the task of language learning after the critical period of left
hemisphere involvement. Genie was evidently able to acquire some language after the puberty
from exposure but she did not do so in a normal way. This case was thought to support
Lenneberg’s Hypothesis but only in a weak form because Genie made great progress in
vocabulary for example, and continued to make gains in morphology and syntax.

Contradicting ‘Critical Period Hypothesis’

In one case, Julie, an English woman, did not start learning Arabic until the age of 21 but was
found to perform like a native speaker on a variety of tests after she had lived in Cairo for
twenty-six years. Therefore, looking at this evidence, not all learners are subject to critical
periods, since some are able to perform like native speakers as in the case of Julie.

Limitations

After the behaviorist way of language learning, cognitive way of language learning has been
very familiar and popular in language teaching and critical period hypothesis has contributed a
lot in the support of cognitive theory or innatist theory but this theory and concept of ‘critical
period hypothesis’ has faced many challenges because of its limitations. Some of the limitations
have been mentioned as follows:

• According to analyses and explanations given by linguists and psychologists, there are
some advantages both for younger and older learners in second language acquisition.
They can be differentiated in the following ways
• advantage Older advantage
Younger advantages Older advantages

Brain plasticity Learning capacity

Not analytical Analytic ability

Fewer inhibitions (usually) Pragmatic skills

Weaker group identity Greater knowledge of L1

Simplified input more likely Real-world knowledge

These are some of the different features, which help learners (younger & older) in second
language acquisition, and therefore this does not really support the very notion of the critical
period hypothesis.

• According to cognitive linguists, children develop their cognition at this ‘critical period’
but research shows that many children are unable to attain logical competence and
abstract thinking.
• Cognitive linguists claim that language is a part of cognitive development and it should
be within the ‘critical period’ but they also talk about ‘assimilation’ and
‘accommodation’, which is not possible without coming in contact with the environment.
The role of environment therefore cannot be ignored in the development of their
cognition as well as in learning language.
• The comparisons of child and adult cases are extremely difficult to make and paths of
recovery have not been studied in a total linguistic way. It maybe that aspects of child
recovery are helped by the involvement of the right hemisphere, but there are also cases
of left hemisphere damage producing severe and long lasting aphasia in children.
• Aspects of phonological and grammatical acquisition do continue until puberty.
However, these skills are well established before the age of five, and some linguistic
skills are still developing in children and adults.
• The neuropsychological evidence generally fails to support the Lenneberg’s hypothesis,
showing lateralization to be established long before puberty- some studies suggest that this
may be even as early as the third year. Lateralization literally takes some years before it is
firmly established, and this overlaps the main period of language acquisition in a way that
this is not yet understood. The relationship between lateralization and language is thus an
extremely complex one, and presents a continuing research challenge in developmental
neuropsychology and neuro- linguistics.

Personal comments

The notion of critical period is not supported by most of the linguists since there is some
evidence that not all learners are subject to critical periods. Some are able to achieve native-
speaker ability from an adult start (after puberty). In one case, Julie, an English woman, did not
start learning Arabic until the age of 21 but was found to perform like a native speaker on a
variety of tests after she had lived in Cairo for twenty-six years. First, the age span for a putative
critical period for language acquisition has been delimited in different ways in the literature.
Lenneberg's critical period stretched from two years of age to puberty (which he posits at about
14 years of age), whereas other scholars have drawn the cutoff point at 12, 15, 16 or 18 years of
age. Unlike Lenneberg, most researchers today do not define a starting age for the critical period
for language learning. Some, however, consider the possibility of the critical period (or a critical
period for a specific language area, e.g. phonology) ending much earlier than puberty (e.g. age 9
years, or as early as 12 months in the case of phonology. However, it could also be because of
the number of years of exposure to the target language.