1. What does Kuhl mean when she says that language has a “critical period”?
The critical period Kuhl is talking about is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their languages, which takes place in ages three to seven. After that age, there is a natural decline in this process.
2. What have researchers learned when studying the head-turn task?
They have learned that children are what they consider “citizens of the world”. This is because they can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter the country or the language they use in the test. She believes that, adults cannot do that because we are attached to the sounds of the languages of our culture. One important question they made themselves was, “When do those citizens of the world turn into the language-bound citizens that we are?” From six to eight months old, before their first birthday.
3. What happens during the critical period for language development in children?
The children start taking statistics in the language they hear. Babies absorb the statistics and it changes their brain, it changes the babies from “citizens of the world” to culture bound listeners like we are when we are adults. We as adults are governed by the representations that all our experiences have given us during all of our live regarding language.
4. What did the researchers learn about the importance of human interaction in learning language?
That human interaction is crucial when babies are absorbing statistics because it is the social brain that takes control over this process.
5. How could an early childhood education site use research like this to improve language development?
An early education site could use research like this to identify specific problems children have to learn a second language. For example, they could advice parents whose children are in the age between six to eight months to be with them all the time as it is a crucial age in which they learn from the interaction with their parents.
