Comments on: New Insights Into Early Childhood Language Learning

By: Larry R Plant

Larry R Plant — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:33:49 +0000

Language comprehension, development, and use, begins from the moment of conception. It is called Life!! It begins at the cellular level, moves to the nervous system, ears, eyes, mouth, touch, brain, etc. etc.

Science is common Sense!!

little larry bird, spelled B-o-b 🐦🐦🐦

By: Jill Curry

Jill Curry — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:25:04 +0000

This is fascinating research! I really appreciate the discovery that socioeconomic status (evidenced here by the educational attainment of mothers) does not play the role that we, including myself, have long-believed it has. This research has exciting implications for understanding and supporting language acquisition and development.

By: Sabyasachi

Sabyasachi — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 16:42:01 +0000

As per old Indian documents, the ear of the embryo start working at the age of 2.5 months ( embryo age) and the brain starts learning adult talk around womb.

So, keeping this in mind, more probing required.

By: Bertha

Bertha — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 16:08:46 +0000

The article was incomplete in my estimation. It told of a lot of ‘that’ (young learners have learning advantage) but not ‘why’ as in blank slate, new book, new news or what, or ‘how’ as different or more varied neurons up with the task. I learned how many youngsters in the studies and who did the studies. :(

By: Peter Mare

Peter Mare — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 13:41:19 +0000

“Children who heard more talk from adults produced more speech.” Kids of stay-at-home parents have an advantage. Also, dyslexia can be caused by the spelling system’s irregularities (surface dyslexia). English has the worst system. Btw, the French fixed 5000 words, but critically they did not force current users to learn the new spellings. The anglosphere needs to start to see the light.

By: Macy Chan

Macy Chan — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 04:00:09 +0000

I agree with Prof. Bergelson that language development start at 6 to 8 months old. This stage is called babbling stage or baby talk.

I would like to add however, that in response, it is also important for the adults or caregiver to baby talk to the baby, repeating what the baby had babbled, and also babble more different sounds. You would be surprised that many babies can mimick these sounds. This is called “motherese”. This is a very important stage in language development but somehow ditched for some reason.

As days go buy, the adult can introduce words, mainly single syllable words or repeated syllables like mama, dada. baba etc. Then identifying objects.

I am an early childhood teacher from New Zealand. I use motherese with young learners but sadly the mainstream early childhood sector frowned upon this method. It used to be encouraged long time ago.

By: cacarr

cacarr — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 23:50:50 +0000

“Bergelson’s research refutes the assumption that socio-economic status significantly impacts a child’s language development….”

I believe this was pretty well refuted by psycholinguists a couple decades ago.