1. The Critical Period Hypothesis

2. Critical period or critical periods? The basic claim Evidence for L1: feral children Lenneberg, 1967 Bickerston, 1981 L2: L2 learning and acquisition Bialystok, 1997, Singleton & Lengyel, 1995

3. Feral children Socialising, teaching and observing Problems - ethical experiments? - teacher=researcher (bias) - relation between lack of language and mental + social retardation

4. Kamala and Amala Found: 1920 (India) Age: 8 years and 18 months Taken into care Limited vocabulary Unusal words No spontaneous use No syntax

5. Genie Found: 1970 (California) Age: 13 Taken into care Fast progress in vocabulary Sign language Making sense of chaos Spatial intelligence No apparent mental retardation

6. Aspects of study Neurological Psychomotor Cognitive Affective Linguistic Contextual

7. Neurological considerations Lateralisation Time - Lenneberg 2-puberty - Krashen 5 - Walsh & Diller (1981): different timetables for different functions Right - hemisphere functioning in SLA - - Obler, 1981: strategies of acquisition, guessing meaning, formulaic utterances Lots of counterevidence - Hill, 1970, Sorenson, 1967 - multilingual tribes

8. Psychomotor considerations Problems in accent studies - native judgement - testing isolated words and sentences Key issue: accent - depends on muscular plasticity, subject to CP - the Kissinger effect

9. Cognitive considerations Piaget, 1972 - sharp change from concrete to formal operation at puberty - CP!! (+ or -??) Superior cognitive capacity in adults (Ausubel, 1964) - a watched pot never boils? Rosansky, 1975 - „Problem-centred learning” of children Piaget - equilibrium for children and adults? Rote and meaningful learning

10. Affective considerations Attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, Inhibition - egocentrism – decentration-defending ego Identity (Guiora, language ego) - face threat - second identity - permeability of language ego

11. Linguistic considerations Bilingualism Strategies and processes in child L1 and L2 acqusition similar Adults demonstrate similar mistakes - acquisition order (Dulay and Burt, 1974), - transfer is rare, creative langauge acquisition - adults rely more on system of L1

12. Context Learning vs. acquisition Motivation for learning Input (motherese vs. foreigner talk) Peer pressure