How Critical is the Critical Period - Essay Example

Cognitive scientists are finding it important to understand the stages of language development, prior to understanding how humans learn to talk. According to Penfield, there is assistance for language acquisition during childhood which also disappears in adult life, which if based on speech and brain mechanisms, makes it more meaningful to teach foreign language from the first grade on (Singleton & Lengyel, 1995). This was the fundamental view point based on the formulated idea of critical period hypothesis.

The critical period hypothesis was popularized by Wilder Penfield and his co-author Lamar Roberts, but Eric Lenneberg promoted it further while relying on the biological foundations of language. Cognitive scientists believe that language and self-awareness are found in the part of the brain, but study also shows that they can also take time to develop with substantial exposure to others (Chomsky, 2003). Therefore, this leads to a growing interest in finding how children acquire and produce language, but one of the most interesting views that will be linked to this consideration is finding the critical period as to when will be that remarkable time for language acquisition.

The work at hand tries to establish the point that language is innate in humans and there is a critical period for language acquisition that along the way will be nurtured by the environment and may potentially diminish as the person grows older because of other vital considerations. Language is such a complex tool that humans use for them to interact every day of their lives. However, as observed the young child does not speak the language the way as adult do, but this does not contest the fact that even in their own simple ways, young children are capable of producing a language that is enough for the adults to understand.

The very basic of this for instance is shown