Research Links Early Exposure to Language in Babies to Easier Acquisition of the Language as Adults

[Francis Hult]

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Research Links Early Exposure to Language in Babies to Easier Acquisition of the Language as Adults

 

California State University, Northridge assistant professor of psychology Janet S. Oh wanted to take that concept a step further. She wondered whether early experience with a language - say before the age of one - can still help an adult many years later to acquire that language more easily that an individual who has not had such early exposure. 

 

"Early indications are that it does," said Oh, who published the results of her pilot study in the latest issue of the Journal of Child Language. 

 

Oh's pilot study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea by U.S. families as young children to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean. All but one of the 12 adopted Koreans were brought to the U.S. prior to age one. Because their adoptive families were European Americans, the adopted Korean adults had little to no exposure to Korean after adoption. Oh wanted to find out whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. 

  

Full story:

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20091208.135951&time=14%2043%20PST&year=2009&public=0

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