Research report 2015 - Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Language acquisition – a long way to go for the brain

Authors
Skeide, Michael A.; Friederici, Angela D.
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Leipzig
Abteilung Neuropsychologie
Summary
The timing of developmental trajectories in language acquisition is paradoxical. Some milestones are reached very rapidly. For example, embryos are able to discriminate vowels already in utero [1]. Other milestones, however, like understanding grammatically complex sentences, are not even reached at the primary school age. What is the reason for this? Current neurobiological findings suggest that a brain network involved in processing grammatical information has to reach an adult-level maturity until it can provide its full function.

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