Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

About this talk

At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

Kelly:


"Falling off the map" might be a bit of an exaggeration but Kuhl is not saying we cannot learn another language post puberty, only that the manner in which we learn will be considerably different from how babies learn. It's probably more accurate to talk about babies "acquiring" language, whereas post puberty we "learn" languages. It's a more effortful, deliberate process for us; babies can pull it off passively, w/o any deliberate cognitive intervention. So enjoy all those languages you are picking up! But you aren't invalidating Kuhl's work. You're only invalidating the world's conception of monolingistic Americans (assuming you are American, that is).