Exposure of multiple languages to children at a young age can help them learn languages faster and more fluently than if exposed as adults. Is it because children’s brains are more receptive to language at a young age? Is it because your mind has already developed a ‘default’ language when you’re older?
Why isn’t this pattern applicable to something like mathematics/any other subject?
In: Biology
Yes. The brain of children is different than the brain of an adult. It’s a lot more adaptive, ready to make novel connections (physically, neurons make connections with each other). On top of that, babies’ brains are preprogrammed (by evolution) to learn certain things by certain ages. If a child doesn’t learn ANY language by a certain age, they never will. This has happened with so-called “feral child” cases. Usually the result of a kid somehow growing up isolated in the wild.
I forget the specific age. I do know that one of the main differences between kids and adults is that the brain prunes (removes) a ton of excess neural connections between the ages of 2 and 10. That’s part of why there are critical time periods a child needs to learn specific things. As long as a kid learns any language, they will be able to learn new ones later. However, learning new languages later in life ends up using different networks in the brain than when we learn them young. Which is another reason it’s harder or slower later in life (but not impossible).
It’s the same as why kids can learn athletics. The body and brain is still forming so it’s easy to create new ways of thinking.
Children are better at learning the natural sounds for reasons mentioned in other posts but adults can outcompete them under more equal conditions. Here is the time the US diplo service expects you to take to learn a language if employed by them
https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
Even the hardest languages are at about a year and a half. Far quicker than a child. You have the advantage of already knowing a language and being able to apply that knowledge to the new one.
The reason why your average person struggles is the tend to have far less time spent on it. You likeöy have to work to support yourself, don’t have a 1:1 personal tutor and aren’t raised in an environment that is majority your new language unlike both kids and people in that training program. As a kid you even have somebody doing most of the chores like cooking and cleaning leaving you more time to practice (play) your new skills/language.
Children’s brains are set up to learn unconsciously, they absorb language and their brains adapt to it. You didn’t learn English from a teacher, you learnt it without attempting to learn it.
This is not just for language, it is all skills.
Adults outperform children in their ability to learn under ‘awareness’.
There’s been a little bit of a pushback on some of these ideas in this thread recently and some serious criticism of traditional second language learning approaches. For all of the sense it makes that kids have better neuroplasticity, one significant factor is that for the first 6-7 years of your life your only job is to learn language. If you as an adult dedicate the same length of time completely immersed in a foreign language with no other job other than to learn that language you’d reach a very high level in your target language too. Kids may also learn more easily, too, but they’re pretty much in 24/7 language learning mode.
Please know that there are a lot of conflicting theories, and that knowledge acquisition in general isn’t fully well understood.
Some of the explanations are:
– It isn’t easier for children at all. Children take a couple years before being able to speak at all, and around 5 to be able to speak consistently. Bilingual children often take longer, and learning a new language takes them time anyway.
– They might learn quicker because they have more time for it. They don’t have to worry about work and chores, so they’re just full time learning.
– Children’s minds may be more “plastic”. Parts of the brain aren’t fully formed yet, and so they’re able to learn things more quickly.
– Adults may “give up” on learning, and so learning a new language is more difficult, just because they’re more set in their ways. They *could* learn quicker, but they’re often not in the right mindset.
Basically, this might not be a real phenomenon, and there’s even evidence that depending on how you measure speed of learning, adults actually learn significantly faster than children. Either way, there are many explanations, and it’s complicated to actually understand and quantify.
There’s a region of the brain called the Broca’s Area which is more active in children and correlates with receptivity to learning language. Specifically, it seems to facilitate mimicry, the ability to hear, retain, and repeat new sounds. The activity level drops off after about age 12 in most people. In a small perch age though, it remains active into adulthood, which is how you get polyglots (people who are able to learn and speak multiple languages).
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