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From: dwt@zippy.eecs.umich.edu (David West)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Language Learning
Message-ID: <487@zippy.eecs.umich.edu>
Date: Fri, 13-Nov-87 12:06:02 EST
Article-I.D.: zippy.487
Posted: Fri Nov 13 12:06:02 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Nov-87 09:26:10 EST
References: <1966@uwmacc.UUCP> <12400009@iuvax>
Sender: usenet@zippy.eecs.umich.edu
Reply-To: dwt@zippy.eecs.umich.edu (David West)
Organization: might be a good idea...
Lines: 43
Summary: some evidence each way
UUCP-Path: ihnp4!umich!zippy!dwt


In article <12400009@iuvax> merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes:
>I remember an experiment in which adult speakers of Japanese were
>trained to discriminate same/different along the [r]/[l] continuum for
>short intervals. ... 
>...My memory is that the subjects could learn to make the
>narrow discrimination of side-by-side tokens, but could not
>generalize.  If so, this would also indicate that there was a real
>crystallization effect, and might lead one to hypothesize that it lay
>in the ability to generalize.

I remember clearly trying (for a few days only) to learn some Dutch vowels 
from a native speaker; I did ok when working from short-term memory, but 
found that the unconscious internal process that transfers short-term to
long-term memory tried to assimilate the Dutch vowels to English ones, i.e.
to make use of existing categories.  First-language learners don't have to
contend with this kind of cognitive interference.

>Incidentally, language is not the only area in which a crystallization
>effect has been hypothesized.  

Hubel and Wiesel established quite unambiguously for the cat visual system
that there is a period at which certain kinds of visual+motor experience are
essential for the development of adult visual+motor competence, and that 
absence of such experience at the appropriate period cannot be compensated 
by its presence later.

>I've heard of claims for such a
>phenomenon in musical performance (specifically cello,) and other
>motor behavior....  

What all of these skills have in common is that they are extremely
demanding of time.  There *is* a change in the environment at puberty: it
consists of a (largely socially-imposed) severe escalation of time demands 
from other things ("education" ,"work", "social life" etc.).  Typically,
by the time one gets round to acquiring a second language, one "can't
afford" to spend as much time on its subtleties as on spent on those of
one's first language. 
Similarly with music.  I learned a single instrument as a child, and have
taught myself several more as an adult.  I am painfully aware that I can't
give these other instruments the time they "need", but I am not conscious
of any other difference.

-David West    umich!dwt