Re: sensitive period in language acquisition

From: Gene Kalutskiy
Message: 887
Date: 2000-01-13

"brent lords" <brentlord-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=884
> >>Gerry: Brent, I'm sure you feel confident about your knowledge in
> Psych; however I know that basics have changed in this field within
the
> past few months.
>
> Brent response:
> You could be right – as I said, I haven't tried to keep up, beyond a
> Nova show here and there (which showed the same old same old) – If so,
> maybe you'll let me know where it has gone to.... But what I covered
> here wasn't theory- it was basic neural physiology (they measure
> membrane osmosis, synaptic connections, neural transmitter
> levels,melanin coatings, firing rates and extinctions etc).....really
> hard stuff... I would be really bowled over if they reversed
> themselves on this. So if you do find something that is substantial –
> not the popular psychology quasi-science stuff - I would love to see
> it.
-snip-
> Sorry Gerry – as I said, its been 25 years. What I didn't sell back
to
> the bookstore when I went onto my higher degrees, I left behind when I
> moved. You're going to have to dig it out yourself. But it won't be
> that hard, any basic textbook on Psychology (college psych – not the
> popular stuff) should cover the basics on the learning processes we've
> discussed here. If you want to get into it deeper go after an
> Introductory textbook on the Psychology of Learning. And if your
> really a glutton for punishment, get into the physiology of neural
> science (Usually called something like Physical Pyschology). Usually
> the latter are upper graduate class material –but don't let that
> intimidate you -shouldn't have any real trouble with it- its pretty
> straight forward, if sometimes tedious... As a shortcut – maybe there
> is a Web site that can give you recent citations.

As an introduction, here's a Time magazine article giving a very
accessible and informative overview of what's going on in a child's
brain before and after birth:
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,247432,00.html

That Britannica.com is great! Thanks to whoever recommended it here
recently.

GK