Early Language Acquisition: Neural Substrates and Theoretical Models

Abstract

Infants learn language(s) with apparent ease, and the tools of modern neuroscience are providing valuable information about the mechanisms that underlie this capacity. Noninvasive, safe brain technologies have now been proven feasible for use with children starting at birth, and studies in the past decade at the phonetic, word, and sentence levels have produced an explosion in neuroscience research examining young children's language processing. At all levels of language, the neural signatures of learning can be documented at remarkably early points in development. Importantly both for theory and for the eventual application of this work to the diagnosis and treatment of developmental disabilities, early brain measures of infants’ responses to phonetic differences are reflected in infants’ language abilities in the second and third year of life. Developmental neuroscience studies using language are beginning to answer questions about the origins and development of human's language faculty.