The Forgotten Language Of Childhood Based On Th...
Download --->>> https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Furllio.com%2F2tEj0F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AOvVaw15RR0ZUth7xbwHTnJA_8Dx
The Forgotten Language Of Childhood Based On Th...
Objective: The aim of this study was to report the incidence rates and other epidemiologic characterizations of written-language disorder. There have been no epidemiologic studies on the incidence of written-language disorder in the United States, and the use of a population-based birth cohort, longitudinally followed, is the most powerful method for reaching this objective.
Methods: In this population-based, retrospective birth cohort study, subjects included 5718 children born between 1976 and 1982 in Rochester, Minnesota, who remained in the community after 5 years of age. Records from all public and nonpublic schools, medical facilities, and private tutorial services were reviewed and results of all individually administered IQ and achievement tests, and extensive medical, educational, and socioeconomic information, were collected. The essential features of writing problems from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision were included in our operationalized definition of written-language disorder. Written-language disorder incident cases were established by using research criteria based on 3 formulas (regression-based discrepancy, nonregression-based discrepancy, and low achievement).
Conclusions: In this population-based birth cohort of school-aged children, written-language disorder was at least as frequent as reading disabilities and significantly more frequent among boys than girls.
Previous research suggests that a language learned during early childhood is completely forgotten when contact to that language is severed. In contrast with these findings, we report leftover traces of early language exposure in individuals in their adult years, despite a complete absence of explicit memory for the language. Specifically, native English individuals under age 40 selectively relearned subtle Hindi or Zulu sound contrasts that they once knew. However, individuals over 40 failed to show any relearning, and young control participants with no previous exposure to Hindi or Zulu showed no learning. This research highlights the lasting impact of early language experience in shaping speech perception, and the value of exposing children to foreign languages even if such exposure does not continue into adulthood.
In an earlier post on language forgetting, I mentioned a little American boy, Stephen, who had acquired Garo in India during his first years of life but who had forgotten it when his parents returned to the United States (see here). I ended the post by stating that those who have a childhood language deep inside their minds probably have a hidden wish that one day they will be able to reactivate it and use it in their everyday life.
Researchers have studied this very question, but have mainly concentrated on whether there are remnants of a first language that are left after it has been replaced at a very early age by a second language (this would have been English for Stephen, not Garo). In a study that is often cited, a group of Paris-based researchers, headed by Christophe Pallier, tested adults (mean age of 26.8) who had been born in Korea and who had been adopted by French families in their early childhood. All claimed that they had completely forgotten their native language, Korean, and all spoke French fluently with no perceptible foreign accent.
Schmid, the language loss expert, agrees, but also points me to a case study in which a Frenchman remembered speaking Mina, the language of the West African country of Togo, when he was a young boy. While born in France, he and his family, native Togolese, spent three and half years living in Togo, where he became fluent in Mina. But after returning to France when he was 6, his family was told not to use Mina with him anymore because it would hinder his French. When he was interviewed as an adult, he had forgotten most of the Mina he used to know. But after several session