The linguistic genius of babies

I was sent a link to this presentation by Patricia Kuhl intriguingly titled “The linguistic genius of babies”.

Kuhl is co-director of the Institute of Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, and researches early language and brain development. Her talk:

shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world. (Source: TED.com)

Here’s the video of the presentation:

The issue of a “critical period” is an interesting one which has been picked up in the comments on the video. It’s often said that children are “better” at learning languages than adults and this is used as an excuse for not learning another language. The critical period is something that could be used as another excuse for why people “aren’t any good” at learning a new language.