¶ … Language

Kuhl et al. (1992) presented some very compelling evidence in their research into childhood linguistics and language understanding. The purpose of their article was to reveal their findings of their investigation into the importance of age and its correlation to phonetic recognition and linguistic experience. The research is premised on the idea that linguistic experience definitely affects phonetic perception, but the study attempted to find out at what age this process may begin.

The study's hypothesis is that this phonetic perception begins in infants at the age of 6 months. The authors wrote " we show here that by 6 months of age, well before the acquisition of language infants' phonetic perception has been altered by exposure to a specific language." The authors addressed the issue of non-specific language recognition as being an issue, as a result the study was created to eliminate this bias and select two different languages to interpret their investigation.

In their study, 64-6-month-old infants were tested, 32 in the United States and 32 in Sweden. The study then applied certain linguistic criteria to evaluate the infants ability to phonetically recognize, language specific sounds. The infants were judged on their ability to recognize through head turning (HT) towards a loudspeaker. Although seemingly impossible, bias was reduced according to the article: "Safeguards against bias on the part of the parent, the experimenter and the assistant were stringent to ensure that these individuals did not influence infants' HT's."

The authors believed that HTs by 6-month-old infants were significant data points to base a study upon. While I personally disagree with the methods of this research, the importance of this study does not appear to be lost. The age at which children do appear to be learning is very important but this article does not provide a significant argument to support this in this particular study. The conclusions of the study are muddled and incomplete as well, as not clear result was communicated. Ultimately the authors' concluded that "infants demonstrate a capacity to learn simply by being exposed to language during the first half year of life, before the time that they have uttered meaningful words." Once again the authors bias in using the word "meaningful" presents problems with the study's design and ability to communicate a clear and distinct picture. The article is well written however, the content is poorly supported by the research and data provided within.