How to Test Whether Younger Children Are Better at Learning Languages
Psychologists Elissa Newport and Jacqueline Johnson proved experimentally that younger people learn language better than older people. Specifically, language learning is more successful before the onset of puberty than after. This advantage of youth in language learning with puberty as the dividing line is called the critical period. Perhaps pre-pubescent children also show age-based differences in language learning. Here are some steps you can use to find out whether there are age effects for language learning among children before the onset of puberty.
Things You'll Need
First treatment group
Second treatment group
Language test
Statistical software program
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Instructions
Assembling Groups, Testing and Analysis
1
Chinese speaking immigrants make good subjects for this study, because their first language is so different from English.
Assemble two groups of recent immigrants from the same native country whose first language is not English. The younger group should be about 8 years old, and the second group should be about 13 years old.
2
The key to success is limiting variables to age.
You must further limit your group by their length of residence in the United States. Two years is a reasonable amount of time to have learned enough English to function in school, so test only those who have been in the United States at least two years.
3
Your subjects will be relieved when they find out that they do not have to study for this test!
Administer a language test to your groups. The test must be appropriate for both age groups.
4
Accurate statistics lead to a successful study.
Grade the tests, and find the median score for each group. If the younger group has a higher median score, then the hypothesis that younger children are better at learning language is confirmed. If the older group has a higher median score, you have proven that younger children are not always better at learning a language.