![]() It is clear that important factors that differ between the two populations may impact the way learning takes place. Second and most important, the differences and commonalities existing between the acquisition process in infants and adults might shed some light on the learning machinery necessary for mastering a new language.ĭespite this fact, infant and adult language acquisition and learning processes 1 have rarely been compared. First, although infants learn their first language as part of their cognitive development, adults are also faced with this challenge when learning a second language. The quoted problem introduced by Gleitman and Newport illustrates two crucial aspects of language learning (LL). If the adult and child human stay on Mars for several years and try to learn this language, what do you think will be the outcome? ( Gleitman & Newport 1997, p. Suppose an adult and child human arrive on Mars and discover that there are Martians who seem to speak a language to one another. Finally, we propose that LL simulations can help us to understand natural language processing and how the recovery from language disorders in infants and adults can be accomplished. We compile these findings and frame them into an integrative neurophysiological model that tries to delineate the major neural networks that might be involved in the initial stages of LL. In the present article, we review this evidence focusing on how different brain signatures relate to (i) the extraction of words from speech, (ii) the discovery of their embedded grammatical structure, and (iii) how meaning derived from verbal contexts can inform us about the cognitive mechanisms underlying the learning process. In several studies we have adopted the human simulation perspective, studying the effects of brain-lesions and combining different neuroimaging techniques such as event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to examine the language learning (LL) process. Little is known about the brain mechanisms involved in word learning during infancy and in second language acquisition and about the way these new words become stable representations that sustain language processing.
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