Educational Psychology
The critical period hypothesis suggests that there is a specific window of time during which individuals must be exposed to language in order to acquire it fully and naturally. This concept highlights the importance of early childhood experiences in language development, indicating that after a certain age, typically around puberty, it becomes significantly harder to learn a language to a native level. The hypothesis draws attention to the biological and cognitive factors that influence language acquisition, making it a crucial aspect of understanding how humans learn languages.
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