ArticleBrain and language2023
Age effects in second language acquisition: Expanding the emergentist account.
Article in Brain and language, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- How Language Attitudes Shape French Language Achievement: The Mediating Role of Student Engagement.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Bilingualism in Context: A Bayesian Psychometric Network Analysis of Language and Culture Among U.S. Heritage Spanish-English Speakers of Latin American Descent.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Chinese students' L2 classroom engagement in college: Perceived teacher support, value beliefs and self-monitoring.PloS one · 2026Article
- Not just two languages: Using variation in language experience to understand how cognitive resources shape syntactic processing.PloS one · 2026Article
- Brain-Inspired Multisensory Learning: A Systematic Review of Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Outcomes in Adult Multicultural and Second Language Acquisition.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The Influence of Separate and Combined Exercise and Foreign Language Acquisition on Learning and Cognition.Brain sciences · 2024Article
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In 2005, Science magazine designated the problem of accounting for difficulties in L2 (second language) learning as one of the 125 outstanding challenges facing scientific research. A maturationally-based sensitive period has long been the favorite explanation for why ultimate foreign language attainment declines with age-of-acquisition. However, no genetic or neurobiological mechanisms for limiting language learning have yet been identified. At the same time, we know that cognitive, social, and motivational factors change in complex ways across the human lifespan. Emergentist theory provides a framework for relating these changes to variation in the success of L2 learning. The great variability in patterns of learning, attainment, and loss across ages, social groups, and linguistic levels provides the core motivation for the emergentist approach. Our synthesis incorporates three groups of factors which change systematically with age: environmental supports, cognitive abilities, and motivation for language learning. This extended emergentist account explains why and when second language succeeds for some children and adults and fails for others.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.