Hartshorne et al. (2018) used a very large sample in order to disentangle the effects of age, years of experience, and age of exposure from each other in context of second-language acquisition. Participants were administered an online test of English grammar. Results revealed a critical period ending around 17 years of age for the most effective acquisition of a second language (L2). The findings of a late cutoff indicate the age range of late childhood to late adolescence as crucial for learning an L2. In this piece, we argue that these results can be conceptualized by emergentist models of language acquisition in which both behavior and brain interactively reorganize across development.

Hartshorne 等人。(2018) 使用了一个非常大的样本，以便在第二语言习得的背景下分离年龄、经验年数和接触年龄之间的相互影响。参与者接受了在线英语语法测试。结果显示，最有效地习得第二语言 (L2) 的关键时期在 17 岁左右结束。晚期截止的结果表明，童年晚期到青春期晚期的年龄范围对于学习 L2 至关重要。在这篇文章中，我们认为这些结果可以通过语言习得的涌现模型概念化，其中行为和大脑在整个发展过程中交互重组。