Study: Language-Learning Ability Is Strong Until Late Teens

Scientists have long posited that there is a "critical period" for language learning, but new research suggests that the time frame stretches on much longer than previously thought. The study, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggests that children remain skilled at learning the grammar of English up to the age of 17 or 18, the time at which many students graduate from high school. The finding injects new evidence for the decades-long debate over the "critical period" that had centered on whether the decline in language-learning skills begins at age 5 or at the ...