Blog 8

Brain anatomy and language in young children

This article is about a study done on children on the acquisition of language. The researchers hypothesized that the part of the brain they would be researching that helps children with the learning of a language would be gaining myelin. The thought was as the acquisition of language progresses and becomes greater, the amount of myelin would increase. This didn't turn out to be the case because even in children as young as one had a substantial amount of myelin already in the brain so the idea then became that the environment in which the child is in plays a role in acquisition. This study isn't just to understand how children learn language, but it will also help figure out the average way in which a language is acquired and in turn help understand how children with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia learn language. If that can be done, then there can be tools to help children like that overcome obstacles in an easier manner if the root of the problem s detected. It is also said in this article that parts of the brain that didn't seem important in learning a language became useful later on in their development. I think this just goes to show that as a mind of a child grows, different parts of it become utilized because more complex thinking is going on. Not only has the understanding of language happened when a child starts school, but the deeper knowledge of grammar and putting a sentence together is becoming more profound and rounded so it only makes sense that the same part of the brain would be used for language alone. Lastly, the myelin didn't develop in other places as the region of language usage in the brain moved, it stayed where it originated further implying that surroundings have a role with a child's language development.