I find this incredibly hard to believe with all of the research on neuroplasticity. Not to mention there’s a VERY famous case that proves this is not a hard and fast rule: Helen Keller.
At this age, a child's brain has already locked in the sounds for their native language and lost the ability to learn non-native sounds (hell, research suggests that unborn infants can recognise the difference between their mothers native language and foreign languages before they even leave the womb). The typical child will have been using single word sentences for months and just starting to move onto two word sentences.
Keller might have regressed to zero language abilities after her illness, but she didn't need to start completely from scratch when she learned how to speak.
While this is in fact an important sample, this doesn't imply much about how humans develop after 19 months, much less how they develop before 19 months.
> At this age, a child's brain has already locked in the sounds for their native language and lost the ability to learn non-native sounds (hell, research suggests that unborn infants can recognise the difference between their mothers native language and foreign languages before they even leave the womb).
We have nearly zero clue how the child's brain recognizes their "native language". We know they react differently at different stages of their development to the same stimulus, which is occasionally linguistic. We have nearly zero clue what the mechanism is that corresponds input to measurable output. This is a very disingenuous characterization of the data.
It's also worth mentioning that the root of this question is trivially false—people obviously learn language after the age of five. Such haphazard presentation (at best) should not be taken seriously.
one day, y-combinator will give a shit about disability. There is not enough money in the game for the powers to be to care yet.
Cochlear implants are amazing but my understanding is they're not 100% restorative. To make a bad metaphorical comparison with blindness, they're like glasses that restore your vision but if the only shape produced were shutter shades.
(pic for reference: http://lh6.ggpht.com/nML2bdK30Z0OS3cHBINnLcXCv6XVI8dWpLvMu8m...)
I agree with you fwiw, but your argument needs to acknowledge the above statement.