MRI scans reveal Chinese babies adopted by French-speaking Canadian families retain ‘unconscious knowledge of their mother tongue Lost” first languages leave a permanent notice on the brain,a report this week has found. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the US, and challenges the existing understanding that exposure to a language in the first year of a child’s life can be “erased” if he or she is moved to a different linguistic environment.
The study showed that Chinese children,adopted at 12 months to French-speaking families in Canada, responded to Chinese tones, and despite having no conscious understanding of the language.
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Source: theguardian.com