Supporting Evidence for Biological Preparedness forLanguage(a) Evidence from animals learning language; (b) earlyfindings about different language deficits associated withdamages to Broca’s vs. Wernicke’s areas of theleft-hemisphere (LH) in aphasic patients, and more recentfindings of a predictable pattern that damages tofrontal-lobe vs. temporal-lobe areas usually yieldproduction vs. comprehension problems respectively, andthat the LH is biased (but not necessary) for languageprocessing; (c) findings suggest the existence of a criticalperiod for acquiring first languages (based on studies withdeaf adults who acquired sign languages at different agesand studies with deaf-born infants who received cochlearimplants at different ages) and of a sensitive period foracquiring a second languagePrelinguistic Readiness for LanguageSpeech Perception: (a) newborns are sensitive to speechsounds; (b) habituation-recovery studies show that younginfants perceive and distinguish a wider range of phonemes(including the vowels and consonants that are units in theirnative language and in nonnative languages) than adults,and that (c) older infants, with increased language exposure,quickly improve on differentiating their native phonemesbut decline on differentiating nonnative phonemes (e.g., atabout 6 to 8 months, Japanese and US infants distinguish /r/and /l/ sounds equally well; however, by 10 to 12 months,perception of these sounds improves for US infants butdeclines for Japanese infants)Word Identification: (a) Infants are sensitive to recurringpatterns of speech sounds they repeatedly hear; (b) parentalinput helps infants process speech sounds- The statistical learning mechanism allows infants asyoung as 7 to 8 months old to abstract familiar repeatedpatterns, to detect novel patterns, and to parse speech