Are there critical periods in brain development?
Yes. … There are critical periods for acquiring certain kinds of skills and abilities. But it’s very important that we be specific about what kinds of skills and abilities we’re talking about. Back in 1986, one of the first volumes that attempted to integrate brain science with early childhood was an issue of Child Development contained an article where the lead author was Bill Greenough. And Bill introduced the terms “experience-expectant brain change or brain plasticity” and “experience-dependant brain change.” What Bill meant by “experience-expectant brain change” is that, given our evolutionary history, humans, like other animals, are born into the world expecting to find certain kinds of experiences. This is the ecological niche they’ve been evolved to develop within. So for things like seeing, hearing, first language learning, there certainly seems to be critical periods for the development of those skills. But what we have to realize is the kinds of experience we need during t
