In the basis of speech are common to humans and animals the ancient functions of the brain
Scientists from the U.S. and Australia have shown that the development of language and children and adults associated with brain functions that perform more General tasks, learning, and appeared much earlier than a person’s ability to speak.
About the mechanisms underlying human speech, there are two opposing hypotheses: on the unique uniqueness of cognitive systems, providing human speech, or, on the contrary, the functioning of language on the basis of mechanisms common to all animals. This study confirmed that the language of human functioning, thanks to the ancient mechanisms of cognitive activity — those, for example, help the lab rats to navigate the maze.
Scientists have developed a model in which two types of memory were correlated with different aspects of learning the language. It was known that due to the declarative memory of man remembers facts and information units, therefore in the model it is associated with memorizing and using vocabulary. Procedural, or implicit memory is responsible for the development of automatic unconscious skill, rules, and sequences, so scientists have suggested that it will be responsible for the development of grammar.
To test the model on experimental data selected results 16 scientific works, in which language skills were compared with the learning efficiency on the basis of the mechanisms in declarative and procedural memory. The material included research on different aspects of different languages, and among 665 subjects were people of different ages and different levels of proficiency. Scientists analyzed 56 correlations between linguistic factors and memory systems.