On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 5:10 AM, Jim O'Flaherty, Jr. <[email protected]> wrote: > So, if this "great pruning" has any real truth to it, it would likely be a > large influencer in why both acquiring a language, an accent and learning > intricate Go patterns prior to 6 are then "hard coded" at a very deep and > abstract level into the resulting pruned network by the time the child has > reached 10 years old. In effect, they have been imprinted deeply and > subconsciously/intuitively in a way no adult can possibly match.
This was my understanding as well. And it strokes with my observations. It is possible that this is the change in level of abstraction that the article is referring to when moving from 'amateur' to 'professional' level. But in that case it's only coincidence that it happened right at the age where this change happens and has nothing to do with the move to professional level. But the majority of people become 'professional' in pretty much anything at a later age. Only a small class of child prodigies reach professional level in their early teens. As to language, I have never met a foreigner who learnt Dutch as an adult who didn't have an accent. Although Dutch sounds gutteral to the casual observer, it's in fact the vowels that seem to be impossible to get right for foreigners. Only when learnt as a child do they acquire the ability to produce (and maybe hear) the right sounds. Maybe an impersonator can fool you for a little while with a few catchy lines, but I don't believe one bit they can fool you in a conversation of even a few minutes. Mark _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
