Educational Psychology / Unit 3 EDP 0207 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Critical or Sensitive Period
The idea
A critical period is a limited window in which an experience must occur; if it is missed, the loss cannot be made up later. A sensitive period is a window in which development comes most easily, but later experience can still help, with more effort. Language learning is the anchor's example of a sensitive period: easiest early in life, but still possible afterward for a learner who puts in the work.
In practice
Worked example: a teenager arriving from abroad learns a new language more slowly than a young child, but learns it. That is a sensitive period, not a critical one.
Where people slip
The two terms are often used as if they meant the same thing. Ask whether later experience can still produce the change. If it can, even slowly and with effort, the window was sensitive; only if it cannot is the period critical.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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