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ON THE RELIABILITY OF ROBUSTNESS

A Reply to DeKeyser

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2002

Ellen Bialystok
Affiliation:
York University Address correspondence to: Ellen Bialystok, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada; e-mail: ellenb@yorku.ca.

Abstract

DeKeyser (2000) reports a study in which he examines three hypotheses concerning the existence of a critical period for second language acquisition. He concludes that his data support all three predictions and that the notion of a critical period is the best account of the data. However, there are problems in both his interpretation of the data and the issues raised in his discussion that undermine that conclusion. The present paper examines the evidence for the three hypotheses proposed by DeKeyser and argues that the data do not provide the necessary support for the interpretation that a critical period has influenced the results.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2002 Cambridge University Press

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