> you end up stuck with whatever your brain has learned by age 14
I very strongly doubt this is true and I must object because this holds up the old alleged "fact" that at a certain age "you're just too old" to learn something new and I detest this with a passion.
Off the top of my head, Gary Marcus' "Guitar Zero" does an excellent job of de-bunking this.
This is a fact for many brain functions like vision for example. If you are born with a ocular birth defect and your eyes are not surgically corrected early enough after birth you will be blind for life.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period
We were talking accents and ability to learn new languages or skills here, not birth defects - the one doesn't have anything to do with the other unless it is a form of direct speech impediment....
I mentioned the birth defect as simply an example of how they discovered there is a critical developmental period for vision.
As far as critical developmental periods for people without birth defects, there are many accounts of feral children that were never able to learn speech. There really is evidence for a critical developmental period for speech functions.
I very strongly doubt this is true and I must object because this holds up the old alleged "fact" that at a certain age "you're just too old" to learn something new and I detest this with a passion.
Off the top of my head, Gary Marcus' "Guitar Zero" does an excellent job of de-bunking this.