Question

Carlos was born into a Spanish-speaking household and as an infant he made many babbling sounds that could be identified as Chinese or Swahili, in addition to those that sounded Spanish. Now, as an adult, Carlos cannot distinguish the sounds in any language but Spanish. The explanation for this occurrence is likely that

a. he cannot retrieve the sounds due to retroactive interference
b. he wasn't exposed to any other languages but Spanish and lost his innate ability to hear and produce sounds and tones outside his native language
c. Carlos was exposed to too many other languages in school
d. he is missing a portion of his hippocampus, which is essential for memory of words
e. Chinese and Swahili words have too many morphemes and are hard to pronounce

Answer 1

Carlos likely lost the ability to distinguish non-native phonemes from languages other than Spanish due to a lack of exposure and the loss of early innate language differentiation capabilities.

Step-by-step explanation:

The explanation for why Carlos cannot distinguish sounds in any language but Spanish as an adult, despite being able to babble sounds from many languages as an infant, is most likely due to the loss of his innate ability to hear and produce sounds outside of his native language because he wasn't exposed to those other languages during critical periods of language development. This is supported by research showing that infants initially have the capacity to differentiate between the sounds of all human languages, but as they grow, they lose this ability if those sounds are not reinforced in their environment. Furthermore, adults, unlike children, often experience greater difficulty in learning new phonemes due to diminishing plasticity in the brain's language acquisition systems.