It is generally believed that for many organisms, there is a specific time period, a so-called “window of opportunity,” during which the organism must receive crucial input from its environment in order for normal development to occur. This period is called the critical period. If the needed environmental input is not received during this period, the normal development of certain physical attributes or behaviors may never occur. In other words, if the organism is not provided with the needed stimulus or influence during the critical period, it may permanently lose the capacity to ever obtain a particular physical attribute or behavior.
Let’s start with a physical attribute, say, uh, in kittens. Adult cats have extremely good vision, especially at night. But in order for a kitten’s eyesight to develop normally, the kitten must be exposed to light during the first four months of its life. Without that, its eyesight will not develop correctly, it will never be able to see as well as it should. Even if the kitten is exposed to plenty of light after those four months of darkness, it won’t matter, its vision will never develop normally.
As far as behavior’s concerned, well, have you ever seen how little baby geese line up and then, single-file, they follow their parent goose around? Well, what would happen if they didn’t see a parent goose within the first two days of their lives?
Actually, for normal behavior to develop, they must see what to follow within these first two days. What happens is, whatever large moving object they first see during those two days, they’ll adopt that object as their parent . . . forever. It can never be changed. For example, suppose after the baby geese were hatched, the only other animal around was, I don’t know, say a dog. OK? So the baby geese see a dog, but no other geese. Even though the dog is a totally different species, the geese will adopt it as their parent—they’ll follow it around. And even if the parent geese reappear later, it won’t matter to the babies—they’ll follow the dog. After two days the behavior is fixed and they’ll never exhibit the normal behavior of following their real parent—a goose.
Using the examples of kittens and geese, explain the idea of a critical period.
| Post dates | Users | rates | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-30 | kap | 83.33 | Check this speaking |
| 2019-11-21 | bishoy | 83.00 | Check this speaking |
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Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 395.0 592.248995984 67% => Need more words or more difficult words.
No of words: 118.0 155.574297189 76% => More words wanted. You may: choose simpler words or speak faster or remove hesitations or remove long pauses, and fully use the time, do NOT save one or two seconds.
Chars per words: 3.34745762712 3.80514564318 88% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.29587325169 3.525876923 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 1.34275910383 1.79077849142 75% => Word Length is similar.
Unique words: 71.0 93.7148594378 76% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.601694915254 0.604071249207 100% => OK
Syllable count: 129.6 185.844578313 70% => The syllable count is low.
Avg_syllables_per_word: 1.1 1.19417670683 92% => OK
Performance on coherence:
Topic speech coherence ratio: 0.0082355576715 0.0650381309087 13% => It may have issues on recording quality or the content is not so closely related to content.
Acoustic performance on paragraphs:
How many acoustic paragraphs: 5.0 4.35341365462 115% => OK
Average paragraph length: 23.6 68.503853103 34% => The average paragraph length is low.
STD paragraph length: 24.23716155 21.3332995233 114% => OK
Average paragraph duration: 9.064 25.9943957902 35% => The speaking content is not well organized.
STD paragraph duration: 9.20714635487 7.84667146824 117% => OK
Acoustic performance on sentences:
How many acoustic sentences: 40.0 42.0642570281 95% => OK
Average acoustic sentence length: 2.95 4.02192344571 73% => OK
STD acoustic sentence length: 2.42847688892 3.1217529195 78% => OK
Average acoustic sentences duration: 1.04825 1.45093177766 72% => OK
STD acoustic sentences duration: 0.86627041823 0.99851816184 87% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic silence:(An acoustic silence means a little pause between two or more words)
How many acoustic silence: 43.0 39.0421686747 110% => It means the content is not pronounced smoothly or it is pronounced slowly. It is word by word.
Total acoustic silence duration: 8.68 7.12997991968 122% => It may have a lot of silences or every silence is too long.
Average acoustic silence duration: 0.201860465116 0.185688545393 109% => OK
STD acoustic silence duration: 0.150615108016 0.155154303396 97% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic words:
Total word duration: 32.44 47.1480722892 69% => Need to talk more.
Average word duration: 0.274915254237 0.305395592593 90% => OK
STD word duration: 0.167006270879 0.189427763521 88% => OK
Disfluencies: like hesitations, or 'ehn' or taking a long time to pronounce a word:
How many disfluencies: 4.0 7.94979919679 50% => OK
Total_disfluencies_duration: 3.41 6.2937751004 54% => OK
Total acoustic noise duration: 2.52 3.39508032129 74% => OK
Acoustic rates:
Total speech duration: 45.32 59.7592369478 76% => Talk more. Do not save time. People can talk 4-5 words in one second.
Compare to expected duration: 0.755333333333 0.995987282463 76% => Some seconds left. Need to talk more.
Rate of silence: 0.94880847308 0.656000678711 145% => Less acoustic silences wanted.
Rate of speech: 2.60370697264 2.60215298798 100% => OK
Rate of speech by unique words: 1.56663724625 1.56821927147 100% => OK
Rate of word duration by unique words: 2.18865598027 1.99336655568 110% => OK
Average articulation rates: 0.220801686441 0.317803793328 69% => It may have issues on recording quality or you may have pronounciation issues.
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by speech e-grader: 15.0 Out of 30
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Note: the speech e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas.