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I am aware of immersion methods as well as mnemonics such as the one Daniel Tammet mentioned in Born on a Blue Day. I read that Kim Peek's lack of corpus callosum enabled his brain to absorb information faster with his whole brain but that hindered other daily activities.

But my motivation was the folklore legends of William James Sidis who is supposed to have acquired a language in one day.

My question thus is two-fold:

  1. Are there any medical conditions which allow one to learn a language faster? For instance, consider John Travolta's character learning Portuguese in a half-an hour car drive.
  2. What are some current theories in cognitive science that allow one to acquire a language faster? For instance, see the book Babel No More. At the end the author mentions a trick of using the whole body to learn a language as well as the accent.

So, how would an artificial intelligence programmer view language learning? What sort of model would he attempt to create?

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    $\begingroup$ The one program I'm aware of is duolingo, which is a free language learning tool. $\endgroup$
    – Alex Stone
    Dec 10, 2012 at 5:57
  • $\begingroup$ I checked it out. Pretty much cut-and-dried classroom setup. Also my question was not a software request rather theory from field of cognitive science dealing with accelerated learning. I have edited my question further. $\endgroup$
    – Sniper Clown
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:40
  • $\begingroup$ Regarding AI Programmer and language learning, this lecture helped me: videolectures.net/nips2010_tenenbaum_hgm . It discusses how the brain might create models of how words relate to each other through trees and priors. $\endgroup$
    – Alex Stone
    Dec 12, 2012 at 2:48
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    $\begingroup$ "I read that Kim Peek's lack of corpus callosum enabled his brain to absorb information faster with his whole brain." Where did you read this please? $\endgroup$
    – Chris Rogers
    Jul 15, 2018 at 15:31

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