I am aware of immersion method as well as mnemonics such as the one Daniel Tammet's Born on a Blue Day. I read that Kim Peek's lack of corpus callosum enabled his brain to absorb information faster with whole brain but that hindered other daily activities.
But my motivation was the folklore legends of William James Sidis who is supposed to acquire a language in one day.
My question thus is two-fold:
- Are there any medical conditions which acquires one to learn a language faster? For instance, John Travolta's character learning Portuguese in a half-an hour car drive.
- What are some current theories in cognitive science that allow one to acquire a language faster? For instance, in the book Babel No More, at the end author mentions a trick of using whole body to learn the 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?
