This article must have been written in 15 minutes. Painfully lacking in detail. The juicy bits:
"A team of researchers looked at the structure of neuron fibers in white matter in 22 beginning Mandarin students. Those who had more spatially aligned fibers in their right hemisphere had higher test scores after four weeks of classes, the scientists found."
The terrible conclusion:
"What language aptitude really is and how it manifests in the brain are complex questions, touching on the nature of attention and even consciousness."
Came to the comment section to say the same thing. I think it would have been more worthwhile for us to read the study directly, and draw our own conclusions.
So, by brains wired for languages they actually meant "wired" for teaching methodologies at schools that are known not to be effective for teaching languages to begin with.
As a beginning Mandarin student myself, four weeks of classes means absolutely nothing about fluency in the language (assuming the students are native English speakers). It's a very difficult language to learn, and four weeks doesn't have you engaging in unscripted conversations with fellow students. The low n is understandable, but only four weeks of classes is pointless.
Four weeks seems ludicrously short too. I'm curious about this because my sister is ludicrously good at languages (learned to speak ridiculously early, became fluent in Hungarian in less than six months etc.) but I'm not sure you'd necessarily distinguish between me and her after just four weeks of classes in most languages. Also Mandarin is a tonal language so could be totally different cognitively from non-tonal languages. It depends too on what you are testing - I know after my first month learning Mandarin, I'd have got full marks on a test with pinyin but done terribly on any sort of aural test. Very different skills.
I'm curious if there is an emergent component to learning language?
Anecdotally, I was raised in a non-religious home, in a community that remains to this day very religious. Other kids had the correctness of the Bible hammered into their heads and struggled to accept language that contradicted it. Granted this is through the lens of time, but I vividly remember one kid reacting very strongly to a comic book, as if it's very existence meant reality itself was about to implode.
On the other hand, I was exposed to multiple STEM topics early and had it explained that experimentation leading to discovery are the way.
I'm not saying religious thinkers are idiots. I've met religious folks that are wicked smart in STEM topics. But in my experience, they too were still encouraged to question, not just accept it, and largely raised under the modern Church acceptance of evolution and the like.
Where I'm going is the restricted access to varied language early on impacts this? It seems to fit too with rural areas, small villages, heavily favoring a local slang and "way". Reducing access to alternate "language" (it may still be English, but language of a very narrow scope)?
Your anecdote suggest confirmation bias, because the opposite is equally possible. How do I know? Because I am the counterexample.
Nobody in my family speaks anything but English. I am from a small town. I have never had a conversation from anyone from my hometown in anything but English. We grew up in a very conservative church, in a very conservative part of the country. While I was never taught that "questioning" was wrong, it was never an active part of the teaching, either; just indoctrination. No early exposure to STEM. Really, church activities (and the band in school) were my life.
At 16, I began teaching myself how to play the piano and to study languages (when the Internet made access to other languages possible). I also taught myself programming, because it was interesting (Pascal, then Assembly, then PHP... I know, it's weird). I had no direction from family (my dad was a butcher (later a salesman), my mom was a nurse) because they didn't know anything about any of it. I just did whatever I thought was interesting on my own.
What is the result? My first degree was from a seminary, where I earned a bachelor's in Biblical Studies. I then went to a state university, and earned a BMus in Piano Performance. I then earned a MSci in CS. I'm 3.5 years into my CS PhD program.
As for language, I'm comfortable in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. I have also studied French, Italian, German, and Russian. This was all done in my late teenage and adult years (again, due to Internet availability).
In linguistics, there is the Sapir Whorf hypothesis [1], in which it is conjectured that language affects the speakers world view and/or thought processes. If you read the George Orwell novel 1984 [2], you might recall the use of Newspeak, an invented language designed so that dissidents would be unable to express themselves, and thus not have treasonous thought.
The Sapir Whorf hypothesis is actively debated and not fully accepted by linguists, you can see some of the debate at [3].
Sapir-Whorf is not just "not fully accepted". Most linguists believe that linguistic determinism, which is what most people are talking about when they refer to Sapir-Whorf, is false.
Linguistic relativity is the weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that is largely accepted, but it doesn't come close to supporting the 1984 can't form treasonous thoughts without the requisite language scenario.
I think people can be disingenuous to their almost intuitive longing to satisfy curiousity. They're taught to filter outside information to what fits their sandbox. For most information that is orthogonal, it passes through such filter, for inorthogonal information, they either shape it to make explainable using their axioms or reject/deny it.
As a dyslexic, it seems that my brain does not process sound in the same way that those good at learning language does. I was recently talking with an Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience - it seems that my brain can remember how words sound because I can remember someone saying the word, however, words for me do not have phonics attached to them, and understanding the sounds that letters make together is incomprehensible for me. Related :http://www.bu.edu/research/articles/tyler-perrachione-dyslex...
Children don't have a desire and determination to communicate!?
Children who don't yet speak any language have 100 times more motivation than an adult who already speaks the language around them - particularly if that language is the words lingua franca.
To expand it, almost every baby is born with the ability to speak any language. [1]
Some of the 'biological' categorization here comes from research that finds that the fundamentals sounds of human language are much like bird song in that the all languages share commonalities, despite their differences. [2] Language is more about nature than nurture, at its very root.
As early as age one, the ability to speak other languages other than the most dominant languages the baby rapidly diminishes. [3]
Studies of Genie, a child who was raised in inhuman conditions until around age 13, found that, despite improvement, she never was able to develop her language abilities to adult level. [4]
As for motivation, learning a language to intermediate-level proficiency may be one of the most difficult things you can learn, even a relatively simple language like Spanish. It is so easy to get frustrated and lose confidence, especially as an adult who is used to being "good" at things like abstract thinking and fixing/making complex software systems.
19 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread"A team of researchers looked at the structure of neuron fibers in white matter in 22 beginning Mandarin students. Those who had more spatially aligned fibers in their right hemisphere had higher test scores after four weeks of classes, the scientists found."
The terrible conclusion:
"What language aptitude really is and how it manifests in the brain are complex questions, touching on the nature of attention and even consciousness."
Anecdotally, I was raised in a non-religious home, in a community that remains to this day very religious. Other kids had the correctness of the Bible hammered into their heads and struggled to accept language that contradicted it. Granted this is through the lens of time, but I vividly remember one kid reacting very strongly to a comic book, as if it's very existence meant reality itself was about to implode.
On the other hand, I was exposed to multiple STEM topics early and had it explained that experimentation leading to discovery are the way.
I'm not saying religious thinkers are idiots. I've met religious folks that are wicked smart in STEM topics. But in my experience, they too were still encouraged to question, not just accept it, and largely raised under the modern Church acceptance of evolution and the like.
Where I'm going is the restricted access to varied language early on impacts this? It seems to fit too with rural areas, small villages, heavily favoring a local slang and "way". Reducing access to alternate "language" (it may still be English, but language of a very narrow scope)?
Does anyone know if this is a researched topic?
Nobody in my family speaks anything but English. I am from a small town. I have never had a conversation from anyone from my hometown in anything but English. We grew up in a very conservative church, in a very conservative part of the country. While I was never taught that "questioning" was wrong, it was never an active part of the teaching, either; just indoctrination. No early exposure to STEM. Really, church activities (and the band in school) were my life.
At 16, I began teaching myself how to play the piano and to study languages (when the Internet made access to other languages possible). I also taught myself programming, because it was interesting (Pascal, then Assembly, then PHP... I know, it's weird). I had no direction from family (my dad was a butcher (later a salesman), my mom was a nurse) because they didn't know anything about any of it. I just did whatever I thought was interesting on my own.
What is the result? My first degree was from a seminary, where I earned a bachelor's in Biblical Studies. I then went to a state university, and earned a BMus in Piano Performance. I then earned a MSci in CS. I'm 3.5 years into my CS PhD program.
As for language, I'm comfortable in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. I have also studied French, Italian, German, and Russian. This was all done in my late teenage and adult years (again, due to Internet availability).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
[3] http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm
Linguistic relativity is the weaker form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that is largely accepted, but it doesn't come close to supporting the 1984 can't form treasonous thoughts without the requisite language scenario.
I think people can be disingenuous to their almost intuitive longing to satisfy curiousity. They're taught to filter outside information to what fits their sandbox. For most information that is orthogonal, it passes through such filter, for inorthogonal information, they either shape it to make explainable using their axioms or reject/deny it.
"For kids, it's about biology; for adults, it's about desire and determination."
-Christine Gilbert, "Mother Tongue: My Family's Globe-Trotting Quest to Dream in Mandarin, Laugh in Arabic, and Sing in Spanish"
Children who don't yet speak any language have 100 times more motivation than an adult who already speaks the language around them - particularly if that language is the words lingua franca.
To expand it, almost every baby is born with the ability to speak any language. [1]
Some of the 'biological' categorization here comes from research that finds that the fundamentals sounds of human language are much like bird song in that the all languages share commonalities, despite their differences. [2] Language is more about nature than nurture, at its very root.
As early as age one, the ability to speak other languages other than the most dominant languages the baby rapidly diminishes. [3]
Studies of Genie, a child who was raised in inhuman conditions until around age 13, found that, despite improvement, she never was able to develop her language abilities to adult level. [4]
As for motivation, learning a language to intermediate-level proficiency may be one of the most difficult things you can learn, even a relatively simple language like Spanish. It is so easy to get frustrated and lose confidence, especially as an adult who is used to being "good" at things like abstract thinking and fixing/making complex software systems.
[1] http://www.livescience.com/4459-infants-amazing-capabilities...
[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2600623/Langu...
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)