💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 1279.gmi captured on 2022-06-12 at 00:23:59. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-05)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard, Ap Medical Writer
Tue Jul 21, 3:08 am ET
WASHINGTON The best time to learn a foreign language: Between birth and age
7. Missed that window?
New research is showing just how children's brains can become bilingual so
easily, findings that scientists hope eventually could help the rest of us
learn a new language a bit easier.
"We think the magic that kids apply to this learning situation, some of the
principles, can be imported into learning programs for adults," says Dr.
Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington, who is part of an international
team now trying to turn those lessons into more teachable technology.
Each language uses a unique set of sounds. Scientists now know babies are born
with the ability to distinguish all of them, but that ability starts weakening
even before they start talking, by the first birthday.
Kuhl offers an example: Japanese doesn't distinguish between the "L" and "R"
sounds of English "rake" and "lake" would sound the same. Her team proved
that a 7-month-old in Tokyo and a 7-month-old in Seattle respond equally well
to those different sounds. But by 11 months, the Japanese infant had lost a lot
of that ability.
Time out how do you test a baby? By tracking eye gaze. Make a fun toy appear
on one side or the other whenever there's a particular sound. The baby quickly
learns to look on that side whenever he or she hears a brand-new but similar
sound. Noninvasive brain scans document how the brain is processing and
imprinting language.
Mastering your dominant language gets in the way of learning a second, less
familiar one, Kuhl's research suggests. The brain tunes out sounds that don't
fit.
"You're building a brain architecture that's a perfect fit for Japanese or
English or French," whatever is native, Kuhl explains or, if you're a lucky
baby, a brain with two sets of neural circuits dedicated to two languages.
It's remarkable that babies being raised bilingual by simply speaking to them
in two languages can learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn
one. On average, monolingual and bilingual babies start talking around age 1
and can say about 50 words by 18 months.
Italian researchers wondered why there wasn't a delay, and reported this month
in the journal Science that being bilingual seems to make the brain more
flexible.
The researchers tested 44 12-month-olds to see how they recognized
three-syllable patterns nonsense words, just to test sound learning. Sure
enough, gaze-tracking showed the bilingual babies learned two kinds of patterns
at the same time like lo-ba-lo or lo-lo-ba while the one-language babies
learned only one, concluded Agnes Melinda Kovacs of Italy's International
School for Advanced Studies.
While new language learning is easiest by age 7, the ability markedly declines
after puberty.
"We're seeing the brain as more plastic and ready to create new circuits before
than after puberty," Kuhl says. As an adult, "it's a totally different process.
You won't learn it in the same way. You won't become (as good as) a native
speaker."
Yet a soon-to-be-released survey from the Center for Applied Linguistics, a
nonprofit organization that researches language issues, shows U.S. elementary
schools cut back on foreign language instruction over the last decade. About a
quarter of public elementary schools were teaching foreign languages in 1997,
but just 15 percent last year, say preliminary results posted on the center's
Web site.
What might help people who missed their childhood window? Baby brains need
personal interaction to soak in a new language TV or CDs alone don't work. So
researchers are improving the technology that adults tend to use for language
learning, to make it more social and possibly tap brain circuitry that tots
would use.
Recall that Japanese "L" and "R" difficulty? Kuhl and scientists at Tokyo Denki
University and the University of Minnesota helped develop a computer language
program that pictures people speaking in "motherese," the slow exaggeration of
sounds that parents use with babies.
Japanese college students who'd had little exposure to spoken English underwent
12 sessions listening to exaggerated "Ls" and "Rs" while watching the
computerized instructor's face pronounce English words. Brain scans a hair
dryer-looking device called MEG, for magnetoencephalography that measure
millisecond-by-millisecond activity showed the students could better
distinguish between those alien English sounds. And they pronounced them
better, too, the team reported in the journal NeuroImage.
"It's our very first, preliminary crude attempt but the gains were phenomenal,"
says Kuhl.
But she'd rather see parents follow biology and expose youngsters early. If you
speak a second language, speak it at home. Or find a play group or caregiver
where your child can hear another language regularly.
"You'll be surprised," Kuhl says. "They do seem to pick it up like sponges."