Thinking in a foreign language leads people to make more rational decisions, according to researchers at the University of Chicago.
Featured in the current issue of Psychological Science, the study found that people have less emotional ties to a foreign language, meaning they have a more rational thought process. Their emotional ties to their native language impedes logical thought, according to the study’s authors.
The study, titled “The Foreign Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases”, used previous research showing that people are naturally risk-averse. In one experiment, researchers asked college students to make their decision in (recently learned) Spanish; the test showed that the students were more likely to take a bet in Spanish than in English. This result has potential benefits:
“People who routinely make decisions in a foreign language might be less biased in their savings, investment and retirement decisions, as they show less myopic loss aversion,” the authors wrote. ”Over a long time horizon, this might very well be beneficial.” (Source: Huffington Post)
Another reason to learn a second language!
I’ve often been accused of having selective hearing, particularly when it comes to being asked to do things I’d rather not do.
Scientists have now explained how selective hearing works – the real kind though, not the type I practice! Selective hearing is the way in which people can tune out a noisy environment and just listen to a single speaker – your date in a crowded bar, for example. It’s also known as the “cocktail party effect”.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) worked with three patients who were undergoing brain surgery for severe epilepsy. They took brain recordings and decoded them using an algorithm, which showed that the cortex has the ability to reflect just what we really want or need to hear.
The findings help scientists understand how the human brain processes language, which could have some major effects for other research.
An average person can walk into a noisy room and have a private conversation with relative ease — as if all the other voices in the room were muted. In fact, said Mesgarani, an engineer with a background in automatic speech recognition research, the engineering required to separate a single intelligible voice from a cacophony of speakers and background noise is a surprisingly difficult problem.
Speech recognition, he said, is “something that humans are remarkably good at, but it turns out that machine emulation of this human ability is extremely difficult.” (Source: Science Daily)
In strange new research news, apparently the layout of your keyboard may have an affect on how we perceive meaning in the words we type.
According to researchers from University College London, we may be “connecting the meanings of the words with the physical way they’re typed on the keyboard”, in what they’ve termed the QWERTY effect. Letter combinations of the right side of the keyboard are easier to type; this leads to positive meaning. For the left side of the keyboard, the reverse is true.
Jasmin cautioned that words’ literal meanings almost certainly outweigh their QWERTY-inflected associations, and said the study only shows a correlation rather than clear cause-and-effect. Also, while a typist’s left- or right-handedness didn’t seem to matter, Jasmin said there’s not yet enough data to be certain.
“But as far as I know, this is the first demonstration that even hints how a word is typed can shape what it means over time,” he said.
In the future, the researchers plan to scrutinize other kinds of keyboards.
“In different languages, there are other variations with more and different punctuation keys in different places and more letters on the right than the left,” he said. “Technology changes words, and by association languages. It’s an important thing to look at.” (Source: Wired)
The full article can be read at the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Image: Just2shutter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Steven Pinker is a well-known linguist (amongst other things), with specializations in visual cognition and psycholinguistics. He’s also very good at making complex ideas seem very understandable and engaging, which is why I love this video illustrating a talk he gave to the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in the UK).
In it, Pinker “shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings”. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Update: I can’t seem to embed the video here, so this link will take you to it.
A new study has revealed that pygmy goats have accents.
Their accent is based on the group or “crèche” they were brought up in, rather than genetics, as was previously thought. Researchers from the University of London believe that the goats are displaying the first signs of evolutionary development in language. As goat kids age, their calls become similar to other goat kids in their crèche.
“We found the pitch of the call slightly different,” said Dr. Alan McElligott of Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at the University of London.
Though you may need a trained ear to tell the difference.
“I’m sure that if a goat listened to a person, they probably couldn’t tell the difference between a Boston accent and a New York accent,” Dr. McElligott quipped. (Source: WBUR)
The next stage of development is imitation, and scientists believe that one day animals may be able to develop complex language like humans. Listen to the goat calls over at the WBUR website.
One of the most often heard excuses for not learning a new language is “I’m too old”.
It’s generally accepted that children are ‘better’ at learning new languages than adults. A new study challenges this idea though, showing that adults are better than children at acquiring a new language skill. The issue may be social convention – it’s easier to correct a child when they say something wrong than it is an adult.
The researchers devised a test giving 8 year olds, 12 year olds and adults a new, made-up language rule to learn. The rule stated that verbs were pronounced and spelled differently depending on whether they referred to an inanimate or animate object.
“The adults were consistently better in everything we measured,” says Ferman. When asked to apply the rule to new words, the 8-year-olds performed no better than chance, while most 12-year-olds and adults scored over 90 per cent. Adults fared best, and have great potential for learning new languages implicitly, says Ferman. Unlike the younger children, most adults and 12-year-olds worked out the way the rule worked – and once they did, their scores soared. This shows that explicit learning is also crucial, says Ferman. (Source: New Scientist)
So, your ability to learn a new language is there – now there’s no excuse not to!
A new study has looked into the question of whether our perception of emotions depends on the language we speak.
The researchers concluded that “you don’t need to have words for emotions to understand them”, a conclusion that supports the view of emotions being biological mechanisms. Both anthropological and psycholinguistic researchers were involved in the study, which compared German speakers to speakers of Yucatec Maya, a language spoken in Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula. Yucatec Mayan speakers have no word for disgust, and identified the emotion as anger, whilst German speakers distinguished between the two. A further test involved participants identifying mixed emotions on digitally manipulated faces.
“Our results show that understanding emotional signals is not based on the words you have in your language to describe emotions,” Sauter says. “Instead, our findings support the view that emotions have evolved as a set of basic human mechanisms, with emotion categories like anger and disgust existing regardless of whether we have words for those feelings.” (Source: Science Direct)
What a fascinating study, particularly for language learners. Visual cues are an excellent way of identifying how well your language attempts are being received!
Research from the University of Washington suggests that babies lose their bilingual ability as early as their first birthday if they are not exposed to different sounds.
The study suggests that introducing two languages before the child can speak seems to be the best way to raise bilingual babies. By around a year old, the monolingual babies in the study appeared to only respond to an English distinguishing sound, whereas bilingual babies still responded to both the English and Spanish sounds.
“This difference in development suggests that the bilingual babies “may have a different timetable for neurally committing to a language” compared with monolingual babies, said lead author Adrian Garcia-Sierra.
“When the brain is exposed to two languages rather than only one, the most adaptive response is to stay open longer before showing the perceptual narrowing that monolingual infants typically show at the end of the first year of life,” Garcia-Sierra said.” (Source: Wired)
UC Berkeley is asking incoming freshmen to submit their voices before arrival in a project that has been described as “part linguistic experiment, part social science and part ice-breaker” by the LA Times.
Last year the school caused controversy by asking students to send in saliva samples for DNA testing, with concerns raised over privacy. The new project aims to map and compare the students’ accents to find differences and similarities across the world.
The resulting voice samples will be presented on an interactive world map with others able to play the samples. Students will also be matched with others who have similar pronunciation, using a voice recognition programme. So far around 300 students have participated and it is hoped that 1500 will in time for orientation in September.
This sounds like a great way to informally connect to your school and your peers whilst also thinking about the implications of such a diverse range of accents. Would you submit a recording if you were headed to Berkeley?
A new book claims that parents should sing to their children to avoid language development problems in later life.
The book, called The Genius of Natural Childhood, is by Sally Goddard Blythe, a consultant in neuro-developmental education and director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology. Blythe says that singing to, and later with, your child uses and develops both sides of the brain and helps their ability to communicate.
Singing traditional lullabies and nursery rhymes to babies and infants before they learn to speak, is “an essential precursor to later educational success and emotional wellbeing”, argues Blythe in a book. “Song is a special type of speech. Lullabies, songs and rhymes of every culture carry the ‘signature’ melodies and inflections of a mother tongue, preparing a child’s ear, voice and brain for language.” Blythe says in her book, The Genius of Natural Childhood, to be published by Hawthorn Press, that traditional songs aid a child’s ability to think in words. She also claims that listening to, and singing along with rhymes and songs uses and develops both sides of the brain. “Neuro-imaging has shown that music involves more than just centralised hotspots in the brain, occupying large swathes on both sides,” she said.
Growing numbers of children enter nursery and school with inadequate language and communication skills, according to the National Literacy Trust, often because their parents have not helped them develop communication skills. Blythe believes that singing to and, later, with a child is the most effective way to transform their ability to communicate.
“Children’s response to live music is different from recorded music,” she said. “Babies are particularly responsive when the music comes directly from the parent. Singing along with a parent is for the development of reciprocal communication.” (Source: The Guardian)
I think this can also be true for learning a new language – I’ve found that words and phrases I’ve heard in simple songs are easier to recall than ones I’ve learned through speaking and repetition. I’m not sure that, as an adult learner, your parents will be quite so useful though!
