"Blame it on the BRAIN"

Did you know that the human ability for learning language is the highest from infant to about 7 years old (Kuhl, 2011)? This ability dramatically decreases as one ages and severely declines at puberty (Kuhl, 2011). The TED talk shared how babies essentially take note of how often they hear a sound (Kuhl, 2011). The most interesting part of this research was that the child’s language acquisition was not effective from a video, but in fact the words had to be heard from an adult actually speaking the language (Kuhl, 2011). 

With just this little nugget of information, you would think that when and how we learn additional languages would shift. Yet, we try to encourage middle, high school and even college students to learn an entirely new language when the most optimal time for this learning should occur when children are in elementary school. It boggles my mind how we have all this research regarding the brain, education, teaching and learning and yet we insist on doing things the way they have always been done.

In watching a number of "brain based" videos, I learned quite a bit about the brain and its functioning with regards to language. One of the videos shared that a damaged brain was used to tell scientists how the brain functions with regard to language (Boston Children's Hospital, 2012). The brains of people who had experienced a brain injury was used to determine what portion of the brain is responsible for language. To use a deficiency to determine why people have a particular portion of the brian that functions seems a bit like backwards design. However, it offers an explanation for the development of language within the human brain.

Another video spoke about the brains of the ape, chimpanzee and other primates who are considered distant relatives of humans (Rilling, 2012). The interesting thing is that although humans have attempted to teach apes a language, they have made no more progress than a three year old child. This video showed the numerous scans of primates’ brains and compared them to the human brain, but ultimately there is no comparison. It would appear that the human brain is unique in its functions. At first, it was thought that it was simply that it had to do with the size of the brain, but it seems that there are several parts of the brain that deal with syntax.

In a video shared based on research from University of California, Berkeley, we learn that by reading a story what parts of the brain are stimulated (Nature Video, 2016). Words, like mom, wife, home and friend are all uniquely coded in the brain (Nature Video, 2016). The experiment showed that blood would be most evident in a particular part of the brain, based on the word (s) in the story (Nature Video, 2016).  From this research it appears that certain words are recognized by certain parts of the brain.This is fascinating! I think this should be shared with people so they can have a better understanding of how the brain functions and impacts language development.

References

Boston Children's Hospital. (2012, May 1). Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience - Nelson Lab - Boston Children's Hospital. YouTube. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hfCV0IwJsg

Kuhl, P. (2011, February 18). The linguistic genius of babies | Patricia Kuhl. YouTube. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XBIkHW954&feature=youtu.be

NativLang. (2013, October 9). Your Brain on Language: Is grammar inside my head? -- Linguistics & Logic 101. YouTube. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUFdUiJXS4E

Nature Video. (2016, April 27). The brain dictionary. YouTube. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61nJkx5aDQ

Rilling, J. (2012). James Rilling - Human Brain Specializations Related to Language. Wikipedia. Retrieved November 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nqaPAqOmKQ&feature=youtu.be