Brains in a state of relaxation are better at learning new languages faster, according to a recent study . Scientists at the University of Washington demonstrated that a fiveminute measurement of resting-state brain activity predicted how quickly adults picked up a second language.
“This is vital brain function research that could enable the military to develop a more effective selection process of those who can learn languages quickly,“ said Researcher Dr Ray Perez. He added, “This is especially critical to the intelligence community , which needs linguists fluent in a variety of languages, and must find such individuals rapidly.“ For the experiment, 19 participants in the age group of 18 and 31, with no previous experience of learning French, took 30 minutes French lessons for eight weeks through an immersive, virtual-reality computer program called Operational Language and Cultural Training System (OLCTS).
The program is designed to make military personnel pro ficient in a foreign language after 20 hours of training. The self-paced program guides users through a series of scenes and stories. A voice recognition component enables users to check their pronunciation. To ensure the participants were progress ing well, the researchers used periodic quizzes with minimum scores to move on with the next lesson.For five minutes before and after the eightweek curriculum, the study's author, Dr Chantel Prat, had participants sit still, close their eyes, breathe deeply and wear an EEG (electroencephalogram) headset measuring resting-state brain activity.
“We found that the larger the networks were in `beta' frequencies [brain frequencies associated with language and memory], the faster our participants learned French,“ says Prat.
No comments:
Post a Comment