The Polyglot Brain

[Le Baron]

I felt that the study offered an fMRI-based reason for something which is essentially a truism: that you don't have to work that hard to use your native language. If they'd done the same scans where participants were learning something entirely new (and perhaps quite difficult)in their native language, I imagine that would possibly show activity similar to using/hearing an L2. Just new information pathways.

I agree with Irena that the definition: 'polyglot' is nebulous and random. Why 'more than five' languages? Why not four or seven. A line has to be drawn I suppose, but I doubt that anyone could say why it has been drawn where it is.

[Irena]

Iversen, here's a very simple question: when it comes to the study of polyglottery, what exactly can an academic do better than a journalist could? Neuroimaging is the obvious answer. Okay, other than neuroimaging? I'm not sure there is much of anything else, to be honest.

Having thought about it some more, I think I may have found the answer to my own question: detailed case studies. Take some high performer in your field of choice (can be a hyperpolyglot) and then study him. Start with a standard battery of psychometric tests, and then study how the person studies, how the person performs in various situations, etc. Do this over many years if possible. The results are going to be anecdotal but informative, and they may help form hypotheses.

Actually, the prototype I have in mind is Luria's book about that guy with an incredible memory (Маленькая книжка о большой памяти). I read it in Russian, but I see that there's an English translation (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Mnemonist-L ... 0674576225). If nothing else, it kept me highly entertained on one very long bus ride.

Alas, the current model of academic funding discourages studies of this type...

[Picaboo]

I just skimmed the article but it has the usual garbage conclusions like "This trend held even when participants were fluent in their other familiar languages, suggesting less brain power is needed to process languages learned early in life."

The study didn't have the proper control groups for this conclusion. First you need to define "early in life" then you need to find people in later adulthood who entirely switched languages "not early in life". For example, spoke only German until they were 12, and then only English after that. Compare them to "the since birth English speakers."

Only in this way can you say "early in life language learning" is special. There was no sudden discontinuity in the data. All the study showed, as was concluded elsewhere in the article, was “When you become a specialist at something, you use fewer resources.” Which is a complete yawner.

[Irena]

Iversen, did you edit that long post? I mean, it's long now. When I first saw it, it only said "Study study methods?" So, you either edited (but it's not not indicated anywhere that it's been edited), or the system somehow malfunctioned.

Study study methods?
Counter question to Irena: can you point to anything done by language researchers that by your standards is both useful AND scientific? And would you blindly trust anything written by a researcher that hadn't studied a certain topic and maybe had a preconceived meaning about it? In that case it wouldn't be much worse to rely on a journalist - I have seen so much rotten unscientific babble from serious employees of universities that I'm no longer impressed just by an academic title (and that includes my own).

Hmm. The stuff that's both "useful and scientific" tends to come from cognitive psychology, and it generally concerns learning at lower levels. The problem with language learning (this applies to a number of other fields, of course) is that it takes so long. You start from zero, and then a decade or two later, you're a highly competent user of the language. Meanwhile, most people who started at the same time as you have quit, having gotten nowhere. This sort of thing is very difficult to study "scientifically." You can, of course, conduct in-depth interviews with successful learners, which can certainly be useful, but I'm not sure it's particularly "scientific."

[Iversen]

I added a lot, and then I saw your short answer and included a reference to it. Actually I tend to save my writings before I am totally satisfied with them, and then I change them several times within the next few minutes. However if I add or change something several hours later I mark the edit with EDIT. I don't really know why some posters get a marking each time they edit something (probably a choice in their profiles), but if I had that it would say something like twenty or forty edits for some of my longer messages, and I really can't see the value of that information.

By the way, I saw that you recommended thorough studies of individual polyglots rather than frantic attempts to do statistical research on a whole bunch of them, and I cannot disagree with that - provided that you do this with so many individual polyglots that you really can see how much they differ (and maybe also whether there are things they have in common). I once read a book with portraits of 2x seven succesful polyglots, where it was made very clear that their learning methods and personalities were totally different. And that's also a relevant result. I think the book was called something like "success with foreign languages".

PS: this short message was edited at least 6 or 7 times (including when I added this line)

[luke]

I once read a book with portraits of 2x seven succesful polyglots, where it was made very clear that their learning methods and personalities were totally different. And that's also a relevant result. I think the book was called something like "success with foreign languages".

PS: this short message was edited at least 6 or 7 times (including when I added this line)

Books like that are interesting because they note significant individual differences from people who have had extraordinary success in learning languages:
Success with Foreign Languages - Earl Stevick

PS: I believe a post shows "edited" when someone has replied to the thread yet. E.G., I can edit the last post in my log, which I wrote a few days back and it won't show "edited" because there have been no follow-up posts. Your message above doesn't show "edited" because there hasn't been a subsequent reply (until this one).

[Iversen]

I actually edited my post on the previous page several times after Irena had written her first short answer, so there must be an other explanation.

As for different learning styles - we already know from this forum that there are different ways of doing things, and also that things that work for one person may not work for another. Which is why it is worth studying several people who have learned several languages succesfully instead of just relying on the recommandations of some academical or pedagogical authority. And by the way: I have also read a long article about fads in pedagogical thinking.

[anitarrc]

I found the article quite amusing..
Some of it corresponds to my reality.. other things don't.

I have been speaking almost exclusively Spanish for 2 months, apart from maybe 2 hours of friendly chat with a Quebecois.

Then, thanks to a small disaster provided by Air Canada I found myself with KLM.
Checkin - Spanish. Lovely
Half of the airport.. spanglish..not fun. Only no entiendo stops that.
Announcements: US English
Boarding.. dutch
Seat neighbour.. français Marseillais.
Helping out old lady behind me..German.
Stewardesses.. dutch mainly. I translated for the seat neighbour.
Watched a movie..Canadian English.
Watched second movie.. Miami cuban spanish.
Amsterdam... Sitting next to a Brazilian lady. Now this was where the brain activity really reved up.. I hadn't spoken a word of portuguese for 2 months. NOT speaking portuñol is a mayor effort.

I am pretty sure that the stress mainly happened for the translation bits and the Portuguese.

[Irena]

I just skimmed the article but it has the usual garbage conclusions like "This trend held even when participants were fluent in their other familiar languages, suggesting less brain power is needed to process languages learned early in life."

The study didn't have the proper control groups for this conclusion. First you need to define "early in life" then you need to find people in later adulthood who entirely switched languages "not early in life". For example, spoke only German until they were 12, and then only English after that. Compare them to "the since birth English speakers."

Only in this way can you say "early in life language learning" is special. There was no sudden discontinuity in the data. All the study showed, as was concluded elsewhere in the article, was “When you become a specialist at something, you use fewer resources.” Which is a complete yawner.

Thank you so much for illustrating my point about why there is so little research on polyglots. You illustrated it so well that I've "liked" your comment.

Sample sizes are always going to be small (there simply aren't that many polyglots out there), which means that you'll never be able to control for all the obvious things, and so any study you do can easily be torn apart. That's bad for an academic's reputation, which is why academics steer clear of polyglots and polyglottery.

[Picaboo]

Sample sizes are always going to be small (there simply aren't that many polyglots out there), which means that you'll never be able to control for all the obvious things, and so any study you do can easily be torn apart. That's bad for an academic's reputation, which is why academics steer clear of polyglots and polyglottery.

I agree that the current state of research funding is bad for this sort of thing. Personally, I have nothing against a study with a few subjects. Or even an old-school case-study.

But it's not an excuse for poor design or sweeping conclusions. The control groups have to be the best possible in order to support the conclusion. I haven't been an experimental psychologist for 30 years, now, after quitting the field, and I can see way better ways to design a practical and cheap study based on the one conclusion, after skimming the article for one minute. Or maybe I missed something. I've now spent more time writing about the article than reading it or thinking about it, which likely isn't recommended.