Neurobiologist on the brain development of children – part 2

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in child development, child rearing, education

Tags

cognitive science, education, Language acquisition, Learning, learning to communicate

This is the second part of the interview I’ve translated from Hungarian about children’s development and the role of the media that was made with Gerald Hüther and published in Hungarian here (unfortunately, this site can no longer be accessed). This part is mainly directly about the effect of the media on the brain.

“So do you think children need tasks?”

For the brain the real challenges and adventures are of decisive importance. Going fishing with uncle, building a house into a tree, or climbing a mountain. The adventures have made us all strong. Nerve scientists can now prove the connection: children have to overcome as many challenges as possible during their lives so that the most important networks can be created. Therefore, children need a world in which interactivity plays a very large role. And that not in the context of virtuality, but of real life.

“Can children later develop this neuronal network in their brains?”

“If the critical period is over and the networks important for the regulation of the body are sparsely developed, the child does not have a good feeling about his/her body. However, the brain remains malleable throughout our whole life. An 8-, or 10-year-old child shall also benefit later from all the experience of his/her body that he/she acquires nowadays. However, the child will be differently motivated to train his/her body. The learning process no longer takes place intuitively and automatically. Children are ashamed of themselves, they are mocked at – and they learn with fear, which is not a good basis.

“Provided that at age 6 the important neuronal networks in the brain have already been established, are children protected by this time against all danger from the media?”

“Not necessarily, because many children are in the danger that they will get lost in the virtual worlds.”

“Are you referring to computer games?”

“Yes, among others. It is because it becomes dangerous if children use the digital media to meet their essential needs. Each person has two of those.

One is to belong somewhere. The other is to want to perform. The first need is expressed in the need for bonding, the second in the desire for freedom. Kids suffer in our society first of all from the fact that they only rarely have the opportunity to achieve something. They find no real tasks which may strengthen them in their development. That is because those would precisely be the tools to be used to build up children’s self-image, their identity.

It is obvious that a lot of parents have already forgotten what such a task would be like, the kind helping the development of a child. The child himself has to find this task nowadays, and it should indeed be challenging and long.

At the end of it, we will feel like when climbing a mountain: we only sit up there, and simply feel happy. This is a sign that the child has solved a real task, that in this case, there is no need for outside praise, he is happy with it on his own.

Today, primarily the boys find it to be their task to develop their proficiency to absolute perfection in computer games. In such competitions, they can show others how good they are. But those tasks are not suitable to assist them to find their way in real life.

“What kind of children are especially vulnerable?”

“Precisely 40% of German schoolchildren go to school feeling stressed. In particular, the boys are those who sit down in front of the computers immediately after school. They need at least one hour’s shooting games. The computer is, for them, a means of getting rid of their frustration. By doing a great job holding their ground among the adventures of the virtual worlds, butchering monsters and becoming victorious, they find a way out of their powerlessness and the mounting agression. They reduce their frustration with a peculiar achievement.

“So then, again, the system of rewards comes in action.”

“Exactly. As if the children had come by a wonderful life experience. This experience, however, applies to a world which does not exist in reality. Neurobiologically speaking, this is fatal: the child trains his mind for situations that only occur on screen. What is more, computers create the illusion of controllability too. When a child plays with another one, his experience is that, in reality, not everything can be controlled. Another person is not always doing what we want.

Besides, a lot of kids can no longer sense their bodies during a game. They no longer need sleep, they do not respond to signals of hunger or thirst. In South-Eastern Asia, the first cases have already appeared where computer-dependent youngsters starved to death or dried out sitting in front of the computer.

“You are talking about boys basically. But what do girls do with the computer?”

“They chat. Girls feel more need to belong somewhere and to build up relationships. And then, if this is not really successful, chatting can become a compensating substitute to some extent for the missing proximity and bonding. I do not have to prattle every five minutes with a friend in whom I can trust. That girls talk so much is rather a sign that they have in fact become uncertain, and they cannot trust the durability and strength of the connection. It is like when chicks call their mother.

“And do the real social relations wither away?”

“This must necessarily happen so. They can only keep real relationships with another if they are really together. All else is only virtual connections. Because in the virtual spaces, people are not present in their full reality. They have no fragrance, no smell, their movement and other manifestations are not life-like. In virtuality, features of encounters prevalent to life do not occur. While chatting, they only communicate in writing.

To be continued soon …

by P. S.

Neurobiologist on the brain development of children

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in child development, child rearing, education, language learning

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cognitive science, Language acquisition, Learning, learning to communicate

My dear reader, I read a fascinating article (in Hungarian) a few weeks ago (which was accessible here in Hungarian but since the publication of this text, is has become unavailable – sorry for the inconvenience) that I found so interesting that I’d like to make it accessible for a different community here in my English translation as well.

It is an interview with leading German neuropsychologist Gerald Hüther (some more information and another interview with him in English here). The original interview may have been in German, so apologies for perhaps deviating from the original meanings at points. It is also long, so I’m going to deliver it in three parts over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to insert my own ideas at places where I find it appropriate as I’m not only interested in, but also involved with young children’s development, especially as regards their language, social and creative development, being closely involved in my co-author’s children’s lives.

What goes on in children’s brains when they are watching television?

In the latest edition of GEOkompakt, devoted to child-development psychology, professor Gerald Hüther, one of the best-known German brain researchers and neuropsychologists explains what goes on in the minds of children who watch television or play with the computer very much.

“Professor, as a neurobiologist, you research how the media affect human brain development. Could you recommend to us a good TV program or a computer game for Children?

“No, and such recommendations would not help us any further. This is because in that way we would only get mired in a superficial conversation about the content quality of the supply; however, it is better to avoid that. On the other hand, you do not need to look for very long: you can quickly find five studies which show you how good watching television is for children, allegedly.

In contrast to this, however, another five studies will prove that TV is bad. This discussion is completely useless for parents. I do not talk about content, I approach the question from much further away.

A few years ago, we neurobiologists still thought that the genetic programs automatically set up all connections in the brain. Therefore, the complex neuronal networks, which direct the ways we think, feel, act, were thought to be genetically programmed. It is now known, however, that in the long run, only those relationships are created in the child’s mind which are regularly activated in real life. What is not used, withers away. (me: And so it is with adults too.) The genetic programs ensure that at first large surpluses of neuron-links get created.

For the creation of the most important neuronal circuits in the brain, children need to experience their own bodies first of all. And this is not acquired sitting before the screen independently of what goes on on TV.

“Why are bodily experiences so definitive?”

“Only those can fully develop their cognitive abilities in whom the appropriate feelings of their own bodies mature. There already exist studies which prove that those young children who are good at mathematics are especially capable of balancing too. One obtains the capabilities necessary for three-dimensional and abstract thinking and for mathematics that he learns to keep his body in balance. As a child is sitting in front of the TV, he no longer feels his body. He does not climb, does not jump, does not balance, or does not climb a tree, i.e. he does not pass the time by learning his body.

“So children should keep moving as much as possible?”

“Yes, but they do not necessarily have to climb mountains. Singing is one of the most extraordinary practices to learn our bodies. In doing this, in fact, the child’s mind has to direct his vocal chords in such a virtuosic manner as to bring out the very exactly appropriate sound. This is the best fine motorneuoronic practice and, at the same time, this is the condition of all future, very differentiated manners of thinking.

On top of this, we can speak of a very complex creative performance with singing. This is because the child has to bear in his mind the whole song so as to be able to hit the correct sound at the correct time. Besides, he also learns to adapt to the others in the chorus, which is one of the conditions of social competence.

Without fear

Moreover, children also experience something wonderful, namely that we are not able to be afraid when we are singing. Neurobiologists now know that during free singing, the brain is not able to mobilise the feeling of fear. This is why, going down to the cellar, man has been singing for thousands of years and not because he wants to scare the mice away.

“Where do such experiences condense, where are the neuronal circuits formed?”

Trying to find out how it works/1

“In the most complicated part of our brains, in the so-called pre-frontal lobe. It is located right behind the forehead. That is where our idea of ourselves evolves. And at the same time, this is also where the urge to turn to the world also evolves, the urge to plan actions, to control impulses and to bear frustration.

This has to be formed in early childhood, until around the age of 6. The networks in the frontal lobe responsible for all this, however, will only evolve if the child acquires this experience. Such experience, in its turn, results primarily from dealing with things that he can make sense of and is able to manipulate. This, however, is more and more difficult today.

“What is the cause of this?”

Trying to find out how it works/2

“The children’s world has changed just as much as that of adults. We are not able to understand any more how our household articles actually work. Formerly this was otherwise. Each object was understandable, the bicycle, the steam engine, even the car. A child could take the clock to pieces, he could study the cogwheels on the inside, and in this way he could uncover the mechanism behind it. Today, in the days of the information society, things may be so complex that very often we fint it hard, or impossible, to understand the cause and the effect.

“How does it all affect the child’s mind?”

“Our brain always adapts to what we do enthusiastically. In the previous century, people felt enthusiastic about machines, and that was what they identified themselves with. In fact, they even applied this machine-like way of thinking to themselves. This then affects the language: we call our hearts pumps, and we talk about run-down joints, which we then replace.

But now suddenly there is this new era. It will be more and more difficult to comprehend the causes and the effects. For example, why the arrow on the screen moves to the right when the mouse is moved. The lack of this mental connection will lead to children not being interested in causality any more. This is the simple result of human brain development. They seem to learn that they have to accept things without capturing the inherent sense behind them.

It is not only that lots of digital media are not understandable, but in addition, there are very few possibilities for us to get involved in current events actively. A very simple example for this is that we cannot change anything else about a television than choose the program. The first time we put a young child in front of the telly, they even talk to the set. They tell the bunny where the fox is lurking. This means they try to participate actively in the events.

This has been taught to them by their experience so far, without virtual media. After a few weeks of watching TV, however, most kids resign to the fact that they cannot actively get involved in the development of things on-screen and give up, that is, they query a part of their own efficacy.

“This is, however, an important element in the development of a child.”

The strength of our inside urge – a toddler choses his own activity against looking at the TV

“Yes, and this only develops by its own experience in the frontal lobe – as a very complex neuronal network. To expand their knowledge horizon, children have to place their new experiences in a mental context. This is because our brain is only able to learn something if the new impressions are linked to an existing pattern which originate in previous experience. This is an exceptionally creative process.

Therefore, the child will try to suit the new to the existing, older patterns. But to do this, he/she will first start looking for things in his/her mind, so to speak. A stage of productive anxiety emerges, until the pattern of stimuli falls in place. And then the chaos is converted into harmony in the brain. This is that particular ‘I see’ experience.

In the meantime, the bonus system is activated. Nerve cells emit “hormones of happiness”. All little experience of our own achievement causes happiness comparable to taking a little cocain and heroin at the same time. In contrast, it is terribly difficult to be actively, creatively involved in watching films. Therefore, it would be preferable if kids did not get into contact with the television or the computer before schooling.

“But we also receive the action in a book ready-made. Reading is also a passive activity.”

“When a child reads, a lot of things go on in the meantime in the brain technically. It puts the letters together into words. The words and sentences are converted into worlds of phantasy. What the child’s brain has read appears before his mind’s eye.

Little Red Riding Hood is walking in the forest. No child sees the letters here. This is an incredible achievement of the brain: to create a picture from black and white. In contrast, a Harry Potter movie is worth nothing. Before you can turn on your imagination, the following image is already there. In fact you are only developed by what you have worked for yourself.”

(me: A proof of this can be considered in the fact that most people watch films to relax, to get out of their own reality, to stop worrying. We may laugh or cry over a film, but we do that because we copy, we are moved at best, not because we take their happiness or sorrows on ourselves. The rare film which is so good that we feel involved is not only rare, but soon becomes obsolete – people get fed up with them; just watch Lars von Trier, or Mike Leigh films – most of them exceptionally good and disturbing films, but never successes at the box office.)

To be followed soon …

by P.S.

Ideas about what works while learning a language – Part One

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in English teaching, language learning

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China, Dutch, education, English language, Language acquisition, Netherlands, Second language

Now that I’ve done so much description, I’m going to expand on the critical side with some positive touch for the benefit of those who may find any kind of advice useful.

I must hasten to add at the very beginning that I’m not a good language learner. I studied, well, yeah, I know, but even then: Russian at school for 8 years followed by 2 more at university, and in the end I didn’t understand when they asked me for my name at the oral exam. However, I made a perfect written translation, so that’s something about what kind of learner I am. I have also studied some (between a few months and a year of) French, Italian, Bulgarian, Rumanian and Slovak, but I never really spoke more than a few sentences in these and they are, for lack of practice, long gone by now. Then I tried Chinese and now Dutch. Not a very fruitful linguistic career, but then again, I can say I belong to the majority, who can only learn maximum one second language. That’s what I could use as encouragement for my Chinese students: if I was able to learn good English, so can you, because I also didn’t have much else to help me but the teacher and the classes at school, we also did not have listening material, didn’t meet native speakers and didn’t, for the most of us, listen to English songs (at the time of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, few people had access to western radio channels).

But as an average learner, I can say that most people then are average learners. Most people in the world find it difficult to learn a second language at school. On the other hand, most articles, blogs and their comments come from people with outstanding linguistic abilities, the kind that already speaks 4-5 languages because they have talent, time and money to do so. I wouldn’t like to explain myself on those terms and levels, I’d like to speak to those who have none of the above advantages, perhaps. I’d also like to benefit the masses of teachers addressing crowds of average students.

I must also point out the difference between language acquisition and language learning. The acquisition of a language is the natural process of learning to understand and then speak and read and write our own mother tongue. Multilingual acquisition also happens in some parts of the world, where people acquire a second language, or more, in a natural way, mingling with neighbours who speak a different one from their own mother tongue, like many people in rural Africa, or South-East or South-Asia, where the former colonial languages are also often naturally acquired along with perhaps several tribal-local languages. This could be ideal, but it depends on where we were born, so can’t really be affected. What remains for others is studying at school.

And there come the problems. The student depends on the national culture of schooling or education as well as his/her own work and talent. If he’s a lazy one, he can still get by alright in the Netherlands, where the general idea is to let the kids develop at their own pace and in general, there’s little interference or pressure on a learner. In China, the lazy one may become suicidal in areas where studying is considered the only possible way to get out of poverty. Such suicides have lately been widely publicized, although the case may be that statistically it happens just as rarely as in Europe, where the population is only about 60% of that of China, or in the US, with half the population of Europe, so it doesn’t happen every decade. Perhaps Japan is famous for some earlier cases, which might mean a higher occurrence statistically.

However it happens, studying a language at school is just one among a lot of other subjects, so the majority handle it that way. But I’ve often met the idea, usually promoted by failing students, that their failure is the teacher’s fault. They shouldn’t be failed, because everybody is capable of learning a language just like history, chemistry or maths and they’ve managed to pass those – well, often only just, I must add. And while probably few students have ever got suicidal over languages, they quite often fail in maths or other subjects, so, we can be sure that they can sometimes fail in a language as well. That just happens at school, as it almost happened to me with Russian.

The reasons are numerous even if discounting the basic cultural surroundings and requirements. I would group them into three areas: the complexity of learning languages, the so-called learning types and individual psychological/intellectual differences.

First of all, learning languages is perhaps the most complex kind of learning, only comparable to learning to play a musical instrument. Both involve a lot of muscular activity (of course of different parts of the musculature), flexibility of body organs as well as the brain, intellectual power, the retaining power of the memory, the power to repeat and persevere with practice in the face of possible boredom, but with languages, we need more interactive ability, problem-solving ability, power to analyse and synthesize smaller and larger structures, like grammar and sentence types, creativity to restructure the elements of language in new ways, so possibly even faster reaction to stimuli, and above the level of everyday chatting, speaking a language well also presupposes a lot of knowledge outside the language itself.

This also means that some extent of failure to speak a language doesn’t mean that the person is not intelligent. On the other hand, he or she may lack patience to practice, withstand the boredom inherent in revising and practicing vocabulary items or grammatical patterns, may be impatient with any kind of grammatization, or is simply a reticent person who doesn’t like to speak a lot.

By the same token, somebody very successful with languages in general may not be a very intelligent person but may simply have the knack and liking for the aforementioned, may perhaps be only a very sociable, perhaps even foolishly sociable person who feels absolutely no shame when uttering stupid mistakes – it may be enjoyable practice for him/her even when others may consider him/her aggressive. That may be a kind of positive selfishness as well.

The second set of conditions for un/successful language learning is the variety of learning types, which are not often discussed in blogs lately, so let me give you some basics.

Pedagogy usually mentions three basic learning types. Visual learners have a preference for seeing (think in pictures; visual aids such as overhead slides, diagrams, handouts, etc.). Auditory learners best learn through listening (lectures, discussions, tapes, etc.). Tactile/kinesthetic learners prefer to learn via experience—moving, touching, and doing (active exploration of the world; science projects; experiments, etc.). Its use in pedagogy allows teachers to prepare classes that address each of these areas. Well, idealistically. But if a teacher of a class of 30-40 pupils, or more than 50 as in some countries like China, tries to work according to the so-called mashing-method that takes these types in consideration, he/she is likely doomed to failure simply by the impossibility to get to know most of his/her students having 5-6 or more such groups every week. Sometimes methods also contradict the culture and traditions, so I can find it difficult to imagine that a lot of teachers would dare and be able to use methods catering for kinesthetic students in a country used to students sitting rigidly at their places slavishly repeating phrases or words by the teacher. I also met the idea in Hungary of giving differentiated materials and handling students according to their abilities in language classes, where the usual class sizes are very often halved for languages. The idea is usually promoted by headmasters and other colleagues not related to language teaching, but I never really met a colleague who managed to implement this ideal well in practice. We have to accept that we do our best and the students do theirs if, but it’s next to impossible to prepare for each and every individual in 5-6 teaching hours every day 5, or in China 6, days a week.

Students can themselves use the model to identify their preferred learning style and maximize their educational experience by focusing on what benefits them the most. Could, but for the fact that teachers don’t draw their attention to such possibilities and have precious little time to suggest a few activities for the students to start with at home. Besides, pedagogy is in itself in contention if the whole idea of the three learner types is neurologically valid. If it were, I should have learned Russian along with English at secondary school, especially after good result in primary. But I didn’t. Or there were and are other factors at play too.

It is true, however, that some students who love listening to English pop songs and do so often, learn, or should I say acquire, the language naturally. It is sometimes suggested that learners listen to music and get to love the language through it. Well, to my mind it’s a good ideas and I have often seen it work, but what if the target language is not English? Have large numbers of pupils ever listened to Chinese, Slovakian, or Dutch pop-songs? I can’t imagine that situation. For learners of some languages other than English, some other methods may work better. It’s about the emotional relationship now. If one doesn’t care about the use of the language but enjoys listening to it, it makes a world of difference. So as teachers, we could try to entice the students

A painting from the Rembrandt-museum, Amsterdam

with something aesthetically pleasing – not with paintings of Picasso, Rembrandt, Riepin or Munkácsy, though those can also be used, but we can show (especially for the benefit of the visual type) photos of interesting cities, buildings, people or activities to our students. Easy again with English, but not significantly more difficult with German, French, Spanish or Italian either. Lots of European language teachers are of the open-minded and well-travelled type, they can even raise their students interests in learning more exotic languages, like Arabic, Chinese or Russian, or even Swahili, by showing them their own photos taken during holidays. However, the important point here should be not simply to flip through the pictures, but to stop with many, evoking personal stories and inviting discussion. Such experiences have a chance of becoming an experience for the pupils themselves too, and through the emotions going with this, will become memorable fix, familiar points to learning.

From the point of view of learning types, language learning may give some advantage to some and disadvantage to others in comparison with learning other subjects. Whereas learning most other subjects may give advantage to the intellectual visual types or, if the teacher lectures better than the book to follow, the audio types, language learning involves a lot more doing than, say, learning biology or history, if there’s any discussion in the pedagogic repertoire of the language teacher. Most kinds of group work, discussion of problems, problem solving tasks and the so-called task-based learning above all, involve a lot of speaking, and that itself is doing for many. Problem-solving stimulates the intellectual types. Games and other group activities like line dictation, arranging sentence part or themselves in patterns and the like add real bodily movement and such a language lesson far exceeds the effectiveness of language classes for the kinesthetic type that any other subject can attain.

The third major group of factors involve the learner’s psychological and intellectual leanings. Like with all people, some students may be sociable types and like talking overlooking their own mistakes easily, as I’ve already mentioned. They can survive any language course with flying colours and being among the most popular members anywhere in the world, though the quality of their achievement may vary greatly. Others are almost afraid to speak out in public, be it a small group or a larger community. This type can just survive an oral test every semester in Hungary and can completely avoid attention in China, whereas could have very hard times in good

Classroom scene, student as teacher (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

British schools where lots of community tasks, discussion and interaction is in order. Intellectual, quality-oriented people could take a lot more time to achieve good results, especially as speaking is concerned, but if they have resistance to the boredom of repetition, they may emerge as by far the best after a few years of study, and could become very good writers and debaters inside and outside class. They only need to survive the years before that without giving up their seemingly futile and embarrassing effort. On the other hand, they may stay slower speakers for the rest of their lives, but being more keen on reading, their vocabulary and general knowledge could sky-rocket.

Then there are the analytical and synthetic types. Without other major strengths, they may become great at solving grammar tests or writing tasks, could especially well analyze pieces of literature, but could never become good teachers or orators on the pulpit of a university. With a good balance and strong intellect, such people will become the best writers. I once had such a reticent type of student who started to write poetry at a young age, also in English. Another one concentrated solely on writing fantasy-literature, also instead of doing his homework tasks, but was so good at it that he got away with it. Unfortunately, those with such limited interest can’t bloom to be all-round excellent speakers of a language.

Others again may lack the sheer memory that is necessary for learning languages. Such people may need logic to support their retaining power, such that may easily come to their help in their own language with any subject but language. Without memory, they may acquire grammar skills, but could hardly use them for lack of means to fill in the spaces.

Another major requirement is to be able to hear well. If effort, intellect, memory, interactive interests are all present but the person still can’t make good differences among the sounds he/she hears and makes, they may become utterly embarrassing talking partners, sooner or later avoided by most. A language inherently has its musical qualities and without getting that right, correct intonation, articulation, sound formation will suffer greatly to the detriment of being understood. Of course, such people can still become very good writers, fast, voluptuous readers, or successful in any other field of life requiring language competences if they don’t need to and insist on talking too much.

Well, it sounds obvious that a language teacher should understand most of these sleeping abilities and difficulties at the cocoon-stage in most of their students and try to draw the attention of as many as possible to their own strengths and weaknesses within the time-constraints that may be. Besides, the teacher should have the utmost quality of the good teacher: persuasiveness. On the other hand, the student who has the advantage of being informed of his/her qualities should need the added ability and brevity to follow advice. With that, they may become successful language learners even against the odds. A tall order against the pull of modern hedonism.