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5 unusual, evidence-based ways to get better at a new language
It's hard not to conclude that if you act like a child, maybe you'll learn as effectively as a child, too…

The last time I tried to learn a foreign language, I was living in an Italian suburb of Sydney. My hour a week at a local Italian class was inevitably followed by a bowl of pasta and a few glasses of wine.
As an approach to language-learning goes, it was certainly more pleasurable than my German lessons at school. Despite the wine, it was also surprisingly effective. In fact, getting better at a new language doesn't have to mean hard hours on lists of vocab and the rules of grammar. It turns out that what you don't focus on matters, too. And a glass of wine may even help …
Listen to the language, even if you don't have a clue what's being said – and you're not even paying close attention
One challenging aspect to learning a new language is that it may contain distinct speech sounds that, as a non-speaker, you can't even tell apart. This isn't a problem for young children – they only need to spend time around the new language to learn to hear the different sounds, simply through passive exposure. It's long been thought adults can't do this, but a study published in 2019 brings a more optimistic message and has implications for the best approach to adult language learning.
The researchers asked native Finnish-speakers to listen to Mandarin speech sounds while engaged in other tasks, and to do this for two hours a day on four consecutive days. Critically, even when they were instructed to ignore the sounds and focus on a silent movie, recordings of their brain waves (via EEG) suggested they were getting better at differentiating between the different Mandarin speech sounds. "For the first time, these results demonstrated that mere passive exposure to sounds can induce plastic changes related to change detection in the adult human brain, which was previously thought to happen only in infancy during the sensitive period," the researchers wrote.
The researchers added that this suggests passive training may help real-life language learning. They recommend listening to a language you want to learn while you're doing something else (as long as it's not too cognitively demanding) – while working out at the gym, or while cooking, perhaps.
A passive approach to learning could also be especially beneficial to older adults in the context of remembering new vocab. A 2013 study led by Lynn Hasher at the University of Toronto showed that older adults have a greater tendency than younger adults to process distracting information. While this isn't usually helpful, it does make them more likely to remember background information. This suggests that after a session of deliberately learning new vocab, hearing those words played in the background could help with learning.
Don't try too hard with the grammar
Not only can children easily perceive the difference between a vast range of speech sounds, but they learn the grammar of a language more easily than adults too. It used to be thought that this advantage ends at about the age of seven. However, again the picture has become more optimistic of late. For instance, in 2018, a team involving Steven Pinker at Harvard University concluded that in fact, the advantage lasts about a decade longer. Once we reach adulthood though, it does become harder to get to grips with grammar and also the structural components of words in another language.
Part of the problem could be that adults' more highly developed cognitive skills work against them. Consider a 2014 study by Amy Finn at MIT and colleagues that found the harder adults worked at the structure and use of units of an artificial language – such as root words, suffixes and prefixes – the worse they did. To learn this language "morphology", "at least in this artificial language we created, it's actually worse when you try," Finn comments.
These findings supported a theory, put forward in 1990 by the linguist Elissa Newport, that adults struggle with this aspect of language-learning because they try to analyse too much information at once. So what can you do? If you're listening to another language, don't over-analyse it, Finn suggests. There was a condition in her study in which some of the participants had to complete an undemanding puzzle or do some colouring while they listened to the artificial language – and it's telling that it was this group who performed best at acquiring the new grammar. It's hard not to conclude that if you act like a child, maybe you'll learn as effectively as a child, too…
Choose the right time of day – or night – to learn
Outside more formal educational settings, a lot of language classes tend to take place in the evenings, but it's worth considering experimental findings that suggest this isn't an optimum time for everyone, especially older people and teenagers.
For example, in a 2014 study, Lynn Hasher and her team found that older adults (aged 60-82) were better able to focus, and tended to do better at memory tests, between 8.30am and 10.30am, compared with 1pm and 5pm. Scans of their brains suggested this was because by the afternoon, their "default mode network" was more active – a neural state indicative of daydreaming. Among young adults, however, other neural networks more associated with focused attention remained active into the afternoon.
Evening learning probably isn't ideal for teenagers either. In a study published in 2012, Johannes Holz at the University of Freiberg, and colleagues, found that 16- and 17-year-old girls performed better on tests of factual memory if they'd learned the material at 3pm than at 9pm.
However, another study, published in Psychological Science in 2016, suggests that evening learning can be beneficial – especially if you follow it with a decent night's sleep, and a follow-up session the next morning.
French-speaking participants were split into two groups: one learned the French translations of 16 Swahili words in the morning, returning for a second booster session that evening; the others learned the translations in the evening with a booster session the following morning.
The group that learned the vocab in the evening, slept and then studied again the next morning out-performed the other group on all kinds of memory tests. The overnight group showed virtually no forgetting after one week (unlike the same-day learners, who'd forgotten, on average, 4-5 of the translations), and by the second session, they'd forgotten less than the same-day learners and were quicker to re-learn anything that they hadn't remembered.
The researchers suspect that sleep soon after learning allowed for a greater consolidation of these memories than for the other group. The results suggest that scheduling two study periods, one for close to bed-time, the other soon for after waking, is an effective way to learn.
Take long breaks
The idea of taking as long a break as possible between learning some vocab and revisiting it sounds counter-intuitive. However, it's worth considering a phenomenon called the "spacing effect" when planning your study schedule.
According to research published in 2007 by Doug Rohrer and Hal Pashler, you should aim to time the intervals between learning something and revising it based on when you'll really need to recall it (for an exam, say, or a holiday) following a 10 per cent rule – i.e. you should space your revision periods at intervals of roughly 10 per cent of the total time you'd really like to retain those memories. If you've got a test coming up in a month, say, then you should revise what you learn today in about two or three days' time. But if you want to remember something over the longer term, so that your performance peaks in a year's time, then it's sensible to revisit that information once a month. Why this rule should work isn't clear, but it's possible that having long gaps between learning, revision and retrieval tells your brain that this is knowledge you'll be coming back to, so it's worth holding for the long term.
The 10 per cent rule is only a rough guide, though. More recent research suggests the spacing effect works best when it is adapted to each individual's progress. In a study published in 2014 in Psychological Science, Pashler and his team devised individual spacing plans for middle school pupils learning Spanish, based on the material's difficulty level and how well the students did on early tests. They found that these individualised plans boosted test performance at the end of a semester by 16.5 per cent, and led to 10 per cent better scores than the "one-size-fits-all" 10 per cent spaced study plan.
Other research has backed up this counter-intuitive idea that, rather than being detrimental, taking a long break from a language that you're learning might actually be beneficial. A study published in 2012 involved 19 people becoming proficient at speaking and comprehending an artificial language and then taking a three- to six-month break. Michael Ullman at Georgetown University and his team found that the group did just as well in grammar tests after this break as they had done right after first learning the language. In fact, after the break, their brain activity while processing the language looked more like the kind of activity you see when native speakers are processing their first language. Ullman thinks taking a lengthy break from an already learned second language can help the representation of the language to shift from a form of "declarative memory" to "procedural" – akin to playing an instrument or riding a bike. This was a small study involving an artificial language so more research is definitely needed, but as the researchers noted, their findings have "potentially important consequences for second language acquisition".
Have a drink…
Alcohol is not exactly known for its brain-boosting properties. It impairs all types of cognitive functioning, including working memory and the ability to ignore distractions. So you'd think it would make it harder for someone to speak in a foreign language. However, a study published in 2017 by Fritz Renner and colleagues found that it doesn't – if anything, it can be beneficial.
German volunteers learning Dutch who'd drunk enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.04 per cent (approximately equivalent to just under a pint of beer for a 70kg male) were rated by independent Dutch speakers as speaking the language more proficiently during a short-test (they had to argue in Dutch for or against animal testing), compared with the other participants who'd only drunk water beforehand.
Why? Perhaps because some people feel anxious when talking in a foreign language, and this was ameliorated by the alcohol. However, as Renner cautions: "It is important to point out that participants in this study consumed a low dose of alcohol. Higher levels of alcohol consumption might not have [these] beneficial effects."
Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest.
Reprinted with permission of The British Psychological Society. Read the original article.
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Designer uses AI to bring 54 Roman emperors to life
It's hard to stop looking back and forth between these faces and the busts they came from.
Meet Emperors Augustus, left, and Maximinus Thrax, right
- A quarantine project gone wild produces the possibly realistic faces of ancient Roman rulers.
- A designer worked with a machine learning app to produce the images.
- It's impossible to know if they're accurate, but they sure look plausible.
How the Roman emperors got faced
<a href="https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/6/201108/14127595/2K-ENGLISH-24x36-Educational_v8_WATERMARKED_2000.jpg" ><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTUzMzIxMX0.OwHMrgKu4pzu0eCsmOUjybdkTcSlJpL_uWDCF2djRfc/img.jpg?width=980" id="775ca" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="436000b6976931b8320313478c624c82" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="lineup of emperor faces" data-width="1440" data-height="963" /></a>Credit: Daniel Voshart
<p>Voshart's imaginings began with an AI/neural-net program called <a href="https://www.artbreeder.com" target="_blank">Artbreeder</a>. The freemium online app intelligently generates new images from existing ones and can combine multiple images into…well, who knows. It's addictive — people have so far used it to generate nearly 72.7 million images, says the site — and it's easy to see how Voshart fell down the rabbit hole.</p><p>The Roman emperor project began with Voshart feeding Artbreeder images of 800 busts. Obviously, not all busts have weathered the centuries equally. Voshart told <a href="https://www.livescience.com/ai-roman-emperor-portraits.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Live Science</a>, "There is a rule of thumb in computer programming called 'garbage in garbage out,' and it applies to Artbreeder. A well-lit, well-sculpted bust with little damage and standard face features is going to be quite easy to get a result." Fortunately, there were multiple busts for some of the emperors, and different angles of busts captured in different photographs.</p><p>For the renderings Artbreeder produced, each face required some 15-16 hours of additional input from Voshart, who was left to deduce/guess such details as hair and skin coloring, though in many cases, an individual's features suggested likely pigmentations. Voshart was also aided by written descriptions of some of the rulers.</p><p>There's no way to know for sure how frequently Voshart's guesses hit their marks. It is obviously the case, though, that his interpretations look incredibly plausible when you compare one of his emperors to the sculpture(s) from which it was derived.</p><p>For an in-depth description of Voshart's process, check out his posts on <a href="https://medium.com/@voshart/photoreal-roman-emperor-project-236be7f06c8f" target="_blank">Medium</a> or on his <a href="https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>.</p><p>It's fascinating to feel like you're face-to-face with these ancient and sometimes notorious figures. Here are two examples, along with some of what we think we know about the men behind the faces.</p>Caligula
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MzQ1NTE5NX0.LiTmhPQlygl9Fa9lxay8PFPCSqShv4ELxbBRFkOW_qM/img.jpg?width=980" id="7bae0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce795c554490fe0a36a8714b86f55b16" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Caligula, left
Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula" target="_blank">Caligula</a></span> was the third Roman Emperor, ruling the city-state from AD 37 to 41. His name was actually Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus — Caligula is a nickname meaning "Little Boot."</p><p>One of the reputed great madmen of history, he was said to have made a horse his consul, had conversations with the moon, and to have ravaged his way through his kingdom, including his three sisters. Caligula is known for extreme cruelty, terrorizing his subjects, and accounts suggest he would deliberately distort his face to surprise and frighten people he wished to intimidate.</p><p>It's <a href="https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-caligula" target="_blank">not totally clear</a> if Caligula was as over-the-top as history paints him, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from churning out some <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">howlers</a> in his name.</p><p>A 1928 journal, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172009" target="_blank">Studies in Philology</a>, noted that contemporary descriptions of Caligula depicted him as having a "head misshapen, eyes and temples sunken," and "eyes staring and with a glare savage enough to torture." In some sculptures not shown above, his head <em>is</em> a bit acorn-shaped. </p>Nero
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NTAwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTQ2ODU0NX0.AgYuQZzRQCanqehSI5UeakpxU8fwLagMc_POH7xB3-M/img.jpg?width=980" id="a8825" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9e0593d79c591c97af4bd70f3423885e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="992" data-height="558" />One of numerous sculptures of Nero, left
Credit: Bibi_Saint-Pol/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p>There's a good German word for the face of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nero</a>, that guy famous for fiddling as Rome burned. It's "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Backpfeifengesicht" target="_blank">backpfeifengesicht</a>." Properly named Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, he was Rome's fifth emperor. He ruled from AD 54 until his suicide in AD 68.</p><p>Another Germanicus-family gem, Nero's said to have murdered his own mother, Agrippa, as well as (maybe) his second wife. As for the fiddling, he <em>was</em> a lover of music and the arts, and there are stories of his charitability. And, oh yeah, he may have set the fire as an excuse to rebuild the city center, making it his own.</p><p>While it may not be the most historically sound means of assessing an historical personage, Voshart's imagining of Nero does suggest an over-indulged, entitled young man. Backpfeifengesicht.</p>A psychiatric diagnosis can be more than an unkind ‘label’
A popular and longstanding wave of thought in psychology and psychotherapy is that diagnosis is not relevant for practitioners in those fields.
Spinal cord injury breakthrough makes paralyzed mice walk again
Scientists regenerate damaged spinal cord nerve fibers with designer protein, helping paralyzed mice walk again.
The paralyzed mice started to walk two to three weeks following treatment.
- Researchers from Germany use a designer protein to treat spinal cord damage in mice.
- The procedure employs gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibers that carry signals to and from the brain.
- The scientists aim to eventually apply the technique to humans.
What is a spinal cord injury?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88b8d4e44e46b7d5fe49d1f3bca56078"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKtBC2Sg_Bg?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Ten things you may not know about anxiety
Cold hands and feet? Maybe it's your anxiety.
