Language learner's MRI scan (Tan et al 2011)

There has been a continuing series of reports in the various news media about the link between reduced risk of developing dementia and the benefits of learning a second or further language, whether in childhood or later life.

For example, Richard Alleyne, reporting from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph about the work of Ellen Bialystok, from York University in Canada. She and her colleagues looked at the medical records of 228 patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s and compared them to their language abilities, noting an apparent delay of onset of up to 5 years among those who had  learned foreign languages.

But, delightful though that may be for those of us who promote foreign language learning (see HELLO English), a moment’s thought would cause one to ask questions.

For example, we know that the people who learn second and further languages are relatively better educated and more affluent than society as a whole. This group is also generally more healthy, better fed and exercised than the mainstream. It might be reasonable to assume, therefore, that while there is a correlation between language learning and degenerative delay, there is also likely to be a similar connection with affluence and a generally healthy lifestyle.

While this is hardly a randomised controlled trial, it is a substantial piece of work and it has been widely reported following its presentation in the 2011 Washington conference. So, although the text is not yet available online, we must assume that such simplistic concerns have been addressed. However, they are nowhere reported, even in the supposedly informed professional press.

Whilst we are on the subject, shouldn’t we also look for a gender element here too? There is a body of evidence that girls are better language learners than boys in the UK. I do not have figures for the Canadian school system – from which Dr Bialystok drew her sample – but I would guess that this is a pretty stable relationship: across countries and over time. And, as reports indicate that extra language learning and reduced dementia appear to be linked to an increased capacity to multi-task – an attribute most often associated with women – we would have to question why issues of gender have not been discussed.

But, wait a moment, aren’t we misunderstanding this somewhat? Surely, at present, the trend noted by Bialystok and her colleagues may be no more an apparent population characteristic which disguises quite complex social features among those of us who suffer with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. But complex social and medical issues are not good copy, although they are what the experts in the field identify as important.

The Alzheimer’s Society, for example, calls for research into possible causal links between dementia and medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity) or lifestyle factors (including exercise, diet, toxic metals and stress). They are also particularly interested in the possible genetic origins of the condition and its relationship with vascular disease. Nowhere among all these important areas for further research is there any mention of language learning or, indeed, the many and various patent quackeries for brain training sold to stave-off old age.

So, in spite of all the research and reporting, learning another language will not definitively prevent you as an individual from getting dementia, but, as work by Tan (Tan et al 2011) has shown, it can strengthen alternative neural pathways in the fusiform and caudate regions of the brain which, should the need arise, will give your brain more options to cope with degenerative impairments.

Tan’s work appears to show that learning a second language requires an alternate path through the brain, correlating only with that second language, not with the primary language, and this is what may be giving some language learners an advantage. It would be interesting to see how brain activation changed as people become fluent in their second language. Does it always take this different processing path through the brain? Or as you become fluent, do the two paths begin to appear more similar?

For a slightly different take on this subject, an excellent paper by Daniel George calls for a re-framing to learn new languages for dementia. In an elegantly argued monograph, he asks whether we might not be able to postpone and ameliorate the impact of aging by revising the language we have learned to use to describe Alzheimer’s and those with dementia? “Choosing new language patterns can reshape our thoughts, attitudes, and actions towards our ageing neighbours and our own ageing brains, giving rise to a slightly different and more life-affirming reality that connects us to those who are ageing instead of hastening their social death.”

So, although learning a foreign language isn’t the silver bullet after all, sadly. It can’t definitively prevent you from getting Alzheimer’s, but it can be part of a healthy lifestyle, which might. It is hard to learn a foreign language, if you are not that way inclined. Perhaps it is easier and better for all of us if we could learn a new language to describe those around us who are getting older and who may have dementia.

And, for those who hate learning languages, this may be one case at least where what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

Sources

Alleyne R (2011); Learn a second language to delay dementia by five years; The Daily Telegraph; p.13; 19.02.11

Bialystok E (2011); Protective Effects of Bilingualism for Cognitive Aging and Dementia; 2011 Meeting of the AAAS; Washington; Friday, February 18, 2011: 1:30 PM-4:30 PM

Bialystok, E., et al. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia 45: 459-464.

Bialystok, E. & Shapero, D. (2005). Ambiguous benefits: the effect of bilingualism on reversing ambiguous figures. Developmental Science 8: 595-604.

George DR (2010); Overcoming the social death of dementia through language; The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9741, pp.586 – 587, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61286-X

Tan LH, Chen L, Yip V, Chan AH, Yang J, Gao JH, & Siok WT (2011). Activity levels in the left hemisphere caudate-fusiform circuit predict how well a second language will be learned. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (6), 2540-4 PMID: 21262807

We all like the idea of ‘Sport for All’ but – in these days of uber-commercialism, increasing obesity and declining physical activity – it is pretty clear that sport just ain’t. So, it is good to think that those whose sporting prowess has more in common with our amateur kickabout can beat the galacticos.

Getting the rules right. With common rules you are stronger and more inclusive.

In 1922, in God’s chosen sport (cricket), for reasons known only to themselves, the eternal enemy (the Australians) decided to count eight balls to an over (balls bowled from one end) even though there had been universal agreement since 1900 that there would only be six. Clearly, it would have created problems if each cricket-playing country had adopted its own system of counting, and numerous attempts were made to agree on this rule. With cricket world cup currently underway on the sub-continent, it is obvious to anyone watching that only six balls are bowled in cricket – a rule that has been fully adopted worldwide since 1979.

In order for sport to make sense, you need to operate under the same rules worldwide: it is as simple as that.

This was nowhere more clear than in last year’s autumn rugby internationals. The different interpretations put on the rules by Southern Hemisphere referees made a mockery of one of the defining characteristics of the game of rugby union football. Only five scrummages were given in the course of England’s match against Australia and none of them was allowed to run its course, thus depriving players and spectators of an important part of the rugby contest. It may be true that Australia and New Zealand want to play running rugby, but if that is all you want to do,  you should take-up basketball.

Different Rules: Failure to referee the scrum deprived England of an advantage

The issue of a historical mismatch between two or more parts of the same sport need not be a cause for misery, though. There are several instances of re-unification title fights in the history of boxing – especially in the heavyweight division. These come about because of the existence of several different international boxing associations – most notably the WBA (World Boxing Association) and the WBC (World Boxing Council). Each have their version of world championship and so you risk having three different boxers all claiming to be heavyweight champion of the world at the same time.

The problem is that each sporting committee has its own vested interests in remaining separate. Empire-building is alive and kicking in the land of the stuffed shirt and, although rugby is no longer administered by Will Carling‘s ’57 old farts’, it is still run very slowly by the elite for the elite.

So what have the rabbonim and priesthood got to do with the sweaty world of professional sport? Well, perhaps more than you might think.

The social elites of organised religion operate to exclude just as do the committees at Twickenham or Lords.

There is still a premier league of Christian churches that leave their Christian poorer relations excluded from the fold. In Islam and Judaism, likewise, there are orthodox elites holding-on to power, privilege and prestige while smaller, more moderate and inclusive progressive co-religionists are kept outside. No-one wants to be the one remembered for letting the true faith be diluted by making peace with dissenters. Each, of course, believes that they have sole patent on the right way of doing things.

Isn’t it time that they took a leaf out of the book of the cricketers and heavyweight boxers and looked to create a common set of rules? Wouldn’t a re-unified broad church of tolerant believers working to enhance society be better for for everyone?

*Andrex Athletes – Former England Rugby captain Laurence Dallaglio alluded to this popular brand of toilet tissue when describing Premier League footballers as ‘Andrex Athletes – very soft and incredibly expensive’.

So important that he had to say it three times. Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, made education the key focus for his premiership. He asked the voters to judge his government by the success of his education policies.

There were lots of them. One thing you can always be sure of and that is that governments, especially new ones, will want to bugger about with the education. And didn’t they just? Re-branded ministries, new targets, revolutionary initiatives on literacy and numeracy, new exams and exam boards, changes to university funding, changes to admission processes both to schools and unis… the whole nine yards.

So, after 13 years, what has been the nett benefit?

It seems to me that you measure the success of any social policy by the degree to which it has helped the most vulnerable. In education terms, that means the ill-educated, especially those who cannot read or count. On this measure, Blair & Co failed, failed, failed.

OECD figures released last week (see Shepherd 2010) show that the UK ranks ranked 25th for reading and 28th for maths out of a study of 15 year olds in 65 developed countries. This continues a slide in our relative performance and was in spite of the fact that only 7 of our competitors spend more per capita than the UK on their children’s education.

The frankly dismal levels of illiteracy in this country have failed to respond to more than a decade of dedicated primary teaching, while employers and universities continue to complain that we may have produced the least numerate generation of school-leavers in history.

Clearly something isn’t working.

There seem to be two explanations. One that these special interventions were wrong-headed from the start. Or, more probably, that there is a dynamic which discourages the universal acquisition of basic skills at a faster rate than they can be learned.

The problem with ‘education, education, education’ is that education has never been only about school. It has always been about respecting and valuing learning.

If, as a society, we have lost all respect for learning, discovery, creativity and wisdom, then, no matter how many squeaky new initiatives are introduced, there is not a snowflake in hell’s chance that good, ordinary kids will get the education they deserve. The extra-systemic, anti-educational forces of instantaneous celebrity culture are simply too powerful to resist.

Do we need to radically re-structure education, again? Probably not. Do we need to re-prioritise the value of learning and education in and of themselves. Yes.

Time for a rethink, methinks.

Sources

Shepherd J; UK Slips Down World Rankings; The Guardian; 07.112.10; http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/07/uk-schools-slip-world-rankings

Faiths Working Together.

Invited by Qamar Bhatti of the MRB Foundation to speak on Jewish approaches to community cohesion at the launch of their Societal Unity initiative on Saturday, so braved (!) the slight scattering of snow and went off to schmooze over coffee with the great and the good at the impressively new and environmentally friendly headquarters of the West Midlands Fire Service.

Talking about community cohesion and social unity to an audience of faith leaders and community development activists is a bit like promoting capitalism at a meeting of the World Bank – you are unlikely to meet with much resistance and the audience is likely to know more about your subject than you do. So my job was not as easy as it might have appeared, especially given that my slot was sandwiched between a former cabinet minister and a Methodist minister, both of whom are gifted public speakers of a quality I could only dream of reaching.

It was fascinating listening to Clare Short, for example, talking about her time as International Development secretary, or Bill Ozonne reminiscing about his work with the Vatican on various papal and interfaith initiatives. But, amid the talk of the military industrial complex, counter-terrorism and inter-faith dialogue, a string of research related issues came to mind.

A point which I took up in my talk – related to the eternal human need to find scapegoats among the out-groups of society. Previous blogs on this site (The Stranger in your Camp) have discussed this phenomenon, which persists across ethnic and cultural boundaries, irrespective of faith or affluence. We are excluders rather than includers by nature, it would appear.

This ‘them and us’ dynamic is related to our psychological predisposition towards binary opposites. We tend to see issues in terms of on or off, orthodox or progressive, nature versus nurture, and so on, even though reality is far more subtle and complex. Thus, even though we are more likely to be injured by an accident in the home than outside it and to be murdered by a friend or family-member, the familiar is perceived to be safe while the stranger is not.

Our thin veneer of civilisation, which appears to coincide with the better aspects of faith, encourages us to be inclusive. At the heart of most, if not all, religions is the injunction to look after the weak and the vulnerable – the widow and the orphan – and to be kind to strangers. Sadly, we don’t always manage it, especially if – like a refugee or a homeless person – they belong to an excluded group.

Whether you ascribe our better behaviour to human nature or faith in the Almighty, it often falls apart when religion meets politics. If there is one thing we can learn from history it is that when money and power meet faith, conflict and persecution are not far behind. Too often, this is justified and exacerbated by the manipulation of scripture. This appears both in the narrative and interpretive writing of the text and in its subsequent exploitation for political ends.

Perhaps, how politics and religion can work together to improve the community is a proper subject for the Societal Unity initiative to explore. Clearly, the religious label attached to a terrorist in a conflict such as persisted in Northern Ireland, for example,  can really only be understood in terms of politics, particularly of post-colonialism, not in the spirituality of religious faith.

The sacred texts that record the core narratives of the world’s religions are all human artifacts. Made by human hands, they are subject to the usual errors of translation and transcription that occur when any book is published and printed, let alone those that have been transcribed by hand for a hundred generations.

Yet, within every religion, there are more or less orthodox groups, who believe in the literal truth of a sacred text, and  progressive believers, who believe in the centrality of the message within that text but accept that some of it was written in the context of the time – with the limited world knowledge available and to appease the powerful.

Within orthodoxy, of course, there are kind, fair-minded, hospitable, gentle and generous free-thinkers just as there are illiberal, dogmatic and inflexible adherents among the progressives. Neither has a monopoly on  virtue. They are merely different in how they practise their faith. However, within each group there are extremes.

What should interest us here is to find out why people are drawn to the immutability of extreme orthodoxy. Surely, in some senses, the appeal of an absolute book of answers is similar to the attraction of  extreme political ideologies? It requires you to do, not think. It is the illusory silver bullet to rid you of the cause of all your woes.

Previously (In the Belly of the Beast), I identified the four ingredients that are needed, at a critical mass, to ensure that extremist conflict ensues: population density, a lack of education, poverty and political ambition. To this we ought to add, a cultural or religious environment which encourages belief in the black and white of simple solutions.

If the MRB Foundation can help us to understand and overcome the psychological, social and spiritual barriers to religious co-operation, their Societal Unity campaign will have been a significant force for good.

Think Dervish: Beat the Beast.

‘There is no Hindu. There is no Muslim. There is only God‘ (Guru Nanak; 15th Century Sikh)

I am no scholar of comparative religion. Heaven knows, I am a poor enough student of my own. However, I find Guru Nanak’s words remarkably familiar. You will find similar sentiments expressed at the heart of Judaism (Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One) and, if memory serves, in most of the central texts of the world’s religions. In so much, the similarities between our principal faiths outweigh their differences.

If we want to dismantle the beast of racism, anti-semitism and extremist violence we must first understand that it has very little to do with the core beliefs of world religions.

Unfortunately, it has all to do with the political history of religion and the texts they follow. These books, written to favour one or other dynasty or political elite, are social artifacts and include large tracts of interpretation which allocate authority to priests (because they wrote the things) and power to patriarchs.

So, while the hearts of world religion have more to unite than to divide them, the superstructure of observance, community history and social order makes potential enemies of us all.

This was wonderfully explained in a paper given at the British Educational Research Association conference in 1997. Its author was the principal of a girls college in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan She  described how she, as the head of the school and a scholar of national standing, had to wait for the gardener, the only man allowed on the school site, to go to the bank for her as she, being a woman, was not allowed to draw money from the bank – a place staffed by men. She explained that, in her very traditional part of Pakistan, strict interpretations of propriety governed everyday life. However, she made it clear that she saw the Koran, in its original form, as an empowering and liberating text for both men and women, but how, over the centuries, scholars and politicians had construed it in such a way as to develop a social structure which was rigidly patriarchal and oppressive.

Clearly, the importance of these social and political discourses cannot be over-stressed, as Berger & Luckmann (1966) so eloquently describe:

“For example, two coteries of eremitical dervishes may go on disputing about the ultimate nature of the universe in the midst of the desert, with nobody on the outside being in the least interested. Once one or the other of these viewpoints gets a hearing in the surrounding society, it will be largely extratheoretical interests that will decide the outcome of the rivalry. Different social groups will have different affinities with the competing theories and will, subsequently, become “carriers” of the latter. Thus dervish theory A may appeal to the upper stratum and dervish theory B to the middle stratum of the society in question, for reasons far removed from the passions that animated the original inventors of these theories. The competing coteries of experts will then come to attach themselves to the ”carrier” groups, and their subsequent fate will depend on the outcome of whatever conflict led these groups to adopt the respective theories. Rival definitions of reality are thus decided upon in the sphere of rival social interests whose rivalry is in turn “translated” into theoretical terms.”

But, the sociology of religion and studies of its use to manipulate and subjugate have been around for a long time. We should be able to separate the essential beauty and humanity of these core texts by now and reject the rest, shouldn’t we? Why do people still buy the theological justifications for iniquity?

Why do we still allow our world to be disrupted by those who use religion to justify oppression and persecution? After all, most religions have strongly codified rules for helping the poor, the weak and the dispossessed, ones which contemporary adherents frequently find too demanding to follow.

Any attempt to understand scapegoat or religious groups without exploring their class relations is bound to fail. This is the more essential as we can notice recurrent patterns of poverty, oppression, ambition and extremism – the signals of a predictable social mechanism which can be controlled and countered if there is the political will to do so.

It doesn’t matter whether the ‘feared other’ are Irish hooligans in the 1870s, Jewish tearaways in the East End in the 1920s, Rastas and Rude-boys in Handsworth in the 1970s, or today’s Bangladeshi and Somali drug dealers, if – when the music stops – they are the principal out-group, living in poverty with few options other than crime and extremism, then they will be the ones to be demonised and come into the greatest conflict with the forces of mainstream society.

To create the beast of social unrest, extremism and violence, you only need four things. Once there is a critical mass in all four there will inevitably be an explosion of conflict, whether religious or ethnic:

1. Population Density: An out-group needs to be present in large enough numbers within a population to be noticeable and perceived to be threatening.
2. Education: Standards of general education among the poorest parts of the indigenous community should be patchy, engendering an absence of critical reflection. By contrast, cultural strength within the out-group community is bolstered by education, cultural institutions or religious indoctrination.
3. Money: For conflict to occur, one or more groups need to be struggling financially. And there will need to be substantial sources of funding to pay for the mobilisation of young men to ‘defend’ ‘their’ ‘communities’.
4. Political Ambition: There need to be those among the elites of the indigenous population and the out-group who have the will and the finances to exploit the situation for their own ends.

This is how we build the beast.

Isn’t it time we stopped?

Source

Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books

Nazi or Saudi?

“Once again, across Europe, respectable liberals are turning a blind eye to hatred and – when they do that – we know the Beast is back…” (Jon Ronson, The Return, Channel 4, 1996)

Extremist literature is always dispiriting. Propaganda, whether from the extreme left or the ultra-religious right demeans the higher human ideals. It does so by asking the reader to attack and devalue another group in order to feel better about themselves. It is a false promise because, after the hate and the pain and the lies, the emptiness will remain.

From the Balkans to Bermondsey, there are those who who want to string-up anyone who is gay, black, Muslim, refugee or Jew… simply because they are  different. It is up to the honest and honourable majority to prevent them.

The research carried-out for the BBC programme Panorama, which aired last night, showed Saudi-sponsored textbooks in Islamic schools which described Jews as being ‘like pigs and monkeys’.

Whilst government agencies made the appropriate noises to assure us of greater vigilance and inspection, is it not time that we saw such propaganda as on a par with the publications of the National Front, the British National Party and the English Defence League?

These parties frequently use (or used) demeaning images of animals to describe their chosen victims. Latterly, white fascists in Britain have started to pillory Muslims, some even defaming the Star of David by using it on their websites. But it wasn’t so long ago that these same people were likening black and Afro-caribbean people to apes and monkeys. The tactics are the same, it is just the focus that has shifted.

As a society, we have worked hard to ensure greater tolerance of all parts of our communities. It was difficult at times, but worth the struggle to create a world of greater tolerance, inclusion and acceptance.

It still is.

So, if it wasn’t acceptable or legal to promote racial hatred against our black neighbours back then, it most certainly isn’t on to demonise Muslims nor, indeed, for some misguided Muslims to pillory Jews in this manner.

It is time for the wider, more moderate, Muslim community in Britain to stand-up and be counted: shoulder-to-shoulder with their Jewish cousins, against the common enemy of fascism.

Life is tough, isn’t it? Just when you read that 2.6 children per family are needed to support us in old age, the pesky Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC 2010) comes out with a massive study showing that ‘only’ children live happier and more successful lives than their multi-sibling peers.

This is unfortunate. Even though we love our children dearly and want them to be as happy as humanly possible, most families have more than one child.

What to do? Well, don’t panic. Single children are one of the most researched groups around – second only to twins (beloved of psychologists and geneticists) – and there is much to question and discuss in this work, albeit from such an august source.

Scientists, particularly from the social sciences, deal in patterns and, particularly, unexplained breaks in them. Not surprisingly, one of the first things that we notice about only children is that they tend to marry other only children and often have only one child. Who then grows-up and marries another only child. This, as Gunter Grass (1990) pointed-out, is a modern tendency which, if replicated worldwide, might lead to an initial increase in human happiness but then, assuredly, to none at all, as we would, as a species, be extinct!

Leaving aside whether they are happy souls, we also know that only children tend not to feature among the ‘mad, sad and bad’ attending behaviour support centres or pupil referral units. They are, as a rule, well-behaved and hardworking souls.

There are reasons for this. Single children benefit from the maximum parental attention and affection. They will tend to get most of their parents’ investment of money, time and other resources. Most telling, in some ways, though: they are not troubled by any feelings of sibling rivalry, when numbers two, three or four come along, because they don’t. These children are set fair to be happy and confident kids, growing-up with substantially less stressful lives than their contemporaries.

This is important. For children, parental affection is as sunshine is to plants. Just as a temperate climate is good for growth, and extremes aren’t (not much grows in permafrost or the desert). So, children grow in the consistent sunlight of parental affection and affirmation – capable of coping with some variation but, ideally, not too much or too often.

For all the folk wisdom about smug only children who are spoilt and insufferable, more often than not they benefit from better bonds with their parents and grow into confident adults as a result.

But, choices about family size go to the very heart of what it is to be human. We had big families in the past in order to cope with peri-natal mortality, war, pestilence and famine. Happily, those horsemen are not so common around here these days, but we still need to have more than two children per couple. It may rob our first-born of their idyll, but – whether for evolutionary necessity or self-indulgence – the need to reproduce remains.

Perhaps the problem is that while having more children may make us happier as parents and ensure the survival of the species, it may not be best for our children as individuals, who are happier the fewer siblings they have and happiest when they have none!

One other factor worth mentioning is that the ESRC study found that as sibship size grows, so does sibling bullying. And we know that, when a child is bullied at home, they are likely to be part of bullying – as victim or aggressor – at school, too. When that happens, it is not surprising that children from smaller families do better.

So, are there benefits to being in a larger flock? Well, socialisation and companionship figure highly here, as does the support that having siblings offers when times are tough. Suna Yongmin & Lib Yuanzhang (2009)’s study of 19,839 adolescents showed the protective effect of siblings in the event of divorce. They found that the negative effect of divorce on adolescent performance diminished as sibship size increases. (It would be fair, I think, to add that there are other studies, not listed here, that explore a range of other benefits to being in multi-sibling families. It is not a one-way street, by any means.)

Yongmin and Yuanzhang also note that the sibship protective effect is weaker in single parent than in two parent families. This two parent benefit features in the ESRC study, too. Do not whisper it too loud, but children are happiest living at home with their natural parents – both of them. It is not new. It is not rocket science, but it is an observable feature of this substantial study and it is interesting.

Well, how does this benefit us? Perhaps, if there is one thing to take from this, it is that we shouldn’t always attempt to subjugate our interests to those of our children. People, generally, don’t want to live in one child families, even if it does please the first born. Perhaps, as professionals, it means also that we need to be more conscious of the possibilities of sibling bullying in larger families, especially when faced with a child who is misbehaving or underperforming in school.

A forthcoming publication by Aaker, Rudd & Mogilner (2011, In Press) explores and highlights the role of time in developing a happy life – how we spend it and how we relate to it. Perhaps we might add to these aspects of time that old chestnut about choosing ones parents wisely, with especial care taken to check whether they intend to stay together and that they don’t plan on having too large a family.

Sources

Aaker, J. L., Rudd, L., & Mogilner, C. (2011); If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time; Journal of Consumer Psychology (forthcoming)

ESRC (2010); ‘The Best Days of Our Lives’, Britain in 2011, the State of the Nation; London; Education and Social Research Council.

Grass G (1990); Headbirths: Or the Germans Are Dying Out; Harvest, London; (tr. Ralph Mannheim) Originally published in 1980.

Yongmin S & Yuanzhang L; Parental divorce, sibship size, family resources, and children’s academic performance; Social Science Research; Volume 38, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 622-634; doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.03.007

Enquiring minds meet inspiring brain.

When I was about 8 years old, I was taken round the museum at the local medical school here in Birmingham. I was captivated by the various mammalian and human brains that were displayed there. It fascinated me that everything that made me special – my whole personality –  could be contained and operated from a brain like those inside my own head.

Some years later, while I was a researcher at that self-same school, there was big inquiry into the storage of human body parts and, now, that museum of medical curiosities is gone. It has been replaced by a large, very modern lecture theatre. That is progress, I suppose, but I wonder how many young students will be as inspired by their lectures as I was by those brains?

Recent blogs on this site have highlighted the importance of language skills to the development of self-control, as well as changes in how we understand cognition in infants as opposed to older children. These findings have profound pedagogical implications, for example in how we design teaching materials and resource childcare.

Increasingly we are seeing how neuroscience research impacts on our understanding not only of the developing brain but also of early years education in the home and nursery.

Recent examples include:

• Vallaton & Ayoub (2010)’s work on the differential impact of language learning for the development of self-control in boys;
• Pessoa’s 2005 study of how emotional visual stimuli are fast-tracked through the brain without attention or awareness; &
• Johnson et al (2010)’s work looking at the positive impact of education on genetic susceptibility to poor health.

These are just three examples of the tidal wave of research being produced by neuroscientists around the world which, whilst improving our understanding of the chemistry and physiology of the human brain, also improves our capacity to educate across the age-ranges.

“But,” I hear you cry, “we all know how education works, don’t we?” The answer to which is, to quote a renowned academic source, “What do you mean ‘we’, Kimosabe?”

When I first started to work in a neuroscience department, it was a controversial field of study at the cutting edge of scientific endeavour. The brain had, for a long time, been the final frontier: the region of the anatomical map still marked “Here be Dragons!” Well, not any more. Although there is much that we are only at the very beginning of our understanding, neuroscience is no longer new. The new kid on my block is neuro-education.

Neuro-what? Well, we know that genes interact with early childhood experiences and the environment to shape and structure the developing brain. Neuro-education attempts to harness our increasing knowledge about the structure and behaviour of the brain and its components to inform and improve the way that education works.

Detractors call it reductionist science; advocates say society cannot afford to do without it. But, in prestigious universities across the pond, a number of neuro-education institutes have been established. Here, too, there are centres at the universities of Cambridge and London.

There is a good case for supporting neuro-education, and not just because of its implications for early years. There is a genuine case for re-writing the pedagogic and skills content of teacher training. Although government ministers regularly mess around with the deckchairs, the Titanic of teacher education changes frighteningly slowly. Indeed, we teach very much the way that we ourselves were taught.

This is unlikely to go down well with those who run educational institutions. The fear and hostility shown by older colleagues when it was suggested that education specialists might sit-in on their teaching with a view to improving student learning had to be seen to be believed.

It is not just in early years and infant education that the benefits of neuro-education are needed.

Sources

Vallotton C & Ayoub C (2010); Use your words: The role of language in the development of toddlers’ self-regulation; Early Childhood Research Quarterly; DOI: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2010.09.002

Pessoa L. (2005); To what extent are emotional visual stimuli processed without attention and awareness?; Current Opinion in Neurobiology; 15(2), 188-196. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.002

Johnson W, Kyvik KO, Mortensen EL, Skytthe A, Batty GD, & Deary IJ. (2010); Education reduces the effects of genetic susceptibilities to poor physical health; International Journal of Epidemiology; 39(2), 406-14. PMID: 19861402

The Developing Brain

A recent post on this blog about research with children (Keeping it Real) set me thinking about how we conceptualise children and child development in research.

What can children really tell us? How reliable are they as informants? At what stage of childhood do children really begin to understand verbal structures and concepts?

Clearly, when we conduct research with children, our notion of childhood and how children think is key to our work.

We have seen already how vocabulary development and cognitive control are crucial to later life success (Metacognition, Marshmallows and the Power of Language). This relationship is explored further in a study by Chris Chatham and his co-authors (2009).

Building on the work of Franklin et al (2008) and others, Chatham differentiates between the cognitive control processes of 8 year olds and those of 3-5 year olds.

The older children already use adult inhibitory mechanisms to allow them to focus on tasks and control thought or behaviour in accordance with goals and plans. The younger children display a qualitatively different form of reactive control, responding to events only as they unfold and retrieving information from memory as needed in the moment.

This conflicts with previous theories of cognitive development, which posited that younger children had the same proactive strategies as adults only in a weaker form.

What does this mean for us as professionals and social researchers?

Clearly, it requires that we differentiate much more between the chronological ages and developmental ages of the children we work with, but it also means a change of approach.

Frankly, it will require that we are better informed and have a deeper understanding of children. We will need to take more time to plan carefully and we will need to be more flexible and creative in how we formulate our enquiries.

Most of us already adapt our methods to take account of age and development, but we will need to be even more aware of the use of visual and auditory non-verbal forms: both as stimuli and as ways of eliciting information with younger children.

Chatham, C., Frank, M., & Munakata, Y. (2009). Pupillometric and behavioral markers of a developmental shift in the temporal dynamics of cognitive control; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0810002106

Franklin A, Drivonikou GV, Bevis L, Davies IRL, Kay P & Regier T (2008); Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; March 4, 2008 vol. 105 no. 9 3221–3225

Polonius in stained glass

The ideal research paper is a brief, elegantly written, well-informed report of a simple, clearly designed study. Sadly, very few are ever written.

I have sat at the feet of masters and, over a long career, I cannot think of many such papers. Perhaps three; written by a theologian and a couple of psychiatrists. Their books were a joy to read and their research papers were famous for their mental acuity and delightful use of language. But they were rare.

Students who write for publication, are often advised to observe the KISS principle – Keep It Short and Sweet. There are many variants of this but it is as true of public speaking (Stand-up, speak-up and shut-up!’) as it is of writing a research paper (‘Your eraser is your best friend’). Nobody likes long-winded, meandering, aimless texts, do they?

Surprisingly, however, some of the greatest advocates of textual brevity are the very bureaucrats who run our universities or commission research, because they inhabit a world strewn with impenetrable jargon. The function of this language is, of course, not to communicate meaning but to bolster power. It is exclusive and divisive and most commonly used by those who are insecure about their authority.

If, on the other hand, you actually want to apply Polonius’s maxim – that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’* – I would counsel you to reject all jargon and excess wordage. You will do better if you also observe Gertrude’s advice: reporting with ‘more matter and less art’.*

But there are some dos and don’ts. Do use the correct technical terms, but keep them to a minimum. Where your paper requires you to discuss your sampling strategy, you should do so with clarity. Don’t, for instance, include a critique of the formula for calculation of sample size in your general summary. It is a question of understanding the purpose of the different parts of your paper and their intended audiences.

Your goal in writing a research paper is to say what you wanted to find-out and why, how you did this, what you found and what it means for future work in the field. That’s it.

Perhaps the key to all this is to set-out with a simple question and study design. After that, with luck, your field results will be uncomplicated and the numbers manageable, so that you can get to the truth in a trice. But, as we are fallible humans and the world complex, our designs are flawed and the phenomena we observe behave unexpectedly – especially if they involve other people!

Then our job is to make order of chaos – summarising the complicated process of redesign and revision that is the reality of most research.

So, though the truth is rarely pure and never simple, as Oscar Wilde put it (1895), perhaps the ambition of those writing for publication should be.

* Hamlet Act II:2; Shakespeare

Assistance If you want any further information about writing research reports, please contact Life Research. To tap into research training or research support, check out the Data Zero website. I am always happy to help in any way I can.