I want you to take a look at this baby. What you're drawn to are her eyes and the skin you love to touch. But today I'm going to talk to you about something you can't see. What's going on up in that little brain of hers. The modern tools of neuroscience are demonstrating to us that what's going on up there is nothing short of rocket science. And what we're learning is going to shed some light on what the romantic writers and poets described as the "celestial openness" of the child's mind.
Poglejte tega dojenčka. Izstopajo njene oči in mehka koža. Danes pa bom govorila o nečem nevidnem, in sicer o dogajanju v njenih možganih. S sodobnimi orodji nevroznanosti lahko vidimo, da so procesi v možganih primer neverjetne znanosti. Kar raziskujemo, bo osvetlilo področje, ki mu romantični pisci in pesniki pravijo "nebeška odprtost" otroškega uma.
What we see here is a mother in India, and she's speaking Koro, which is a newly discovered language. And she's talking to her baby. What this mother -- and the 800 people who speak Koro in the world -- understands is that, to preserve this language, they need to speak it to the babies. And therein lies a critical puzzle. Why is it that you can't preserve a language by speaking to you and I, to the adults? Well, it's got to do with your brain. What we see here is that language has a critical period for learning. The way to read this slide is to look at your age on the horizontal axis.
Tu vidimo mati v Indiji, ki govori jezik koro, pred kratkim odkrit jezik. Pogovarja se s svojim otrokom. Ta mati in še 800 govorcev kora ve, da morajo za ohranitev jezika govoriti s svojimi otroki. V tem tiči ključ. Zakaj se jezika ne da ohraniti preko govora med odraslimi, med mano in vami? Razlog je v možganih. Tu vidimo, da ima jezik kritično obdobje za učenje. Na vodoravni osi je starost v letih.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And you'll see on the vertical your skill at acquiring a second language. The babies and children are geniuses until they turn seven, and then there's a systematic decline. After puberty, we fall off the map. No scientists dispute this curve, but laboratories all over the world are trying to figure out why it works this way.
Navpična os pa prikazuje vašo sposobnost osvajanja novega jezika. Dojenčki in otroci so geniji do njihovega sedmega leta, nato pa ta sposobnost upada. Po puberteti gre samo še navzdol. Znanstveniki tem dejstvom ne oporekajo, laboratoriji po vsem svetu pa poskušajo dognati, zakaj pride do tega.
Work in my lab is focused on the first critical period in development, and that is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their language. We think, by studying how the sounds are learned, we'll have a model for the rest of language, and perhaps for critical periods that may exist in childhood for social, emotional and cognitive development. So we've been studying the babies using a technique that we're using all over the world and the sounds of all languages. The baby sits on a parent's lap, and we train them to turn their heads when a sound changes -- like from "ah" to "ee." If they do so at the appropriate time, the black box lights up and a panda bear pounds a drum. A six-monther adores the task.
V našem laboratoriju se osredotočamo na prvo kritično obdobje razvoja, obdobje, v katerem dojenčki poskušajo ugotoviti, kateri glasovi pripadajo njihovemu jeziku. S preučevanjem učenja glasov želimo doseči model za ostala področja jezika in morda celo za kritična obdobja otroštva za socialni, čustveni in spoznavni razvoj. Dojenčke smo preučevali s tehniko, razširjeno po vsem svetu, in z zvoki vseh jezikov. Dojenček sedi v starševem naročju, mi pa jih naučimo, da se obrnejo vsakič, ko se zvok spremeni, kot iz "a" v "i". Če jim to uspe ob pravem trenutku, se črna škatla zasveti in panda udari na boben. Šestmesečni malčki obožujejo to nalogo.
What have we learned? Well, babies all over the world are what I like to describe as "citizens of the world." They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter what country we're testing and what language we're using, and that's remarkable because you and I can't do that. We're culture-bound listeners. We can discriminate the sounds of our own language, but not those of foreign languages. So the question arises: When do those citizens of the world turn into the language-bound listeners that we are? And the answer: before their first birthdays. What you see here is performance on that head-turn task for babies tested in Tokyo and the United States, here in Seattle, as they listened to "ra" and "la" -- sounds important to English, but not to Japanese. So at six to eight months, the babies are totally equivalent. Two months later, something incredible occurs. The babies in the United States are getting a lot better, babies in Japan are getting a lot worse, but both of those groups of babies are preparing for exactly the language that they are going to learn.
Kaj smo ugotovili? Dojenčki celega sveta so, kakor jim sama pravim, državljani sveta. Lahko razločijo vse glasove vseh jezikov, ne glede na državo in jezik, kar je izjemno, saj mi tega ne zmoremo. Mi smo družbeno omejeni poslušalci. Lahko razločimo glasove našega jezika, ne pa tudi tujih jezikov. Postavlja se vprašanje, kdaj se ti državljani sveta spremenijo v družbeno omejene poslušalce. Odgovor pa je: pred prvim rojstnim dnem. Tu vidite, kako so se na nalogo obračanja glave odzvali dojenčki v Tokiju in ZDA, tu v Seattlu, ko so poslušali glasove "ra" in "la", ki so pomembni za angleščino, a ne za japonščino. Dojenčki, stari med šest in osem let, se ne razlikujejo. Po dveh mesecih pa se zgodi nekaj neverjetnega. Dojenčkom iz ZDA gre veliko bolje, japonskim pa veliko slabše, saj se obe skupini otrok pripravljata na jezik, ki se ga bosta naučili.
So the question is: What's happening during this critical two-month period? This is the critical period for sound development, but what's going on up there? So there are two things going on. The first is that the babies are listening intently to us, and they're taking statistics as they listen to us talk -- they're taking statistics. So listen to two mothers speaking motherese -- the universal language we use when we talk to kids -- first in English and then in Japanese.
Zanima nas, kaj se dogaja v tej dvomesečni kritični dobi? To je kritično obdobje za razvoj zvoka, a kaj se dogaja v možganih? Dve stvari. Prvič, dojenčki nas pozorno poslušajo in med poslušanjem izvajajo statistiko. Poslušajte dve materi, ki govorita materinsko, univerzalen jezik za govorjenje otrokom, v angleščini in nato v japonščini.
(Video) Ah, I love your big blue eyes -- so pretty and nice.
(Video) V angleščini: O, kakšne lepe velike modre oči imaš, tako lepe in srčkane.
(Japanese)
(Japonščina)
Patricia Kuhl: During the production of speech, when babies listen, what they're doing is taking statistics on the language that they hear. And those distributions grow. And what we've learned is that babies are sensitive to the statistics, and the statistics of Japanese and English are very, very different. English has a lot of Rs and Ls. The distribution shows. And the distribution of Japanese is totally different, where we see a group of intermediate sounds, which is known as the Japanese "R." So babies absorb the statistics of the language and it changes their brains; it changes them from the citizens of the world to the culture-bound listeners that we are. But we as adults are no longer absorbing those statistics. We are governed by the representations in memory that were formed early in development.
Medtem ko mi govorimo, dojenčki poslušajo in delajo statistiko jezika, ki ga slišijo. Te porazdelitve rastejo. Ugotovili smo, da dojenčki razumejo statistiko, ki pa se med angleščino in japonščino zelo razlikuje. Angleščina ima veliko r-jev in l-jev. To lahko vidimo na tabeli. Porazdelitev pri japonščini je zelo drugačna, kjer vidimo skupino vmesnega glasu, znanega kot "japonski r". Dojenčki prevzamejo statistiko jezika, kar vpliva na njihove možgane in jih iz državljanov sveta spremeni v kulturno omejene poslušalce, kot smo mi. Mi odrasli teh statistik ne prepoznamo več. Vodijo nas predstave v spominu, ki izhajajo iz zgodnjega razvoja.
So what we're seeing here is changing our models of what the critical period is about. We're arguing from a mathematical standpoint that the learning of language material may slow down when our distributions stabilize. It's raising lots of questions about bilingual people. Bilinguals must keep two sets of statistics in mind at once and flip between them, one after the other, depending on who they're speaking to.
Ugotovitve torej spreminjajo naša videnja kritičnega obdobja. Z matematičnega stališča trdimo, da se učenje jezikovne snovi upočasnjuje z umirjanjem statistik. Veliko vprašanj se pojavlja o dvojezičnih ljudeh. Dvojezični morajo namreč ohranjati dva niza statistik in izmenično izbirati med njima glede na njihovega sogovorca.
So we asked ourselves, can the babies take statistics on a brand new language? And we tested this by exposing American babies who'd never heard a second language to Mandarin for the first time during the critical period. We knew that, when monolinguals were tested in Taipei and Seattle on the Mandarin sounds, they showed the same pattern. Six to eight months, they're totally equivalent. Two months later, something incredible happens. But the Taiwanese babies are getting better, not the American babies. What we did was expose American babies, during this period, to Mandarin. It was like having Mandarin relatives come and visit for a month and move into your house and talk to the babies for 12 sessions. Here's what it looked like in the laboratory.
Vprašali smo se, ali lahko dojenčki ustvarijo statistiko povsem novega jezika? Za ta namen smo ameriške dojenčke, ki še niso slišali drugega jezika, mandarinščini izpostavili prvič v kritičnem obdobju. Vedeli smo, da so enojezični dojenčki v Taipeju in Seattlu ob poslušanju glasov mandarinščine pokazali enak vzorec. Med šestimi in osmimi meseci med njimi ni bilo razlik. Po dveh mesecih pa se je zgodilo nekaj neverjetnega. Tajvanski dojenčki so postajali boljši, ameriški pa zaostajali. Ameriške dojenčke smo v tem obdodju izpostavili mandarinščini. Kot bi prišli na enomesečni obisk sorodniki s Kitajske, se nastanili k vam domov in se dvanajstkrat pogovarjali z otroki. Tako je bilo to videti pri nas.
(Mandarin)
(Video) (V mandarinščini)
PK: So what have we done to their little brains?
Kaj smo naredili tem malim možganom?
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
We had to run a control group to make sure that coming into the laboratory didn't improve your Mandarin skills. So a group of babies came in and listened to English. And we can see from the graph that exposure to English didn't improve their Mandarin. But look at what happened to the babies exposed to Mandarin for 12 sessions. They were as good as the babies in Taiwan who'd been listening for 10 and a half months. What it demonstrated is that babies take statistics on a new language. Whatever you put in front of them, they'll take statistics on.
Nadzorna skupina je morala zagotoviti, da si zgolj s prihodom v laboratorij ni izboljšala znanja mandarinščine. Nato je prišla skupina dojenčkov in poslušala angleščino. Na prikazu lahko vidimo, da izpostavljenost angleščini ni izboljšala njihove mandarinščine. Kaj pa se zgodi dojenčkom, izpostavljenim mandarinščini v 12 nizih? Postali so tako dobri kot tajvanski dojenčki, ki so svoj jezik poslušali deset mesecev in pol. Izkazalo se je, da dojenčki ustvarijo statistiko novega jezika. Karkoli jim predstavite, bodo spremenili v statistiko.
But we wondered what role the human being played in this learning exercise. So we ran another group of babies in which the kids got the same dosage, the same 12 sessions, but over a television set. And another group of babies who had just audio exposure and looked at a teddy bear on the screen. What did we do to their brains? What you see here is the audio result -- no learning whatsoever -- and the video result -- no learning whatsoever. It takes a human being for babies to take their statistics. The social brain is controlling when the babies are taking their statistics.
Spraševali smo se, kakšnega pomena ima človek pri teh vajah učenja. Druga skupina dojenčkov je bila prav tako na 12 nizih, ki pa so potekali preko tv sprejemnika, tretja skupina pa je poslušala le zvoke in gledala medvedka na ekranu. Kaj smo naredili z njihovimi možgani? Tu vidite rezultat poslušanja, pri katerem učenje ne napreduje, ter rezultat gledanja in poslušanja, prav tako brez napredka. Le človeško posredovanje jezika omogoči dojenčkom ustvarjanje statistik. Njihovi socialni možgani odločajo, kdaj lahko pride do statistike.
We want to get inside the brain and see this thing happening as babies are in front of televisions, as opposed to in front of human beings. Thankfully, we have a new machine, magnetoencephalography, that allows us to do this. It looks like a hair dryer from Mars. But it's completely safe, completely noninvasive and silent. We're looking at millimeter accuracy with regard to spatial and millisecond accuracy using 306 SQUIDs -- these are superconducting quantum interference devices -- to pick up the magnetic fields that change as we do our thinking. We're the first in the world to record babies in an MEG machine while they are learning.
Radi bi vstopili v možgane in od blizu videli, kaj se dogaja, ko so dojenčki pred TV sprejemnikom oz. poslušajo druge ljudi. Na srečo imamo novo napravo, imenovano magnetni encefalogram, ki nam to omogoča. Videti je kot marsovska havba. Je popolnoma varna, neinvazivna in tiha. Z milimetrsko natančnostjo v prostorskem smislu in v časovnem do milisekunde točno, preko 306 SQUIDov - superprevodnih naprav za kvantno interferenco - lahko opazujemo magnetna polja, ki se spreminjajo glede na misli. Prvi na svetu smo posneli dojenčke z napravo MEG med njihovim učenjem.
So this is little Emma. She's a six-monther. And she's listening to various languages in the earphones that are in her ears. You can see, she can move around. We're tracking her head with little pellets in a cap, so she's free to move completely unconstrained. It's a technical tour de force. What are we seeing? We're seeing the baby brain. As the baby hears a word in her language, the auditory areas light up, and then subsequently areas surrounding it that we think are related to coherence, getting the brain coordinated with its different areas, and causality, one brain area causing another to activate.
To je mala Emma. Stara je šest mesecev. Različne jezike posluša preko slušalk v ušesih. Kot vidite, se lahko giblje. Njeno glavo spremljamo preko kroglic v kapici, zato je prosta, da se giblje. Priča smo izjemnemu dosežku. Kaj vidimo? Dojenčkove možgane. Ko zasliši besedo v njenem jeziku, se odzovejo območja za slušno zaznavanje in za njimi sosednja območja, za katera menimo, da so povezana s koherenco oz. uskladitvijo možganov med različnimi območji, in vzročnostjo, ki povzroči, da eno področje spodbudi drugo.
We are embarking on a grand and golden age of knowledge about child's brain development. We're going to be able to see a child's brain as they experience an emotion, as they learn to speak and read, as they solve a math problem, as they have an idea. And we're going to be able to invent brain-based interventions for children who have difficulty learning. Just as the poets and writers described, we're going to be able to see, I think, that wondrous openness, utter and complete openness, of the mind of a child. In investigating the child's brain, we're going to uncover deep truths about what it means to be human, and in the process, we may be able to help keep our own minds open to learning for our entire lives.
Začenjamo z veliko in zlato dobo poznavanja razvoja otroških možganov. Lahko jih bomo opazovali med doživljanjem čustev, med učenjem govora in branja, reševanja matematičnega problema ali ko dobijo zamisel. Lahko bomo izvedli posege na možganih za otroke, ki imajo učne težave. Kot so že pesniki in pisci opisali, mislim, da bomo lahko videli čudovito odprtost, popolno in celovito odprtost otroškega uma. Preučevanje otroških možganov nas bo privedlo do globokih resnic o pomenu biti človek in tako bomo morda lahko ohranili naše misli odprte za učenje skozi celo življenje.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)