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.
請大家看一看這個小嬰兒 你會被她的眼睛所吸引 你也會想摸摸她粉嫩的肌膚 但是今天我要跟大家談談你所看不到的東西 在她的小腦袋裏發生的事情。 現代的腦神經科學的儀器 能向我們顯示腦袋瓜裏發生的 是十分神奇奧妙的事。 而我們研究的結果 將會帶領我們一窺 浪漫詩人和作家所描述的 小孩心靈那有如 “天體般的公開”。
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.
這裡我們看到的 是個在印度的媽媽 她說的是一個叫做Koro的語言 這是一個新發現的語言。 她正在跟她的嬰兒講話 這個媽媽 和全世界總共800個講Koro的人 都很清楚,想要保存這個語言的話 那就必須跟新生兒說這個語言。 這裡面有個關鍵的謎題 爲什麽跟你我這樣的成年人說 是無法保存這個語言的呢? 這個,跟你我的大腦有關。 我們這裡的意思是說 學習語言有一段關鍵的時期。 這張投影片X軸是你的年齡
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
垂直的Y軸 是你學習第二外語的能力。 嬰兒和幼童在七嵗以前 都是學習語言的天才 七嵗以後能力就遞減。 青春期以後就掉到圖的外面了。 所有的科學家都同意這條曲綫 但是全世界的各大實驗室 想盡辦法要找出原因來解釋這個現象。
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.
我的實驗室裏的研究專注在 發展過程裏最早的關鍵時期 也就是嬰兒建立學習語言 用到的語音的集合的時期。 我們想,藉著研究語音是如何學起來的 我們就能把剩下的學習語言的機制建立起來, 甚至還能把嬰兒學習社交能力 情緒、認知能力的關鍵時期 也找出來。 所以我們研究小嬰兒 我們用了一個技巧 適用於各地的嬰兒和所有的語言。 我們把嬰兒放在媽媽的大腿上 我們訓練嬰兒,當聽到語音改變時會轉頭 像從“ah”變成“ee”時。 如果他們在對的時間轉頭 這個黑盒子就會亮起來 熊貓也會開始敲鼓。 六個月大的小嬰兒很喜歡這個遊戲。
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.
那麽,我們得到什麽結果? 世界上所有的嬰兒 —我常常喜歡稱呼他們為 世界公民— 都有能力去分辨所有語言的所有語音 不論我們在哪一國用哪一個語言測試。 這是了不起的,因爲這件事你我都辦不到。 我們的聽力是受到我們的文化束縛的。 我們只能分辨我們自己語言裏的語音 別的語言裏的語音我們是聼不出有什麽不同的。 所以問題就來了 什麽時候這些一生下來為世界公民的小嬰兒 會變成像你我一樣只懂得單一語言呢? 答案是:一歲以前。 你這裡看到的是嬰兒轉頭測試 在東京和在美國的 在這裡西雅圖作的 他們分別聼“ra”和“la” 這兩個在英語不一樣但在日語裏沒差別的音。 六到八個月的嬰兒的表現完全一樣 兩個月後,不可思議的事發生了。 在美國的嬰兒分辨得越來越好 在日本的卻是越來越差, 這兩組嬰兒正是同處在 準備學習母語的階段。
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.
所以,我們要問,在這關鍵的兩個月 發生了什麽事? 這個階段是語音發展的階段 在嬰兒的腦袋裏發生了什麽事? 有兩件事發生了 第一是,嬰兒很密集地聼我們的發聲 他們一邊聼一邊在腦袋中作統計 他們在做統計。 聼兩個媽媽在說「母語」—— 也就是所有的媽媽跟小孩說的話—— 先是英語,再來是日語。
(Video) Ah, I love your big blue eyes -- so pretty and nice.
(影像)美國媽媽:啊,我好喜歡你的藍眼睛 好漂亮,好美喔。
(Japanese)
日本媽媽:[日語]
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.
Patricia Kuhl :在學習語音的階段 當嬰兒聼的時候 他們是在做統計 在統計他們聽到的語言。 語音的分佈情況也會改變 我們現在知道的是 嬰兒們對語言統計很敏感 而英日語語音的統計分佈是十分不同的。 英語有很多的“R”和“L” 從這裡可以看出。 日語的語音分佈是完全不同的 我們可以看到有一群語音分佈於L和R之間 就是所謂的日語的R。 嬰兒會吸收 語言語音的統計分佈 而這會進而改變他們的腦。 這會使他們從世界公民 轉變成跟我們一樣受自己的文化所限制。 我們已經長成 不會再吸收這些統計的結果了。 我們也就受制於 早期在發展時期形成的記憶。
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.
所以我們這裡看到的 是在這個關鍵時期語音分佈模型的改變。 我們從數學的觀點來看 語言資訊的學習速度在分配達到穩定後 就會慢下來。 對會雙語的人來説,這裡面有很多疑問。 會雙語的人必須保留兩套統計資料 並且在這兩套間換來換去 隨著對話的對象不同換成不同的統計。
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.
所以我們問自己 小嬰兒可以對新的語言作統計嗎? 我們測試了這個假設, 讓處在發展關鍵時期 但從未聼過其他語言的美國嬰兒聼國語。 我們已經知道,用國語測試單語的嬰兒 在臺北或西雅圖嬰兒 他們顯示相同的模式 六、八月大的嬰兒,完全一樣。 兩個月以後,不可思議的事發生了。 臺灣的嬰兒變得更好,美國的沒有。 我們接下來讓美國的嬰兒 聼國語。 就好像有說國語的親戚來拜訪一個月 住在你家裏 並且跟嬰兒說了12場的話。 這是一段在實驗室的影片
(Mandarin)
(影片)國語:
PK: So what have we done to their little brains?
所以,這些小腦袋瓜裏發生了什麽事?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我們必須另外跑一組控制組 來證明光進一趟實驗室 是不能改善你的國語能力的。 所以有一組嬰兒來實驗室但是聼英語。 我們可以從圖上看到 對英語有所接觸並不能改善他們的國語。 但是看看聼了12場國語的嬰兒 有什麽改變? 他們的國語就跟住在臺灣 聼了十個月半國語的嬰兒一樣好。 這顯示了嬰兒有能力 對新的語言來做統計。 他們聽到的是什麽語言,他們都能做統計。
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.
我們也想知道 真人的出現在這個學習裏面 扮演著什麽樣的角色。 所以我們又測試了另一組嬰兒 也是聼了12場的國語 但是是透過電視(視覺組) 還另外有一組嬰兒同樣是由電視聼國語 但是螢幕上只有泰迪熊(聽覺組)。 這對他們的大腦有什麽影響? 這裡你看到的是聽覺組的結果 完全沒有學到什麽 這是視覺組的結果 也沒有學到東西。 所以小嬰兒只會對真人的 聲音作統計。 小嬰兒作語音統計的時候, 是由社交的大腦來控制。
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.
我們想進入大腦裏面 看看這個過程的發生 看看小嬰兒在真人和電視前 大腦裏有什麽不同。 很幸運,我們有個新的機器 腦磁圖監測儀 能幫我們做到。 這看起來像火星來的吹風機 但是這是完全安全的 非侵入性,不產生噪音。 我們的準確度可以達到一公釐 在時間上準確度 可達千分之一秒 我們使用了306個SQUID腦磁圖通道 這些都是超導體 量子干涉儀(SQUID) 這可以偵測到當我們思考時 大腦磁場的改變。 我們是全世界第一個 用腦磁儀來記錄 嬰兒學習時 腦波的變化。
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.
這是小Emma 她六個月大。 她用耳機 在聼著不同的語言。 你可以看到,她可以自由擺動 我們用她頭盔裏的小偵測器 來追蹤她的頭, 所以她可以完全自由地擺動 這是科技的精心傑作。 我們在看什麽? 我們在看嬰兒的腦袋 當嬰兒聼到她母語裏的字的時候 聽覺區會亮起來 接著臨近區域也會亮起來 我們認爲這是和連貫性有關 使大腦協調裏面不同的區域 還有因果順序 不同的區域會活化其他不同的區域
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.
在有關嬰兒大腦發展的知識上 我們進入了前所未有的 黃金時期。 我們能看見小嬰兒 當他們產生情緒 當他們學説話和閲讀 當他們思考數學問題的解答 當他們有個主意時,腦袋裏的變化。 我們也將能發明針對腦部的治療 來醫治有學習障礙的小孩。 跟詩人和作家所說的一樣 我想,我們將能夠看到 那不可思議的公開 小孩的心靈 純粹和完全的公開。 在研究小孩的大腦的同時 我們也將能解開 「人類是什麽?」這個深奧的事實, 在研究的過程中 我們也能使我們的心靈 保持在終身學習的狀態。
Thank you.
謝謝大家
(Applause)
(掌聲)