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Essay on Language Learning and the Brain
Language is one of the pillars of the human intellect. It is the principal means whereby individuals formulate thoughts and convey them to others. It plays a role in analyzing the world, in reasoning, solving problems, and planning actions. It allows us to convey memories of the past and beliefs about the future, to engage others about events that have not taken place, and to express the relations between events.
For the first year or two of life outside the womb, our brains are in the most pliable, impressionable, and receptive state they will ever be in. We begin to be shaped as our immensely receptive brain/minds interact with our early environment and interpersonal relationships. It is through this dynamic interaction with others that therapy works, for instance. It is now clear that throughout our lives, our brain/minds change in response to their engagement with others - so much so that individuals must always be seen to be integral parts of larger social systems. Indeed, part of our identity depends on establishing community and finding ways to belong. Learning, therefore, is profoundly influenced by the nature of the social relationships within which people find themselves.
A team at the University of Rochester has found that the human brain makes much more extensive use of highly complex statistics when learning a language than scientists ever realized. The research, appearing in a recent issue of Cognitive Psychology, shows that the human brain is wired to quickly grasp certain relationships between spoken sounds even though those relationships may be so complicated they're beyond our ability to consciously comprehend (Kovalik, Olsen, 1997).
For most people, the parts of the brain that process language are located in the left hemisphere..............
