早教有理:以為忘了 其實(shí)沒忘

Human memory isn’t perfect but its also far more plastic than some people give it credit. For instance, a new study found that the earliest traces of a language can stay with us well into adulthood even if today we can no longer understand, let alone speak the language. According to the paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, this subconscious knowledge can then be exploited to speed up the language acquisition process.

人類記憶并不完美，但它遠(yuǎn)比人們所認(rèn)為的更加靈活。一項(xiàng)新研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，生命初期的語言痕跡能夠跟隨我們直到成年，哪怕我們不再理解它、也不再說它。人們能夠利用這種潛意識(shí)知識(shí)，加速語言習(xí)得過程。

The findings were reported by an international team of Dutch and South Korean researchers who studied 29 Korean-born Dutch speakers and an equal-sized native Dutch-speaking control group. The first group was essentially made of people born in Korea but adopted by Dutch families before the age of six. With no exception, all participants reported they could not speak a word in Korean.

荷蘭與韓國(guó)的研究人員進(jìn)行了一項(xiàng)研究。他們招募了29名出生于韓國(guó)、但在六歲之前被荷蘭家庭收養(yǎng)的荷蘭人，并將同等數(shù)量的荷蘭語母語者作為控制組。所有參與者都表示自己一個(gè)韓國(guó)詞匯都不會(huì)說。

For two weeks, the adoptees were trained to identify three Korean consonants and asked to reproduce them. These sounds were unlike anything in the Dutch language.

他們接受為期兩周的訓(xùn)練，學(xué)習(xí)辨認(rèn)三種韓語輔音，并學(xué)會(huì)發(fā)音。這些發(fā)音與荷蘭語一點(diǎn)都不像。

At the end of the training period, the participants’ attempts at Korean utterances were rated by native Koreans. Ultimately, the researchers found that the adoptees improved far quicker across the training period than the control group.

訓(xùn)練結(jié)束時(shí)，韓語母語者為其韓語發(fā)音進(jìn)行打分。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，收養(yǎng)組的提高速度遠(yuǎn)高于控制組。

The most striking find, however, was that the rate of learning was just as accelerated even for those adopted before the age of six months. At this age, babies can’t speak but the experiment proves there’s some kind of assimilation that subconsciously stays with us well into adulthood.

最令人震驚的實(shí)驗(yàn)結(jié)論是：哪怕在六個(gè)月前就被領(lǐng)養(yǎng)，其學(xué)習(xí)速率依舊能夠加速。實(shí)驗(yàn)表明，盡管六個(gè)月前的嬰兒尚不會(huì)開口說話，但某些語言同化能夠在潛意識(shí)中跟隨著人們，直至成年。

“One of the most interesting findings was that no difference showed in the learning results of those Korean-born participants adopted under six months of age and those adopted after the age of seventeen months,” explained Mirjam Broersma, who is a language scientist at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI). “This means that even in the very early months of life, useful language knowledge is laid down, and what has been retained about the birth language is abstract knowledge about what patterns are possible, not, for instance, words.”

在出生于韓國(guó)的參與者中，無論被收養(yǎng)于6個(gè)月前、還是17個(gè)月后，其學(xué)習(xí)結(jié)果并不存在差異。也就是說，哪怕是在極早的生命初期，語言知識(shí)也已貯存在我們的大腦中。此外，這個(gè)階段保留下來的是一些抽象語言知識(shí)(哪些語言模式是可能的)，而非詞匯之類的具體知識(shí)。

The first six months of our lives can be very wild and there’s a lot we learn in this short time. It was never clear up to now, however, how much of that learning is retained even if there’s no further input from a language. Whatever’s the case, for the thousands of people who were adopted internationally this may come as good news, especially for those looking to reconnect with their ancestral roots — the people, culture, and language of their birthplace.

生命的最初六個(gè)月非常混亂，我們能夠在極短時(shí)間內(nèi)學(xué)習(xí)大量事物。但此前，人們并不知道在沒有持續(xù)輸入的情況下，嬰兒所習(xí)得的語言知識(shí)能夠保留多少。如今，對(duì)成千上萬的跨國(guó)領(lǐng)養(yǎng)兒童來說，這項(xiàng)研究或許是個(gè)好消息——尤其是對(duì)那些希望尋根的人而言。

Previously, researchers from McGill University, Canada performed a similar experiment with children from China adopted in France. They found the participants’ brain activity carried the same response as bilinguals even though by all accounts they looked monolingual. Bilinguals get distracted less easily, are better at multitasking, find creative solutions to problems more often, have increased memory capacity, and lower risk of Alzheimer’s. So, it seems that being exposed to a foreign language very early on can have lasting benefits later in life.

先前，加拿大麥吉爾大學(xué)的研究人員曾在法國(guó)進(jìn)行過類似研究，研究對(duì)象是出生于中國(guó)的領(lǐng)養(yǎng)兒童。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管這些人貌似只會(huì)說一種語言，但他們和雙語者的大腦活動(dòng)反應(yīng)是一樣的。雙語者更不容易被干擾、更擅長(zhǎng)處理多重任務(wù)、更容易找到創(chuàng)造性的解決方法、記憶容量更大、阿爾茲海默患病率更低……所以，早早聆聽外語似乎能夠擁有持久的功效。