早教有理:以為忘了 其實沒忘

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，但它遠比人們所認為的更加靈活。一項新研究發(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知識，加速語言習得過程。

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.

荷蘭與韓國的研究人員進行了一項研究。他們招募了29名出生于韓國、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韓國詞匯都不會說。

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練，學習辨認三種韓語輔音，并學會發(fā)音。這些發(fā)音與荷蘭語一點都不像。

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.

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

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.

最令人震驚的實驗結(jié)論是：哪怕在六個月前就被領養(yǎng)，其學習速率依舊能夠加速。實驗表明，盡管六個月前的嬰兒尚不會開口說話，但某些語言同化能夠在潛意識中跟隨著人們，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.”

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

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.

生命的最初六個月非?；靵y，我們能夠在極短時間內(nèi)學習大量事物。但此前，人們并不知道在沒有持續(xù)輸入的情況下，嬰兒所習得的語言知識能夠保留多少。如今，對成千上萬的跨國領養(yǎng)兒童來說，這項研究或許是個好消息——尤其是對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，加拿大麥吉爾大學的研究人員曾在法國進行過類似研究，研究對象是出生于中國的領養(yǎng)兒童。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管這些人貌似只會說一種語言，但他們和雙語者的大腦活動反應是一樣的。雙語者更不容易被干擾、更擅長處理多重任務、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。