A scientist who studied the people of the Piraha tribe in Brazil, whose language has no words to describe quantities, discovered that they are unable to mentally grasp a connection of more than two objects * Researchers from Hong Kong discovered that the Chinese language activates different areas of the brain than those activated by English
Yuval Dror, Haaretz, voila!
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Research: Dyslexia varies according to the language spoken
2/9/04
Yuval Dror, Haaretz
"The brain will activate circuits that are not damaged" (photo illustration) Researchers from Hong Kong discovered that the Chinese language activates different areas of the brain than those activated by English, and concluded that the cause of dyslexia is not universal
More in the article:
The reason for the difference: Chinese is made up of graph symbols and not letters »
Dyslexia is apparently not directly related to a certain area of the brain »
Dyslexia is a disability in the brain's ability to translate the graphic sign (letter) into a sound or syllable. In recent years, evidence has been found that a functional impairment in a certain area of the brain is responsible for the problem. But what happens in the minds of the Chinese, who write in a language composed of ideas and words rather than letters and syllables?
A group of researchers who examined the issue found that Chinese dyslexia manifests itself in a functional impairment in a completely different area of the brain, and hence concluded that the brain is able to read language in different ways, by activating different areas. "The meaning is that if dyslexia is detected early enough, the reading strategy can be changed so that the brain activates other circuits that are not damaged," says Dr. Yael Leitner, director of the neurology and child development unit at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba.
Language decoding is a type of code decoding. The reader looks at a graphic symbol, such as the letter A, and translates it into a sound (phoneme). When we read, we group the letters into groups and connect the sounds associated with them, and this is how a word is formed. When we write, we do the opposite: extract a graphic sign that is part of the set of syllables that make up the word. This mechanism is not normal in the dyslexic and therefore they have difficulty in writing and reading.
Today it is estimated that about 5%-10% of the public school students suffer from dyslexia at various levels, dyslexia is more common among boys than among girls. In the past, researchers believed that dyslexia is related to a visual disorder that prevents the child from seeing the letters properly, and therefore it was called "congenital word blindness".
In recent years, evidence has been found that a malfunction of an area of the brain, known as the left temporoparietal area, is responsible for the problem. Some scientists even claimed that the defect in this area is the universal cause of dyslexia. The meaning of the claim is that dyslexics who speak Hebrew, English, Chinese and other languages share the same impairment, in the same area of the brain.
The reason for the difference: Chinese is made up of graph symbols and not letters
Researchers from the University of Hong Kong, led by Wei Tink Siok decided to test the theory. The results of their research were published in the journal
"Nature". The reason for this is due to the differences between the different languages. The Chinese language, as mentioned, is not built on letters that join to form sounds and syllables, but on graphic symbols that represent an idea or whole words.
The researchers asked dyslexic and non-dyslexic Chinese children to perform several tasks, in which they tested their ability to translate the graphic sign into sound and later also into meaning. At the same time, the children were examined using fMRI, a technology that shows the active areas of the brain when performing the task.
The results contradict the assumption that the cause of dyslexia is universal. It turns out that the area with the most significant activity in the Chinese when performing the various tasks is an area known as the left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG), which is mainly responsible for coordinating spatial-visual perception.
The reason for this probably lies in the fact that reading Chinese requires the child to make a threefold move of coordination between the sign, the sound and its meaning, since they are all folded inside the graphic symbol. In the Chinese children suffering from dyslexia, this area does not work as it should.
According to Dr. Leitner, the findings are very important in several respects. "The results of the study may teach us that it is different cognitive strategies for reading the language that shape the cerebral cortex. It may mean that the way you teach the language and the way the language itself is structured are directly related to the area of the brain that will decode it. Hence, the research findings place a big question mark around the prevailing theory, according to which dyslexia is directly related to a certain area of the brain and is not related to a certain language."
The researchers note in their article that the results show the importance of conducting cross-cultural studies when testing theories that assume the existence of a universal cause for various problems.
Research: It is impossible to think without words
Yuval Dror, Haaretz, 25/8/04
If the Hebrew language didn't have the word "nervous", wouldn't we be able to think of nervousness? Is it even possible to think of something without a word to describe it? The discussion of this question has continued for more than 50 years, but recently an American researcher proved that there is a connection between words and thoughts, after it became clear to him that members of a Brazilian tribe on the banks of the Amazon have no words to describe quantities.
Dr. Peter Gordon, from the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Columbia University in the US, studied the Pirahã tribe in Brazil, descendants of the Mura family who once ruled large parts of the Amazon.
Linguistically, this is one of the strangest tribes in the world. It has been known to researchers for years that they have no words to describe the different colors, they do not tell imaginary stories, they have no written language or art and their syntactic pronouns are taken from the languages of other tribes. Although they are sparing with words, they have other forms of communication - they also communicate by singing and humming, not only through speech. In addition to these peculiarities, there are no words describing numbers in the tribal language. In fact, their language does not even have the word "number", and the only quantitative words are "an amount close to one", "an amount close to two" and "many". It is possible that the people of the tribe were not required to use such words because they do not engage in barter and therefore are not required to value their property.
Even birds can count to 7
Gordon was not satisfied with documenting the exotic nature of the Piraha language and tested whether the absence of words to describe quantities affects the quantitative thinking of the tribe's people. In an article in the latest issue of the journal Science, he described the experiments he performed with six adult volunteers. For example, he placed a number of batteries on a table, and asked the subject in front of him to place a similar number of batteries. When Gordon placed one, two or three batteries, the subjects succeeded in the task. But when he placed more than four batteries, the rate of failing the test rose dramatically.
In another experiment, Gordon put several candies into a jar and took them out one by one, asking the subjects if they thought the jar was empty yet. Here, too, it turned out that when there were less than three candies in the jar, the subjects knew when they had all been taken out of it. When there were more than ten candies in the jar, the success rate dropped to zero.
Gordon claims that the subjects took the tasks seriously and it was obvious that they were trying to succeed in them. Some grouped the objects into groups of two or three or counted with their fingers, but even these methods yielded only partial success. According to Gordon, the level of success of the tribesmen is reminiscent of the calculation level of pre-verbal infants, monkeys, birds and rodents.
Advertisement The study, as expected, arouses controversy. Psychologist Dr. Lisa Figenson, from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, told the Nature.com website that the findings are "amazing": in her opinion, this is "the strongest evidence that the tribe members are unable to think of large numbers in the absence of words to describe them." Others suggest that it was sexual relations between close relatives that damaged their cognitive abilities. British scientist Brian Butterworth, who specializes in neuroscience, told the "Guardian" that the findings are very strange in his eyes, considering the fact that birds are able to count up to seven. "Perhaps there are other reasons beyond the lack of words that describe numbers, that explain the phenomenon," he said.
