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How We Learn to Talk

Recent research has identified the first gene linked to speech, SPCH1, which may help explain how humans learn to talk and how language evolved. Brain imaging studies indicate that language processing involves complex interactions between different brain areas, challenging the notion of a linear problem-solving approach. Additionally, early language exposure and specific learning techniques, such as using single words and engaging in reading games, significantly enhance children's language acquisition.

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Mariana Liria
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15 views

How We Learn to Talk

Recent research has identified the first gene linked to speech, SPCH1, which may help explain how humans learn to talk and how language evolved. Brain imaging studies indicate that language processing involves complex interactions between different brain areas, challenging the notion of a linear problem-solving approach. Additionally, early language exposure and specific learning techniques, such as using single words and engaging in reading games, significantly enhance children's language acquisition.

Uploaded by

Mariana Liria
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HOW WE LEARN TO TALK

Talk about a dream gene

"Brain scans are revealing how we think and may help scientists discover how we learn to talk.
Deborah Smith reports."
The three-year-old's pleas are piercing and persistent. "I want Elizabeth's blue dinosaur now!"
Embroiled in the noisy family battles that ensue when children begin to articulate their desires, it is
easy to forget what an extraordinary achievement such a cry represents.

We are the only species to employ complicated syntax and a large vocabulary to communicate. And
many master much of it by three.As Darwin noted in 1871: "Man has an instinctive tendency to speak,
as we see in the babble of our young children, while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew
or write."

How does our brain do it?

This week geneticists provided a clue, with the discovery of the first gene linked to speech. They found
it by studying the DNA of a London family, half of whose members cannot talk intelligibly. The
unfortunate British family have just one wrong "letter" among the 6,500 letters that make up the
gene, yet the impact is profound.
The discovery opens up the tantalising possibility of comparing the equivalent gene in chimpanzees
and other primates, which could reveal how human language evolved.
The gene, dubbed SPCH1, is also thought to control other genes responsible for building the brain
circuitry that underlies language and speech, and the search is now on for them.
Other scientists, however, caution that genes will never explain fully our unique ability to talk.

A University of Queensland researcher, Dr Greig de Zubicaray, says it has long been known that if
people don't learn a language early enough in life, they will never be fluent in it. "So the contribution
of nurture to nature is tremendous in language."
De Zubicaray believes the latest "non-invasive" brain-scanning techniques will do much to help
unravel the labyrinthine workings of the healthy brain.
Previously researchers had to rely on people with brain damage - those, for example, who lost the
ability to name particular objects - to study the complexities of human language.

De Zubicaray uses functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, in which a person lies encased in a
powerful magnet. The equipment measures changes in blood oxygen levels in different parts of the
brain as the person performs different mental tasks.
There are restrictions in Australia on young children participating in these experiments, even though
kids often enjoy lying in claustrophobic tunnels they build themselves at home, he says.
He believes comparing the brain activity associated with language tasks from childhood up would be a
promising approach.

The prevailing wisdom is that our brains automatically put different items into categories. If we are
asked, for example, to name the group to which a carrot belongs, we can do this more quickly than if
asked to name a group to which a carrot does not belong.
De Zubicaray's brain-imaging studies show that the brain has to suppress the normal "vegetable"
category response before it can begin to generate the new category answer.
In research to be published later this year he has also studied the fact that people can quickly name a
picture of a cat, if they hear the word dog, but are slower if they hear a word from a different
category, such as box.
The brain-imaging results show that two areas of the brain are active, one associated with interpreting
sounds of words, the other with processing concepts.
This supports the theory that the brain is not like a computer, solving problems, step by step. Rather,
there is a feedback loop between different bits doing different things.
"It is this multiplicity which makes the brain such a useful tool," he says.

The power of fMRI was demonstrated in a study published last week by an American team, who
claimed they could tell which category of object people were looking at - such as faces, houses, shoes
and chairs - just from their brain activity.
Last month, an unusual study of three children with profoundly deaf parents found that the babies
began to babble silently in sign language.
This finding supports the theory that vocal babbling is not just jaw exercises but a critical first step in
learning to speak.

Other recent language research is more practical, showing that young children learn to speak more
quickly when parents use single words in isolation - an instinctive tendency.
And reading and rhyming games are good. The better infants are at distinguishing the different parts
of words, the better they will be later using more complex language, researchers say.

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