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LEARNING LANGUAGE: NEWINSIGHTS INTO HOWBRAIN FUNCTIONS

For most native English-speakers, learning the Mandarin Chinese language from scratch is no easy task.

Learning it in a class that essentially compresses a one-semester college course into a single month of intensive instruction -- and agreeing to have your brain scanned before and after -- might seem even more daunting.

But the 24 Americans who did just that have enabled University of Delaware cognitive neuroscientist Zhenghan Qi and her colleagues to make new discoveries about how adults learn a foreign language.

The study, published in May in the journal NeuroImage, focused on the roles of the brain's left and right hemispheres in language acquisition. The findings could lead to instructional methods that potentially improve students' success in learning a new language.

"The left hemisphere is known as the language-learning part of the brain, but we found that it was the right hemisphere that determined the eventual success" in learning Mandarin, said Qi, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science.

"This was new," she said. "For decades, everyone has focused on the left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere has been largely overlooked."

The left hemisphere is undoubtedly important in language learning, Qi said, noting that clinical research on individuals with speech disorders has indicated that the left side of the brain is in many ways the hub of language processing.

But, she said, before any individuals -- infants learning their native language or adults learning a second language -- begin processing such aspects of the new language as vocabulary and grammar, they must first learn to identify its basic sounds or phonological elements.

It's during that process of distinguishing "acoustic details" of sounds where the right side of the brain is key, according to the new findings.

Researchers began by exposing the 24 participants in the study to pairs of sounds that were similar but began with different consonants, such as "bah" and "nah," and having them describe the tones, Qi said.

"We asked: Were the tones of those two sounds similar or different?" she said. "We used the brain activation patterns during this task to predict who would be the most successful learners" of the new language.

The study continued by teaching the participants in a setting designed to replicate a college language class, although the usual semester was condensed into four weeks of instruction. Students attended class for three and a half hours a day, five days a week, completed homework assignments and took tests.

"Our research is the first to look at attainment and long-term retention of real-world language learned in a classroom setting, which is how most people learn a new language," Qi said.

By scanning each participant's brain with functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) at the beginning and end of the project, the scientists were able to see which part of the brain was most engaged while processing basic sound elements in Mandarin. To their surprise, they found that -- although, as expected, the left hemisphere showed a substantial increase of activation later in the learning process -- the right hemisphere in the most successful learners was most active in the early, sound-recognition stage.

"It turns out that the right hemisphere is very important in processing foreign speech sounds at the beginning of learning," Qi said. She added that the right hemisphere's role then seems to diminish in those successful learners as they continue learning the language.

Additional research will investigate whether the findings apply to those learning other languages, not just Mandarin. The eventual goal is to explore whether someone can practice sound recognition early in the process of learning a new language to potentially improve their success.

"We found that the more active the right hemisphere is, the more sensitive the listener is to acoustic differences in sound," Qi said. "Everyone has different levels of activation, but even if you don't have that sensitivity to begin with, you can still learn successfully if your brain is plastic enough."

Researchers can't say for certain how to apply these findings to real-life learning, but when it comes down to it, "Adults are trainable," Qi said. "They can train themselves to become more sensitive to foreign speech sounds."

( S o u r c e : U n i v e r s i t y o f D e l a w a r e . " L e a r n i n g l a n g u a g e : N e w i n s i g h t s i n t o h o w b r a i n f u n c t i o n s . " S c i e n c e D a i l y .<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190508093716.htm> ScienceDaily, 8 May 2019).

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Sem definição sobre crédito suplementar, CNPq suspende apoio para novos bolsistas.

Ao G1, Ministério da Economia diz que ainda avalia pedido de crédito suplementar para cobrir o déficit de mais de R$ 300 milhões, feito pelo MCTIC em 1º de março.

Por Ana Carolina Moreno, G1

16/08/2019 00h01 Atualizado há 2 dias.

Sem resposta do governo federal sobre a garantia de abertura de crédito suplementar para cobrir o déficit do orçamento de 2019, o Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) anunciou, na tarde desta quinta-feira (15), que suspendeu a assinatura de novos contratos de bolsas de estudo e pesquisa.

“O CNPq informa a suspensão de indicações de bolsistas, uma vez que recebemos indicações de que não haverá recomposição integral do orçamento de 2019”, disse o CNPq em nota. “Dessa forma, estamos tomando as medidas necessárias para minimizar as consequências desta restrição”.

A recomposição, segundo informou o órgão ao G1, se refere ao crédito suplementar de R$ 330 milhões. Quem abre o crédito é o Ministério da Economia, mas, de acordo com o conselho, até a tarde desta quinta a pasta não havia dado garantias de que liberaria o reforço orçamentário.

Ao G1, o Ministério da Economia afirmou, na noite desta quinta, que o pedido de crédito suplementar para o CNPq, feito em 1º de março e referendado em votação no Congresso Nacional em 11 de junho, ainda “permanece em análise na JEO [a Junta de Execução Orçamentária], sem prazo para decidir sobre o pleito.”

Esse recurso é necessário para cobrir o déficit previsto pelo CNPq desde o ano passado, quando a Lei Orçamentária Anual (LOA) de 2019 foi aprovada, para as bolsas.

Nesta semana, o presidente do CNPq, João Luiz Filgueiras, se reuniu tanto com o ministro da Ciência e Tecnologia (MCTIC), Marcos Pontes, quanto com o Ministério da Economia para tratar sobre o assunto do déficit orçamentário de 2019 e da elaboração do orçamento para 2020.

Com a suspensão de novas bolsas, o CNPq espera concentrar o que ainda tem garantido no orçamento de 2019 para cumprir o compromisso com os pesquisadores que têm bolsa vigente, mas, como mostrou o G1 neste domingo (11), com pouco mais de um terço do ano pela frente, resta ao conselho apenas 12% da verba prevista até dezembro.

Fonte: https://g1.globo.com/educacao/noticia/2019/08/16/sem-definicao-sobre-credito-suplementar-cnpq-suspende-apoio-para-novos-bolsistas.ghtml.