Treceți la conținutul principal

How To Learn New Words Quickly and Efficiently

Image result for learn new wordsThe brain is able to learn words so quickly because it remembers how the whole word ‘looks’, a new study finds.

The researchers found that a small part of our brain is holistically tuned to recognising words as a whole, rather than as parts or through individual letters.

Dr Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at the Georgetown University Medical Center who led the study, said:
“We are not recognizing words by quickly spelling them out or identifying parts of words, as some researchers have suggested.

Instead, neurons in a small brain area remember how the whole word looks — using what could be called a visual dictionary,”
A part of the brain called the ‘visual word form area’ is vital to how we learn new words.

Close by in the visual cortex is the fusiform gyrus, an area which helps us recognise faces.

Dr Riesenhuber said:
“One area is selective for a whole face, allowing us to quickly recognize people, and the other is selective for a whole word, which helps us read quickly.”

Learn new words

For the study, 25 participants were asked to learn new words that were actually nonsense.

Their brains were scanned before and after the training to look at how it had changed.

The results showed that after learning the visual word form area began to respond to the nonsense words as though they were real words.

Dr Laurie Glezer, the study’s first authors, said:
“This study is the first of its kind to show how neurons change their tuning with learning words, demonstrating the brain’s plasticity.”
People with reading disabilities may find it easier to learn words as a whole, anecdotal evidence suggests, rather than breaking them down.

Dr Riesenhuber said:
“For people who cannot learn words by phonetically spelling them out — which is the usual method for teaching reading — learning the whole word as a visual object may be a good strategy.
The visual word form area does not care how the word sounds, just how the letters of the word look together.

The fact that this kind of learning only happens in one very small part of the brain is a nice example of selective plasticity in the brain.”
The study is published in The Journal of Neuroscience (Glezer et al., 2015).

Author: dr. Jeremy Dean
sursa: psyblog
About the author
Dr Jeremy Dean is a psychologist and the author of PsyBlog and HealthiestBlog.com. His latest book is "Making Habits, Breaking Habits: How to Make Changes That Stick". You can follow PsyBlog by email, by RSS feed, on Twitter and Google+.

sursa foto: directenglish.uz

Postări populare de pe acest blog

Subway Performer Mike Yung - Unchained Melody (23rd Street Viral Sensation)

Engleza și franceza în dialect oltenesc. Greșeli monumentale pentru străinii care vin la Brâncuși

Foto: Radu Ciocoiu/Facebook via adevarul.ro Turiștii străini care ajung în Gorj ar face bine să citească Wikipedia  înainte. Și asta pentru că panourile informative și cărțile poștale despre Ansamblul Monumental „Constantin Brâncuși” conțin mari greșeli de traducere. În Târgu Jiu, turiștii pot cumpăra de la Centrul de Informare Turistică Brâncuși vederi cu marile opere ale sculptorului român: Coloana Infinitului, Poarta Sărutului, Aleea Scaunelor, Masa Tăcerii. Numai că traducătorii gorjeni au reușit teribila „performanță” de a greși două dintre numele acestor monumente: – numele în franceză al Coloanei Infinitului este „LA COLO N E SANS FIN” (varianta corectă este „LA COLO NN E SANS FIN” ); – numele în franceză al Mesei Tăcerii este „LA TABLE DU SIL A NCE” (varianta corectă este „LA TABLE DU SIL E NCE” . „Este foarte probabil ca denumirile să fi fost traduse de oameni slab pregătiţi, care nu au consultat nici măcar un dicţionar şi s-au grăbit. ...

Is this The end? Australian inventor creates a special character - Ћ - to replace English language's most common word

It is the most commonly used word in the English language. But, if an Australian restaurateur has his way, our use of 'the' could be about to change forever. Paul Mathis, from Melbourne, has designed the letter 'Ћ' as a replacement for 'the'. Idea: Paul Mathis, from Melbourne, has designed the symbol above as a replacement for 'the'. This is a scene from a promotional video   The businessman is now lobbying Apple asking to promote his app, which features the character in its iTunes store. In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, he said: 'The word "and" is only the fifth-most used word in English and it has its own symbol – the ampersand. 'Isn’t it time we accorded the same respect to "the"?' As reported by The Telegraph, Mr Mathis, who has opened more than 20 restaurants and hotels across Australia, has invested AUS $38,000 (£23,500) in the new app. But despite his optimism, it has s...