rationalskepticism.org

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Yep, a lot of our creative and novel behaviors come about as a result of poor stimulus control, and the behavior can overgeneralise to other situations. Problem solving is an example of poor stimulus control, where we apply solutions from one situation to a completely novel problem. So I don't see why the same concept couldn't be applied to language.

Let me see if I've got this right. Problem solving comes about as a result of botched learning processes?? Now I'm thoroughly confused. Especially because I seem to remember you saying (on another thread) something to the effect that people can be trained to behave creatively. And because I thought humans were supposed to be excellent learners, but now you seem to be saying that we are great at not learning very effectively, which results in, well, effective behaviour in novel situations ...

Could be! I don't know enough about it to know, but I like lateral thinking like that.

Yes, I like the results of poor stimulus control as well.

katja z wrote:But, with all that we can learn, I'd be surprised if we couldn't (re)train the ear to hear new distinctions (again), just like painters get very good with colours, or oenologists with taste, etc - I don't think we need to assume early exposure to other languages as the determining factor.

Probably true, and I think I had this discussion with some a while back.. Oh no, I think I was discussing teaching people perfect pitch. Same idea though, I imagine.

I've never thought of the two as connected, but it makes sense. Vowels, after all, are distinguished on the basis of signature frequencies (formants).

katja z wrote:I've found this bit especially interesting:

The new study shows consistent activation of the right angular gyrus among native signers and some, but not consistent, activation of that brain region among late signers.

So some late signers do manage to use precisely the same brain areas as native signers; the article doesn't say it explicitly, but presumably this is connected with reaching native-like fluency.

I think the comment there says that the late signers used the same areas of the brain, but the "some" refers to the activation rather than the amount of people who use it. That is, the difference between the two groups is that the late signers don't show consistent activation of that brain region (as opposed to some late signers using that brain region, and some not).

But if you're right, if these late signers can use this specific area sometimes, why not always? Doesn't make sense to me. On the other hand, we know that some (although rare) late learners do achieve native-like fluency in their second language (depending, however, on how you define "native-like fluency" - it isn't too clear a measure of language proficiency but what it certainly doesn't mean is "knowing the language inside out", because in this case many native speakers wouldn't fulfill the criteria!).