Pardon?

[andrewducker]

In a change from my usual slant, here's a fascinating look at how training can help overcome things. In this case it can help children to learn to distinguish sounds much faster than they would otherwise.

As a note, I believe that people can learn/train to do incredible things. It goes without saying (to me) that people can remake themselves dramtically using sociological and psychological techniques. It's the genetics stuff which amazes me, because it seems so much less likely. That's why I'm fascinated by it.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The degree to which playing video games (especially at a young age) can boost one's reflexes is also pretty darn impressive. The result being a whole generation of video games where the hard mode simply cannot be played by anyone who didn't grow up playing such things...

[andrewducker]

Lucky for me I'm only 31 and did so, then :->

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Amd I'm 32 and I didn't. I can't even manage the easy mode on most things.

Something *useful* from university studies of dead languages.

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

I took a course on Old English as well as one of the development of the English language. It was amazing all of the sounds that some people can and cannot tell apart. Dealing with my customers who do not speak English as a first language became a little easier when I could more accurately guess what they were *trying* to say.

The opening sound of "thigh" and "thy" seem to have been interchangeable in Old English/Kentish Anglo-Saxon. Modern Spanish speaking South Americans can have trouble with "b" versus "v" while the r/l issue for Chinese and Japanese speakers makes more sense when you look at the way the sounds are created and how they relate to people.

Castillians can sound like they have a lisp to other Spanish speakers and I have a friend who often says "wit" instead of "with" and occasionally tossing in "wif", usually just to watch me twitch.

Tres interesant, eh?

Ekatarina, who also knows such useless and arcane knowledge like that fact that "vat" and "vixen" are the only words of Old English origin that begin with the letter "v". All other "v" words are imported post-conquest. It was that particular dialect that remained dominant with those two words,... otherwise we would say "fat" and "fixen" as the rest of the Seven Kingdoms did way back when.

E

Re: Something *useful* from university studies of dead languages.

[andrewducker]

This has been sitting in my "LJ inbox" waiting for me to write a response to it indicating how cool I thought it was.

Having had some time to think about it I'm going to go for "ooh, cool."

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Whereas I find the genetics stuff straightforward and generally much more likely to contain truth than your average sociological/pshychological 'theory'. OK, it;s getting better now, but they do seem to be the disciplines (not I did NOT say sciences) that are most susceptible to bias/interpretation/political pressure etc. - for entirely obvious reasons!

[andrewducker]

Aah, I didn't mean "psychological theory", I meant that through training and self-programming people could change themselves in fairly extreme ways.

I mean, taking NLP as an example, as an explanatory system it lacks rigour, but it certainly works very well for a lot of people.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Hey, nice makeover :-)(Not sure about the pinky grey though).

Lots of things "work for a lot of people" that seem nonsense. Religion for one.

From what I know of NLP it probably wouldn't be effective for me. You can say what you ike, you can put it as positively as possible but I still demand concrete, measurable proof.

Also, logically, if it's as valid to phrase something positively as it is to phrase it negatively, then it is as valid to phrase it negatively as it is to phrase it positively. Some people might be 'happier' ignoring one or the other, but to me they both exist (and many others in the space in between).