Category Archives: BLIP Bites

Does the brain read Chinese the same way it reads English?

We know that our brain is capable of many things, including the ability to learn languages. This includes reading, writing, speaking, you name it—but does it do the same for all languages, like reading Chinese characters that look so different from English? In “Does the brain read Chinese or Spanish the same way it reads English?” which was published in Frontiers for Young Minds, the writer gave an interesting summary of how written languages work, and how our brains decode these symbols as we read.

Most (if not all) spoken languages in the world are represented by writing systems that use symbols. These symbols are called orthographies. Orthographies can be alphabetic (such as English and Spanish), or non-alphabetic (such as Chinese and Japanese Kanji). In alphabetic orthographies, each symbol represents one phoneme—an individual sound—such as the /b/ sound in “book”. In non-alphabetic orthographies, each character represents more than a phoneme—it might symbolize a syllable, such as “” (péng) in the word “朋友” (péngyǒu).

Alphabetic orthographies can also differ from each other according to how well the graphemes (symbols or letters) and phonemes (the sounds) match up. When every letter almost always has only one sound, then we say that the orthography is consistent, or “shallow”. When letters can represent different sounds, then that orthography is considered inconsistent, or “deep”. Spanish is a shallow orthography because its letters are always pronounced the same way, while English is a deep orthography because some of its letters can have many pronunciations, such as the two different /c/ sounds in “circus”.

On the other hand, non-alphabetic orthographies can represent either a syllable or a one-syllable unit of meaning with each symbol (i.e. a morpheme). In “朋友” (péngyǒu), the character “” (péng) doesn’t have a meaning on its own! It’s just a syllable that goes with “” (yǒu) to make a word that means “friend”. Another example is “的士” (deshì) which means taxi. The character “” (de) on its own is a possessive pronoun as in “belongs to”, and “” (shì) means “soldier”!

Is learning to read harder in some orthographies than others?

Reading requires us to match letters or symbols to the sounds they represent. This is a skill called phonological decoding. There is  overwhelming support  from research that shows learning to read is easier in consistent orthographies than in inconsistent orthographies. English readers take longer to learn to read than readers in almost all other alphabetic orthographies, and Chinese readers take even longer.

For children with dyslexia, this difficulty may depend on the language they’re trying to read in. Consistent orthographies like Spanish do not really affect their phonological decoding skills, which means that they can read words correctly, although they still tend to take more time than their peers who do not have dyslexia.

Inconsistent orthographies such as English tend to be harder even among peers who do not have dyslexia—this makes it even harder for children who have problems with phonological decoding, and mistakes in reading are more apparent. For a non-alphabetic language like Chinese, children with dyslexia also have difficulties reading, but more than having problems with phonological decoding, they may have trouble understanding how the character represents the meaning of a word. This skill is called morphological awareness, and it’s important for reading, too!

At BLIP Lab, we have a lot of fun activities that everyone can be a part of. Our Baby Talk-A-Thon study looks at how Singapore’s unique language landscape may affect language development in young children. In Red-Dot Baby-Talk, we ask people how familiar they are with our colourful Singlish words. More information about our studies can be found here!

 

Here’s a link to the original article: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2016.00026

Conrad, N. (2016.) Does the Brain Read Chinese or Spanish the Same Way It Reads English? Front. Young Minds, 4(26). doi: 10.3389/frym.2016.00026

Handling failures: Fixed and Growth Mindset

We shared the news recently of Singaporean students and their fear of failure as reported in the well-being survey in the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment  (PISA) – an international assessment conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

72 per cent of Singaporean students revealed that they are anxious about how others would perceive them when they fail. 78 per cent of the students also reportedly viewed failure as something that would cast doubt on their future plans – well above the 54 per cent average reported by students from the other 37 OECD member countries. Is this just a case of being kiasu or is there more to this? 

Being kiasu is the hallmark of a being Singaporean student – with high-stakes national exams and assessments for academic and non-academic activities. While this fear of losing to others may drive students to work hard but it may also ingrain an unhealthy mindset that focuses purely on outcomes and returns.  

So how can we encourage our children to be less afraid of failing? 

Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, is known for her research on children’s mindsets when facing challenges. She identified two core mindsets: Fixed mindset, the belief that one’s abilities are predetermined at birth and set in stone and the Growth mindset, the belief that one’s qualities and skills can be cultivated and improved through hardwork and perseverance.

In her research, she saw that children with the Fixed mindset have a predetermined idea of what their abilities are and see challenges as high-risk. They shrink back and avoid challenges, thus limiting their learning opportunities. When they do try, harsh criticisms, poor grades, failures become proof that they are incapable.

On the other hand, those with the Growth mindset see challenges as a way to improve their abilities and skills. They tend not to shy away from learning something new or something difficult.  For years, her research has influenced parents, educators and education policymakers. A teacher might praise a child for making an effort on a test even if he’d failed it, believing that doing so would promote growth mindset in that student. Encouraging our children to develop the growth mindset can help make them less afraid of failing. 

But, here’s a caveat – empty praises may actually impede the development of the growth mindset. 

In Dweck’s new book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she warns about the false growth mindset. She summarises the false growth mindset as 1) believing that a person has the growth mindset all the time for all areas, and 2) oversimplifying the growth mindset to be all about effort. 

An individual may have the growth mindset for an area that she has already experienced success, for example, getting all the math problems in an assignment right. She may then be more confident when taking on other math problems. However, everyone experiences triggers that can set us on the fixed mindset for example, encountering something outside your comfort zone or meeting a person who is much better than you in something you pride yourself in. The key is being aware of what your triggers may be and being mindful when we find ourselves falling into the fixed mindset. 

Secondly, we should never oversimplify the growth mindset and just simply praise all effort. Children who don’t do well may start to see the praise for effort as just a consolation prize. They may believe that you already see them as incapable and therefore are just praising them to make them feel better.

Dweck encourages parents and teachers to not just give empty praises but tie the praises to efforts that led to learning or growth. She says to also support the children in identifying strategies that worked for them and those that didn’t. In that way, failures become part of the process of identifying strategies that didn’t work.

Children need to know that when they fail, purely redoubling the effort in ineffective strategies may not lead to success. We should help them evaluate themselves and find more effective solutions to solve their problems. 

Read more about Carol Dweck and her new book in this interview

This post is crafted by Fei Ting:  lab manager, teacher, and budding psycholinguist. 

Are you a parent or educator? Or just someone interested in the Science of Learning? Here at BLIP lab, we are researching on various factors behind the science of learning – including what children are hearing in their environments. Join us in our research

New publication: Pitch & Pointiness

BLIP Lab research published last week shows that the language a person grows up hearing changes their sensory experience of the world. And it’s not just the sense of hearing – connections between the senses are also affected: When people who speak Mandarin Chinese listen to vowels “ee” and “oo” in the different tones of Chinese, they make different decisions about which sound should go with which shape – and some of their decisions are exactly the opposite to the decisions made by people who don’t speak any tone languages! You can find out more about this effect, and why we think it occurs in our our BLIP Bites – plain language mini research reports: The Point of Pitch.

 

Original Research article: Shang, N. and S. J. Styles (2017). “Is a high tone pointy? Degree of pitch-change in lexical tone predicts of sound-to-shape correspondences in Chinese bilinguals.” Frontiers 8(2139): 1. Open Access Link: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02139