- It would be interesting to know if a polyglot would have similar or entirely different perceptions, since what appear to be "nonsensical" letter strings in an idiom might be more familiar, from the visual standpoint, in another idiom - so that what appears to be nonsensical to, say, a native Portuguese speaking who was iliterate in German or French might suggest sounds or words to another who was literate in that idiom.
- From another standpoint, I wonder what makes a set of characteers familiar or nonsensicle. A native russian (not literate in other idioms) might perceive a string in latin characters as nonsensicle and even fail to integrate the perception of latin charachters, while the reverse would be the case for non-russian people. Someone who´s multilingual might have a different, more integrated perception of both characters sets. Even stronger effects would be observed as to Japanese / Chinese people, where the character sets are strongly visual, symbolic, and might be more associative. Would a chinese react similarly to a set of Japanese characters, and differently to a set of latin charachters? Would a Russian have similar reactions as to other similar ciryllic characters, in other baltic idioms?
- Could the "literacy area of the brain" be thus mapped?
- Just wondering...
Article Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing
sure; but to my knowledge, the (relative) selectivity of the VWFA response to script over faces, objects or places only occurs in people who have learned to read that script.cf. Szwed et al J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2014; Baker et al. PNAS2007. For Chinese, what seems also to matter is the complexity and handwritten-like shapes (Szwed et al 2014; Nakamura et al PNAS 2012
The issue is, do a polyglot have a different degree of such abilities? Let´s remember that, for instance, in ciryllyc letters lke Я (their soft vocal "iá"), for instance, migh mirror the latin "R"; other letters might either mirror or resemble latin letters, or be completely distinct. Either way, someone who is literated in both idioms might have distinct perceptive training or abilities; or, learning a new idiom might stimulate the promppting of "new" perceptive abilities. As to the pictorial idioms lke Japanese and French, they might even require a different (addicional) set of perceptive abilities, and work in different perceptive pathways.
What I really wonder is: perhaps learning a new idiom (either using latin character set, ciryllic or another character set, or even something totally different like a pictorial one) might be therapeutic for selected patients. Beyond simple learning and brain training, they might serve as a stimulus to recruit certain neural pathways. For instance, I do believe that learning an idiom "wakes" some abilities, and makes the learning of others easier. The grade of difficulty and intensity of training might then be adequated to the patient clinical picture and needs.
Hi Victor,
That once was a hot topic in neurolinguistics. There are number of discoveries about the specific parts in the brain that are related to language functions. The most important areas in the brain which are somehow related to language production and comprehension are including Broca's area, Wernicke's area, motor cortex and arcuate fasciculus. Therefore, yes, we can somehow draw a map!
I know of a japanese stroke patient, who entirely lost her Portuguese language function. As a result she went back to communication in Japanese, which was intact.
I know not of any effort made in order to "re-teach" her Portuguese, because she was rather old and besides she had a daughter who helped her by the translation.
Meanwhile, I wonder: The process of literacy seems to activate other areas and activities of the brain; learning new or multiple idioms seems to enhance that even further.
We regularly deal with patients with aphasias and agnosias.
Might the learning of new idioms be therapeutic to this kind of patient, not directly but through indirect activation of new abilities, and recruiting of new areas of the brain? Might it not be a neuroplastic stimulus?
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