The Neurobiology of Learning Perspectives From Second Language Acquisition This page intentionally left blank The Neurobiology of Learning Perspectives From Second Language Acquisition John H. Schumann University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles Shella E. Crowell University ofWashington, Seattle Nancy E. Jones University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles Namhee Lee University ofCaliforniaat Riverside Sara Ann Schuchert Mid-Wilshire Christian Schools, Los Angeles Lee Alexandra Wood STARR Litigation Services, Des Moines, Iowa LAWRENCEERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2004 Mahwah, NewJersey London Copyright©2004 byLawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro ducedinanyform, byphotostat,microfilm,retrievalsys tem,oranyothermeans, withoutpriorwrittenpermission ofthepublisher. LawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Inc.,Publishers 10IndustrialAvenue Mahwah, NJ 07430 I IcoverdesignbyKathryn HoughtalingLacey LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Theneurobiologyoflearning:perspectivesfromsecondlan guage acquisitionIJohn H.Schumann ... [etal.] p. cm. Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN0-8058-4717-0(alk. paper) QP408.N4952004 612.8'233-dc22 2003060656 CIP BookspublishedbyLawrenceErlbaumAssociatesareprinted onacid-free paper,andtheirbindings arechosen forstrength anddurability. Printed intheUnited States ofAmerica 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Arnold Scheibel Intheearly 1980s,BobJacobs,thenagraduatestudentinAppliedLinguisticsatVCLA,be gan to take neuroscience courses at the Brain Research Institute. There he studied neuroanatomywithDr.AmoldScheibelandbecamebothaTAforDr.Scheibel'sclassesand anRAinhis laboratory. In the 1985-86academicyear when Dr.WolfgangKlein from the Max PlankPsycholinguisticInstitutewasavisitingprofessoratVCLA,Bobarrangedforus tomeetwithDr.Scheibelonaregularbasistodiscussissuesofbrainandlanguage.Asaresult ofthesediscussions,Dr.ScheibelofferedtoteachneuroanatomytostudentsinAppliedLin guistics. Thefirstcoursewastaughtinthefall 1987,anditbeganalongexcitingrelationship betweenourAppliedLinguisticsstudentsandDr.Scheibel.AppliedLinguisticsstudentshave been takingneuroanatomywithDr.Scheibeleveryotheryear sincethen. Dr.Scheibelisadynamic teacherwholoveshissubject.HislecturesarelikewatchingNova threetimesaweek.Learningneuroanatomyisnoeasytask.Afriend,whoisanoncologicalsur geon,recalls his neuroanatomystudies in medical school assimilar "to memorizingAmtrak schedules."Indeed agooddealofmemorizationisnecessary,butDr.Scheibel makessurewe seethebrainfrommultipleperspectives:bydissectingsheepbrains,humanbrains,andworking throughdiagramsinbrainatlases,TheHumanBrainColoringBook,andincomputervisualiza tionsofthesubstrate. Slowly but surely the students becomecomfortablenavigating the neural landscape, and thenawholenewworldopens.Theylearnaboutthebrainandtheylearnascience.Whenhu manitiesstudentsbecomeproficientinascience,itisveryempowering-particularlyinneuro sciencewhichprovidesabiologicalbasis forallhumanactivityandwhichfrequentlyleadsto interest inevolution, genetics, andcomplexity. Successfullylearning neurosciencerequires distributed cognition, and itcouldn'tbedone withoutDr.Scheibel'sgeneroushelpbeyondtheneuroanatomyclass.Hehasservedonmanyof ourAppliedLinguisticsMAthesiscommittees,PhDqualifyingpapercommitteesandPhDdis sertationcommittees. Heputsusintouchwithotherneuroscientistswithexpertiseinourareas of interest. Dr. Scheibel also organizes a monthly meeting of individuals interested in the neurobiologyofhigher cognitive function. The group has been meeting for about 15years. Whenstudentshavefinishedtheneuroanatomyclass,theyarewelcometojointhegroupandto explore withotherneuroscientistsawiderangeofissuesinvolvingbrain function. ItistherelationshipwithDr.Scheibelthatallowedustowritethisbook. Heguidedusto theknowledgeofneurobiologythat weusehere tounderstandSLA,and hehasbeen toler antand supportiveofourlinguisticspeculationsthat gobeyondtheneuraldata. However, whileourinspirationand guidanceare his gifts tous, any mistakesare ours. Itistothiswonderfulscholar,teacher,gentleman,andfriendthatwededicatethisbook. V Thispage intentionallyleft blank Contents Foreword ix Preface xi Introduction 1 John H.Schumann 1 The Neurobiologyof Aptitude 7 John H.Schumann 2 The Neurobiologyof Motivation 23 John H.SchumannandLeeA. Wood 3 The Neurobiologyof Procedural Memory 43 NamheeLee 4 The Neurobiologyof Declarative Memory 75 Sheila E. Crowell 5 The Neurobiologyof MemoryConsolidation 111 Nancy E.Jones 6 The Neurobiologyof Attention 143 SaraAnn Schuchert vii viii CONTENTS Conclusion 175 John H.Schumann References 181 AuthorIndex 199 SubjectIndex 207 Foreword There hasbeenatendencyinlanguageacquisitioncircles todismiss neurosci ence because, as the claim goes, supposedly not enough is known about the brain tomake significantcontributionstoour understandingofhowlanguage isacquired. Unfortunately,suchclaimsoftenreflectanoverridingignoranceof underlyingneural mechanisms-adismissiveattitude abouttheneurosciences thatmustend.Thisbookconstitutesatimely contributiontotheexistinglitera turebypresentingarelativelycomprehensive,neurobiologicalaccountofcer tain aspects of second language acquisition. Moreover, the present volume avoidsthecorticocentricbiasthatcharacterizesmanybrain-languagepublica tions-bothcorticalandsubcorticalstructuresreceive theirappropriateatten tion here. The chaptersinthis volume demonstrate, withoutanyapology, that enoughispresentlyknown about thebrain toinformourconceptualizationsof howhumans acquire second languages. Itthus provides arefreshingly novel, highlyintegrativecontributiontothe(second)languageacquisitionliterature. Historically,the languageacquisition mirror, asit were, has reflectedbe haviorbackinto the "blackbox" oftheoretical mechanisms with littlecon cern for the neurobiological plausibility of those mechanisms. The acquisitionliteratureisrepletewithsuch supposedmentalmechanisms(e.g., buffers, filters, organizers, Language Acquisition Device, Universal Gram mar). Although such cognitivemetaphorsmay help researchersdescribe ac quisition at a phenomenological level, they are ultimately of limited explanatoryvalue withoutanunderlyingneuralfoundation. With this book, the perspective comes full circle: we are now looking out from the brain it self, letting the neurobiology itself indicate potential signposts along the road of second language acquisition. Such an approach is not for the neurobiologicallytimid, however, asitrequires one to learn the languageof thebrainforeffectiveacademicdiscourse.Itisalong, complex,butintellec tually stimulating neural pathway. Indeed, theimpulseforthisspeculativeaccountoflanguageacquisitionbe gannearly four decades agowithLenneberg's(1967) landmarkpublicationof Biological Foundations ofLanguage, which helped set the general stage for thiskind ofinterdisciplinaryundertaking.Within thefieldofsecondlanguage ix