TED | 婴儿的天才语言能力

演讲简介

很多人会觉得婴儿在会说话之前都不太能辨别大人说的话，但其实婴儿是拥有超越种族和语系的语言识别能力的。本期Ted演讲就根据这一点进行了深入的分析，一起来听听吧。

 

 

 

 

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

 

So what have we done to their little brains? (Laughter) We had to run a control group to make sure that just coming into the laboratory didn't improve your Mandarin skills. So a group of babies came in and listened to English. And we can see from the graph that exposure to English didn't improve their Mandarin.

所以我们对他们的小脑袋瓜都做了什么？（笑声） 我们还得有一个对照组确保来到实验室并不能提高普通话的水平。所以这组婴儿来这儿只听英语。我们从这图表看出，在英语条件下的婴儿没有提高他们的汉语。

 

But look at what happened to the babies exposed to Mandarin for 12 sessions. They were as good as the babies in Taiwan who'd been listening for 10-and-a-half months. What it demonstrated is that babies take statistics on a new language. Whatever you put in front of them, they'll take statistics on.

但看看上过12次普通话课的婴儿的身上都发生了什么。他们和那些曾听普通话有 10个半月大的台湾婴儿一样棒。这说明了婴儿对一种新语言也能做统计。不管你在他们面前说了什么，他们就会统计这语言。

 

But we wondered what role the human being played in this learning exercise. So we ran another group of babies in which the kids got the same dosage, the same 12 sessions, but over a television set and another group of babies who had just audio exposure and looked at a teddy bear on the screen. What did we do to their brains?

我们也好奇，在这一学习过程中人起了什么样的作用。所以我们设置了另一组婴儿让他们如法炮制地上12节课，但是在电视机前上课和另一组婴儿只是通过音频上课，看电视屏幕上的玩具熊。我们又对他们的脑袋瓜做什么了？

 

What you see here is the audio result -- no learning whatsoever - and the video result - no learning whatsoever. It takes a human being for babies to take their statistics. The social brain is controlling when the babies are taking their statistics.

我们这儿看到的是音频结果没有任何学习效果，视频结果 也是没有任何学习效果。只有人才能，帮助婴儿统计他们的声音数据。当婴儿在统计时社会大脑在控制着。

 

We want to get inside the brain and see this thing happening as babies are in front of televisions, as opposed to in front of human beings. Thankfully, we have a new machine, magnetoencephalography, that allows us to do this. It looks like a hair dryer from Mars. But it's completely safe, completely non-invasive and silent.

我们想了解大脑内部观察各种变化，探究电视前的婴儿和与人在一起的婴儿有何不同。多亏我们有了这台新机器，脑磁图显示机，它可以让我们做到这个。它看上去就像来自火星的吹风机。但它是完全安全的，完全对人无害，而且是静音的。

 

We're looking at millimeter accuracy with regard to spatial and millisecond accuracy using 306 SQUIDs - these are Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices - to pick up the magnetic fields that change as we do our thinking. We're the first in the world to record babies in an MEG machine while they are learning.

我们的要求是，在空间上精确到毫米、时间上精确到毫秒、使用306 SQUIDs即是超导量子干涉磁量仪用来检测我们大脑变化的磁场。我们是世界上第一个记录婴儿在脑磁图显示机下的学习的脑图。

 

So this is little Emma. She's a six-monther. And she's listening to various languages in the earphones that are in her ears. You can see, she can move around. We're tracking her head with little pellets in a cap, so she's free to move completely unconstrained.

所以这是小爱玛，她有6个月大。她正通过耳机聆听多种语言。大家可以看到，她可以移动。我们用她帽子上的小球，来记录她的脑图，所以她完全不受束缚地自由地移动。

It's a technical tour de force. What are we seeing? We're seeing the baby brain. As the baby hears a word in her language the auditory areas light up, and then subsequently areas surrounding it that we think are related to coherence, getting the brain coordinated with its different areas, and causality, one brain area causing another to activate.

这是一个技术上的杰作。我看到什么了？我们看到婴儿的大脑。当婴儿听到语言中的一个词大脑中听觉区域亮起来，然后在它周围的其它区域也亮起来。我们认为这是有关联贯性的，让大脑和其他不同脑区域相协调，一前一后， 一片脑区域激活另一片脑区域。

 

We are embarking on a grand and golden age of knowledge about child's brain development. We're going to be able to see a child's brain as they experience an emotion, as they learn to speak and read, as they solve a math problem, as they have an idea. And we're going to be able to invent brain-based interventions for children who have difficulty learning.

我们开启了一个开发儿童大脑知识的宏伟的黄金年代。我们能够观察他们的大脑，当儿童体验到感情，学着说和读，解决一个数学问题，或当他们有个想法的时候，我们也能为学习有障碍的孩童，发明基于脑的治疗方法。

 

Just as the poets and writers described, we're going to be able to see, I think, that wondrous openness, utter and complete openness, of the mind of a child. In investigating the child's brain, we're going to uncover deep truths about what it means to be human, and in the process, we may be able to help keep our own minds open to learning for our entire lives.

正如诗人和作家所描述的，我想我们能够看到一种奇妙的融通开放，一个孩子心智的完全开放。在对儿童大脑的研究中，我们会深刻揭示 ，这对人类来说意味着什么的事实， 在这一过程中，我们或许能帮助我们自身开放心智，在我们一生中不断地学习。

 

Thank you.

谢谢。