By Nicole Findlay
A new state-of-the-art language and brain lab that combines linguistics, psychology and neuroscience is conducting unique research on how people acquire and process language.
Masako Hirotani, director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience: Language and Brain (CCN.LaB) is using the Japanese language, or Kanji, to determine how our brain visually processes language.
Biological coding allows our brains to interpret wildly diverse languages. Yet, some of the processes by which we react to both the English alphabet and Japanese symbols is the same.
“When we are reading, our eyes skip simple words or characters but stop at more complex ones,” said Hirotani. “Do they skip because of visual simplicity or because of the language itself?”
The study of language processing helps linguists and cognitive scientists understand how the brain works, and more specifically which areas of the brain do what. Recent research has discovered that chemical changes in the brain allow it to evolve after puberty, giving hope for rehabilitative therapies for people who have suffered brain trauma such as strokes.
Kanji also convey information about sound and meaning. Future research will focus on how the brain processes these factors.
A call for more brains…
The lab is looking for native Japanese speakers, between the ages of 18 and 40, who have completed three years of high school in Japan.
Volunteers will read sentences presented on a computer monitor while their eye-movements are being recorded by an eye-tracker to determine the eye’s unconscious movements.
To participate contact http://www.carleton.ca/lbl