HICPR: Synesthesia alert: No magnetic letters on your refrigerator!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Synesthesia alert: No magnetic letters on your refrigerator!

Image credit: Synesthete.org

Especially if you have toddlers in the house! Well, not really. This study, by Witthoft and Winnawer of Stanford University, summarized by Science Daily, reports on what may well be a rather spurious or at least indirect correlation between the development of synesthesia and the presence on our refrigerators of those cute, plastic colored letters with magnets for young children to play with. What they found was that synesthetes, when given lists of colorless numbers and letters , tend to pick the same colors as those refrigerator magnet letters, whereas non-synesthetes' responses are pretty much random. How could that be? They don't say really, stopping short of suggesting that there is some direct relationship between the synesthesia and those letters being on the refrigerator during child development. Hmmm. I just posted the following on an NLP discussion list:

"Interesting. Go to the website and take the test. When you do, before you respond to the query for your read on the "color" of the number or letter, say the number or letter out loud slowly, like a kid might. Note the overall felt sense of that articulation, where it lands in your head and vocal tract… and then pick your vowel. Better yet, look away from the grapheme when you do that. I can almost get to the synesthesia threshold that way . . . The research design neatly ignores controlling for how subjects get to making a decision, what cognitive and experiential process they lead with. (It is apparently done as a web-based survey only.) I am very suspicious of any direct link to childhood letters. That the letters happen to have been assigned those colors in the first place by the initial designers is probably more where it all leads."

So what does that have to do with haptic-integrated pronunciation work? Everything. The phonaesthetic and somatic felt sense qualities of vowels, both in visual and articulatory terms, are well researched from several disciplines. Where the vowels are placed in the visual field in EHIEP and how the vowel sounds are presented and identified (or mis-identified) with letters in phonic characterizations, as in the "Refrigerator" study, does make a difference. (See earlier posts on the pedagogical application of vowel color such as this one.) Keep in touch.

1 comment:

Bill ActonJanuary 25, 2013 at 7:41 AM
Have had several comments about this post. My point was that the manner in which the research was summarized in the media gave the impression that those innocuous little magnet letters may have somehow contributed to the development of synesthesia, that synesthesia may be, in some bizarre sense, "learned." Nonsense--at least based on what the research "discovered." My position was that the phonaesthetic qualities of the colors of the letters alone may more than account for the response differences between normals and synesthetes--not that the "near refrigerator" experience contributed to the neurological mis-wiring later. If you have followed the blog you know that I sometimes assign light weight research findings or summaries (especially by Science Daily) to a "Well . . . duh!" category. This one perhaps belonged in that pile as well.
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What is haptic pronunciation teaching?

Basically, it is using gesture, touch and movement to teach pronunciation of English (or any language). What makes this method unique is that it is based on controlled and systematic use of gesture in doing that. (Often the problem with gesture use in language learning is that it can be "crazy" or random or intimidating or inconsistent, or not well-developed and tied to clear outcomes.)

The earlier "Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation (EHIEP) approach," now KINETIK, does a better job of enhancing presentation, modelling, feedback and correction. The method is simple and easy to follow. Once a 30-minute module is finished, teacher and students have a set of techniques to use in class anytime a pronunciation problem or opportunity comes up!

Haptic Preliminaries

I often begin workshops or papers with the comment that in about 40 years in the field I have had just one idea: that the systematic use of body movement is essential to effective and efficient pronunciation instruction. That has never been more relevant than today, with the general deemphasis on pronunciation and introduction of technology into the field. From both perspectives, the "haptic" perspective approach developed here offers great promise. I can at least promise you a "moving" experience!

What is the KINETIK Method?

KINETIK is the name of the new v6.0 haptic pronunciation teaching system. About six years earlier we were using the acronym, "Haptic Integrated Pronunciation for Other/Extended Circle English Speakers" (HIPOECES)--still there in the url of this blog!

Haptic-integrated clinical pronunciation is:

A different way to learn pronunciation, based in part on Arthur Lessac’s notion of “Training the body first.” It is also based on research in the use of movement and touch in learning and training. It:

Looks somewhat like a combination of aerobics, sign language and Taichi

Provides a basic foundation for continued, self-directed pronunciation learning and classroom instruction

Designed for use by relatively untrained teachers but appropriate for all teachers (and learners) of all levels

Focuses on pronunciation used in conversation (not all words in English)

Is a highly “brain-and-body-friendly” system that promotes efficient learning of integrated tasks in general

Designed to promote integrated classroom pronunciation instruction and enable integration of conscious pronunciation work into spontaneous speaking.

Introduction

This blog was formerly named: HIPoeces (pronounced 'hI-pƏ-cIs), basically an approach to teaching English pronunciation to speakers of "outer and expanding" circle Englishes (including that population commonly termed: non-native speakers) but also compatible with the use of local models other than simply Standard" American" or RP. Using Kachru's "Inner, expanding and outer circles" model to characterize the breadth of Englishes and speakers of those, HIPoeces (now HICP) systems focus on developing haptically-centered pedagogical models and methods which can be adapted for teaching the pronunciation of various Englishes as they are spoken and taught by "owners" of those varieties.

In theory, the underlying principles can be applied to teaching the sound system of any language. Most language instructors intuitively use a great deal of movement and tactile anchoring in the classroom. The essential question is how to use that resource systematically, especially so that those learners who are less "haptic" in nature are also "moved" by the method.

Simply put, the HICP model/method is based on the idea of speaking along with arm and hand movement, not all that different from that used in sign languages. Most movement patterns are taken from either typical classroom pronunciation instruction practice or from related fields, such as psychotherapy or sports.

Most blog posts link to research that relates to the general HICP model, that is studies dealing with the role of gesture, touch, movement, learning modalities, learning in output, use of the visual field in learning, and experiential learning.

DEFINITIONS:

"Haptic" techniques- procedures that involve both movement and touch (Obvious examples include clapping hands, tapping feet, or holding an object and shaking it to the rhythm of a poem.)

"HICP techniques" - procedures that are haptic and also explicitly coordinated with phonological structures and/or discourse prosody (For example, clapping hands on primary stressed syllables in multi-syllable words, or doing a dance step on key words in conversational turns.)

"Haptic integration"- The haptic dimension probably functions as much to anchor visual and auditory material as it does to assist the learner in getting the "felt sense" of the sound or sound process. Lack of integration into spontaneous speech being such a serious potential shortcoming of instruction, haptic engagement seems a promising bridge to more accurate fluency.

"Visual field" - in HICP extensive use is made of the visual field in front of the learner. (For example, a modified version of the IPA vowel chart is anchored haptically in the imagination of the learner, directly in front of the upper body, and used for several purposes throughout the program.)