Motivation to do Pronunciation work: Smell-binding study!

Rats! Well . . . actually . . . mice who are motivated to (voluntarily) exercise more are genetically set up or developed to have better, more discriminating vomeronasal glandular structure. Is that big, or what? Check out the Neuroscience News summary of this unpublished study by Haga-Yamanaka, Garland and colleagues at UC-Riverside, forthcoming in PLOS ONE, Exercise Motivation Could Be Linked to Certain Smells.   I LOVE the researchers' potential application of the research: 

“It’s not inconceivable that someday we might be able to isolate the chemicals and use them like air fresheners in gyms to make people even more motivated to exercise,” Garland said. “In other words: spray, sniff, and squat.”

Being a runner, myself,  I especially like the study since it uses mice who are what they term "high runners!" Admittedly it is a bit of a stretch to jump to the gym and then to the ELT/pronunciation classroom from the study, but the reality of how smell affects performance is well established in several disciplines--and probably in your classroom as well! 

Decades ago, a colleague who specialized in olfactory therapies and was a consultant in the corporate world on creating good-smelling work spaces, etc., sold me on the idea of using a scent generator in my pronunciation teaching. Required a mixing of two or three oils to get students in the mood to do whatever I wanted them to  better. Back then it seemed to be effective but there was little research to back it up and it was before we have been forced to work in "scent-free" and other things-free spaces.

What is interesting about the study to our work is the connection between persistence in physical exercise and heightened general sensory awareness, and the way smell in this case is enhanced. My guess is that touch, foundational in haptic pronunciation teaching is keyed in similar ways. Gradually as students practice consistently with the gestural gross and fine motor gestural patterns, what we call pedagogical movement patterns, their differential use of touch increases. (An earlier post identifies over two dozen "-emic" types of touch in the system.) In other words, touch becomes more and more powerful/effective in anchoring sound change and memory for it. 

That insight is central to the new haptic pronunciation teaching system, Acton Haptic Pronunciation Complement--Rhythm First, which will be rolled out early in 2021. (For preliminary details on that, check out the refurbished Acton Haptic website! )

Zoom(h)aptic: Haptic Pronunciation Teaching online

Keeping in touch doing pronunciation online with your students a problem? We've been working with what we call "haptic videos" for over a decade. Basically by that we mean using video models that learners move along with and in the process use gestures that are mediated and regulated by touch. (The touch usually occurs in the path of a speech-synchronized gesture where the stressed syllable in the word or phrase is articulated.) 

Just read a fun piece by Powers and Parisi on Techcrunch.com (hat tip to haptician Skye Playsted) The hype, haplessness and hope of haptics in the COVID-19 era, I'll focus a bit on the latter! What they get to is a number of haptic technologies, some of which at least promise to help us touch during COVID so we don't pass on something, such as virtual bank "touch" screens that feel to your fingers like you are actually touching the buttons when, in fact, you aren't. They also mention the sort of thing we have been following here for years such as haptic prosthetics, full-body suits and vests and gaming consoles. 

What we have discovered in doing haptic pronunciation teaching online for the last few years is that having learners "dance" along with us haptically, with extensive use of gesture and touch as they repeat or speaking spontaneously from various perspectives, is that the work really does "connect" us. Because the gesture complexes (pedagogical movement patterns - PMPs) are very easy to teach and conduct on Zoom, for instance, everybody (or every body) should get the sense of greater participation and what we term "haptic presence." 

Years of research on mirror neurons has demonstrated that if you are paying careful attention to the motions of another your brain is experiencing much of what is happening as if you, yourself, were the source of the action. What that means is that after students have been introduced to the gestural patterns--by doing them along with select phrases, when they see them again, it should (and generally does from our experience) resonate with them. In informal experiments where we ask students NOT to move along with us, they report that their bodies generally cannot help but move along to some degree. (That is a doctoral degree research project for any haptician who is interested!!!)

So . . . pack up your mirror neurons and go over the www.actonhaptic.com and look at the demonstration videos. And, while you are at it, check our our latest webinar with IATEFL on HaPT! After you do, come back and we'll sign you up for some HaPT training. Right now we are still in v4.5 but v5.0 "ActonHaptic Pronunciation Complement" will be rolling out later this fall!

Managing distraction in (haptic pronunciation) teaching: to block or to hype . . . or both!

New study by Udakis et al:  Interneuron-specific plasticity at parvalbumin and somatostatin inhibitory
synapses onto CA1 pyramidal neurons shapes hippocampal output, characterized by Science Daily as a  . . . a breakthrough in understanding how memories can be so distinct and long-lasting without getting muddled up." Normally, I wouldn't take a shot at connecting research in basic neuroscience to haptic pronunciation teaching, but this one, describing the basic mechanisms by which some memories get stored so that they are recalled vividly later, points to a couple of principles that should underlie all instruction, not just haptic pronunciation teaching. 

In essence what were identified are two key "circuits," in effect, one that basically intensified the event and another that served to block out distraction, or put another way functions to inhibit other "learning" that might cover over or undermine an experience. One interesting implication of that model is that the brain, in some sense, is "intentionally" managing distraction. Now the conditions that have to be in play for an experience to be "protected" are, of course, myriad, but the concept that highly systematic attention to distraction, not just increasing excitement or emotional engagement in a "teachable moment" is critical is worth considering. 

Clker.com

In the comment on the earlier post on distraction, the observation was made that, at least in one program, distraction was not seen as having any relevance in instruction, whatsoever. My guess is that that is the case in many systems as well. In our haptic pronunciation teaching workshops one of the questions we must explore is how teachers explicitly and intentionally deal with in class distractions, of all kinds, but especially extraneous kinetic (movement in the room), visual (elements in the visual field of learners), auditory (any noise coming in from outside or being generated in the room), olfactor (odors), airborne (pollution, etc.), temperature fluctuations and furniture comfort and distribution. 

Any one of those can seriously undermine instruction, of course. In haptic work which is based on systematic control of movement and gesture and utilization of the visual field, you can see how any distraction, in addition to just naturally "wandering students minds" can undermine the process. Consequently, we attend to ALL of them in our initial assessment of the classroom setting that learners are about to enter. 

Just the use of gesture and movement synchronized with speaking will capture the attention of learners at least temporarily mediating the surrounding potentially distractions, but the idea is that in addition to learners being "captivated" by the lesson content, activities and instructor delivery, attention to or control of select environmental features may be extraordinarily important. Assuming you can not control everything at once, I'd suggest you use our basic heuristic: adjust . . . at least just one or two intentionally . . . each class--without letting learners know what you are up to.  Then maybe do some kind of warm up, maybe not like this one of mine, but you get the idea!

Source: 

University of Bristol. (2020, September 8). Research unravels what makes memories so detailed and enduring. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 1, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200908131139.htm