Back to the future of pronunciation teaching (and the "Goldfish" standard for attention management)

You apparently have a bit more than 8 seconds to read this post. So you may want to just scroll down to the conclusion and start there . . .

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Capturing and holding attention, if only for a few seconds, is the key to effective change in pronunciation work, especially for "mechanical" adjustments--and most other things in life. In earlier blog posts, the "gold standard" or is sine qua non of haptic pronunciation work has been seen to be about 3 seconds. In other words, for a learner to adequately experience the totality of a new sound or word, physically, auditorily, visually and conceptually--connecting things together, before moving on to practice or at least noticing or any chance at "uptake"-- takes complete, undivided attention for at least that long or longer.

Even that is often an unrealistic requirement with all the other potential distractions in the classroom or visual field. Research on the effectiveness of recasting learner utterances by instructors, for example, (Loewen and Philip, 2006) suggests that most of the time that strategy is relatively ineffective. One critical variable is always the quality or intentionality of learner attention, both in term of what the function the instructor is attempting to carry out and general learner receptivity.

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Recall that Microsoft claims that our collective attention span, in part due to the impact of technology, has now dropped to about 8 seconds, just below that of the goldfish. (The UK Telegraph report is much more entertaining than that from the techies.

A new study by Moher, Anderson and Song of Brown University, summarized by Science Daily.com, adds a fascinating piece to the puzzle and may suggest how to begin to maintain attention better in class. What they discovered in an experimental study was that their subjects were, in effect, better able to "block" obvious distractions than they were more subtle ones. Backgrounded images in the visual field had more effect on subsequent action than did foregrounded, more striking elements which appeared to be easier for the brain to manage or ignore. They seem to have "discovered" one possible path into the mind by subliminal stimuli, evading first line conceptual or perceptual defences.

What is the obvious "subtle, unobtrusive, yet potent" application to pronunciation teaching? If you don't have "full body, mind and visual field" attention, there is no telling what is interfering with anchoring of sound change in the brain and subsequent total or partial recall.

Early on in EHIEP (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation) work I experimented extensively with controlling eye movement, in part to maintain concentration and attention, based primarily on the research underlying the therapeutic model of "Observed experiential integration" (See citation below) developed by  Bradshaw and Cook (2011). The effect was dramatic in working with individuals but applying those techniques to the classroom proved at least impractical. In part because the haptic pedagogical system was just developing, I backed off from eye patterning techniques in pronunciation work in 2009.

Based on Moher et al's research, however, it is perhaps time to again give directed eye movement management a "second look" in our work, going back to what I believe is the (haptic) future of pronunciation instruction, especially in virtual, computer-mediated applications.

Will report back on an in progress exploratory study with one learner using some eye movement management later this summer. Not surprisingly I am already "seeing" some promising results, attending to features of the teaching session that I would normally not have noticed!

Full citations:

Brown University. "Surprise: Subtle distractors may divert action more than overt ones." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 July 2015, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716123831.htm. (Jeff Moher, Brian A. Anderson , Joo-Hyun Song. Dissociable Effects of Salience on Attention and Goal-Directed Action. Current Biology, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.06.029)

Bradshaw, R. A., Cook, A., McDonald, M. J. (2011). Observed experiential integration (OEI): Discovery and development of a new set of trauma therapy techniques. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 21(2), 104-171.

Loewen, S., and Philip, J. (2006). Recasts in the adult English L2 classroom: Characteristics, explicitness, and effectiveness. The Modern Language Journal, 90, 536-556.

Process-experiential Pronunciation instruction

Logo: Process-Experiential Therapy

Once every couple of months I check in with my local counseling psychologist/researcher in the building next door on my current thinking as to the development of this work, one of those who introduced me to Observed Experiential Integration over five years ago. Yesterday's question was: How can I better conceptualize the role of haptic integration within the appropriate balance between cognitive-conceptual and body-based somatic pronunciation instruction? He referred me to Process-experiential therapy. To the right is the logo from the PE website which outlines the general model. If you just substitute "haptic-integrated" for "experienced emotion" you have a very interesting framework for the theoretical foundation of our work, especially in light of recent developments relating to the importance of learning about this approach--experientially! (The logo, itself, not surprisingly, maps on very nicely to the general character of the visual field as detailed in several earlier posts, with "up~down" being "internal~external, and "left~right" being "stability~change.") What is even more striking (to me at least, not my colleague!) is that the 12 boxes also map on beautifully to the "vowel clock" framework described in earlier posts as well. In the next few posts, I will unpack and slightly alter the labels of several of those "boxes" in examining the empirical and theoretical bases of HICP. If you are one of my grad students, you have your homework!

A touch of speech-synchronized gesture just for good measure--and measuring!

Speech-synchronized gesture has been studied extensively--although subsequent research has questioned whether, in fact, the gestural "chicken" does not in fact come before the words, or at the very least they are generated simultaneously by the brain or are proceded by still "deeper" origins. Linked above is a blog post from December 2011 where I described something of the process by which I had arrived at haptic-integrated pronunciation work after a couple of decades of basically "kinaesthetic" exploration and classroom practice. To that comment, I'd now add this:

• My early work with speech synchronized gesture resulted in a series of "gesture-synchronized speech" techniques, with the focus on using gesture to drive and anchor language, such as the use of upper torso nods, baton strokes, and various arm and hand movements across the visual field.
• As many have discovered, although the effectiveness of movement-based techniques may be striking at times, it is exceedingly difficult to document or validate and reproduce consistently.
• When, in 2005, I was introduced to a psychotherapeutic system, Observed Experiential Integration, that exploited eye tracking across the visual field, for a time it looked like that approach might serve to make the impact of gesture-synchronized speech stronger and consistent. To some extent that turned out to be the case but the training involved by instructor/therapists and potential interpersonal risks involved was  excessive. 
• In OEI, however, and in American Sign Language to some extent, I discovered a great deal of haptic anchoring, movement terminating in self-touch, usually on the upper body or limbs. From there, researching the fundamentals and neurophysiology of touch and movement to the application of haptic techniques and haptics (machine interfaces) in several fields would gradually lead to where we are today: haptic-integrated, clinical pronunciation. 



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• Haptic-integration seems to both solve the problem of systematic pedagogical use of movement and provide an engaging and potent anchoring capability to pronunciation work. Once pedagogical movement patterns become regularized, their impact and potential to enhance memory and recall becomes extraordinary, measurable . . . and empirically verifiable.

It has been a moving journey thus far--but is only the beginning. Keep in touch.

Future pronunciation: Hands-free "optic" anchoring (with eye tracking)

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Ever since seeing the Clint Eastwood 1982 film, Firefox, I have been intrigued with the idea of using eye tracking for teaching pronunciation. In the film, Eastwood flies a stolen, high tech Russian fighter--controlled by his eyes and a few spoken Russian commands-- back to the US. As noted in the right column, the work of Bradshaw and Cook in developing "Observed Experiential Integration,", which involves extensive, therapeutic use of eye tracking, was fundamental to much of the early development of the HICP/EHIEP framework. Here is, basically, a marketing piece for a company that has developed (from my perspective) an amazing range of eye tracking-based software applications. As I read the product list, it would take only two or three applications to allow a learner to do almost all of the protocols or procedures that we have developed, hands free.

In fact, the "optic anchoring" created simply by tracking the eyes across the visual field in roughly the same patterns that we do with arms and hands would be at least as effective, if not more so. Although we do use some eye tracking techniques in working with accent reduction, in general EHIEP work, no explicit eye tracking is used, in part because of the inherent potency of eye tracking procedures and the absolute necessity of being formally trained in working with it. This technology is certainly worth "taking a look at" now. It is clearly integral to the future of virtual reality-based language instruction.