Enhanced courage and L2 pronunciation through acute alcohol consumption!

Clker.com

Some studies are enough to drive you to drink . . . and then miss numerous unaccounted for sources of variance.

You may have seen popular commentary on this recent study, "Dutch courage? Effects of acute alcohol consumption on self-ratings and observer ratings of foreign language skills" by Renner, Kersbergen, Field, and Werthmann of the University of Liverpool, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.  (ScienceDaily recast the title as: "Dutch courage: Alcohol improves foreign language skills."

This study had potential. What they found, basically, was that rater evaluation of pronunciation , as opposed to overall speech production, was better but  (interestingly!) that the subjects, themselves, did not perceive their L2 speech to be better. The subjects had been provided with a pint of something a bit earlier--not the raters or the experimenters, as far as we can tell.

Another relatively interesting feature was that the evaluations were done by blindfolded judges (which in itself, may have been problematic as noted in recent blogposts here) and the speech was evaluated during dialogue (interesting, again, but not sufficiently unpacked), not just with controlled repetition in a laboratory setting as had been the case in many past studies (e.g., summary of  Guiora et al, 1972 by Ellis).

Two terminological issues:

• By "acute" the researchers indicate that it was a "low dose", one pint of 5% beer or equivalent. Now in the field of psychopharmacology that term, acute, may just mean something like "one time" or unusual. (I find conflicting opinions on that.) In normal North American English usage, of course, that usually is taken to mean something like: severe, critical, long term, etc. --or, of course, insightful, attention to detail, etc.  In Guiora, et al (1972) the alcohol dosage where the main effect was evident was at about one ounce of alcohol in a cocktail, roughly equivalent to that used in this study--but it was not described as "acute!"
•  The subjects were termed "bilingual" (absent any empirical measurement of what that meant exactly) who had learned dutch "recently", at best a loose interpretation of what "bilingual" is generally taken to mean in the field today. That proficiency question may have had significant impact on the outcome of study, in fact.

So, why was the perceived improvement in subjects' speech just in their pronunciation, not other aspects of their speech or behavior? In Guiora et al (1972), for example, to explore that effect, subjects also had to perform a motor skill task, putting shaped blocks in holes of different shapes. What they found, not surprisingly, was at the 1-ounce level, both pronunciation improved and manual dexterity declined. The "physical" correlate was clear. One of the main criticisms of that alcohol study was that the alcohol effect may have been primarily "just" loosening up of the muscles and vocal mechanism, not some more higher level cognitive functioning. (Brown, 1989, also cited in Ellis, above).

Guiora et al (1972) were ultimately looking for the impact of that effect on "language ego", perception of one's identity in the L2. In a way they found that--a correlate. It is to some extent a matter of design directionality: loosening up the body does the same to the vocal mechanism. Will it be any surprise to find out that other non-pharmacological yet still "somatic" treatments, such as hypnosis, mindfulness or simply kinaesthetic engagement, such as gestural (or even haptic) work do something similar? Not at all.

In other words, the "pharmacogs" seem to have come up with a possible explanation for a well-appreciated phenomenon: after a shot, you'll be more courageous (or foolhardy) and your L2 pronunciation will be perceived as improved as long as your date is blindfolded or the room is very dark--but you won't know it, or care . . .

A little more interdisciplinary research and theory-integration, along with more in depth concern for the relevant "cocktail cognitions" of the subjects, might have made this more a fun read. Of course, the ultimate source of insight on the effect of  alcohol will always be Brad Paisley!

Source:

Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, Jessica Werthmann. Dutch courage? Effects of acute alcohol consumption on self-ratings and observer ratings of foreign language skills. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2017; 026988111773568 DOI: 10.1177/0269881117735687

Famous "Alcohol/L2 pronunciation study" mystery solved: Here's (NOT) looking at you, kid!

Clip art: Clker

If you have done some formal study of second language pronunciation teaching and learning, you have almost certainly ran across the 1972 "Alcohol" study done by Guiora and colleagues. Explanations as to exactly why drinking about an ounce and half of alcohol seemed to improve subjects' ability to imitate an audio recording of Thai sentences have run from Guiora's theoretical construct of "enhanced ego permeability" to simply "muscle relaxation" (Brown 2006 and elsewhere.) If you have followed this blog some you are aware of the critical importance of limiting visual field distraction to effectiveness of haptic pronunciation teaching techniques. (That observation is backed up by any number of studies in general "haptic" learning that demonstrate how visual modality consistently overrides auditory and tactile engagement.)

In Guiora's study, subjects sat facing an experimenter who operated the tape recorder. I have long wondered what would have happened had the imitation phase been done in a lab, rather than face to  face. (In a 1980 attempt to replicate the alcohol study later--in which I was on the research team, the attractive "social presence" of one of the (female) experimenters appeared to demonstrate the added impact of a face on the effect.)

A new study by Gorka, Fitzgerald, King, and Phan at University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, reported by Science Daily, Alcohol attenuates amygdala–frontal cortex connectivity during processing social signals in heavy social drinkers, suggests another, related explanation for the improved performance of subjects on the imitation task: desensitization to "threatening" features in the visual field in front of them. In the current study, "heavy social drinkers." given an appropriate size drink, were significantly slower in reacting to pictures of "threatening" facial expressions. The bottom line: the alcohol served to somewhat disconnect the connection between the (emotion-related) amygdala and the pre-frontal (visual) cortex.

There are many ways to functionally do the same thing in pronunciation instruction, restricting the emotional/social/visual impact on learner's attention. The field (pronunciation teaching) has figured out how to deal with the social and emotion milieu reasonably well but generally does not focus on the potentially disruptive effect of what is going on, on an ongoing basis,  in the visual field. In our work, that is essential--a given. SEE what I mean?

Apologies to Bogart for the take off on his famous line from Casablanca in the post title.