Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) / quote 32 of 91
Human learning is fundamentally relational
What is strong enough, Kuhl and other researchers wondered, to keep that door from closing? Say you expose your baby, in the critical period, to a tape of someone speaking a foreign language. Does the brain stay open for phonemic business? The answer is no. How about a DVD of someone speaking the foreign language? The door continues to shut. Only one thing keeps that door open to another language. You have to deliver the words through a social interaction. A real live person has to come into the room and speak the language directly to the child. If the child’s brain detects this social interaction, its neurons will begin recording the second language, phonemes and all. To perform these cognitive tasks, the brain needs the information-rich, give-and-take stimulation that another human being provides. Tucked into these data is a bombshell of an idea, one with empirical support across the developmental sciences. Human learning in its most native state is primarily a relational exercise. Intelligence is not developed in the electronic crucibles of cold, lifeless machines but in the arms of warm, loving people. You can literally rewire a child’s brain through exposure to relationships.